Polycrisis 2025

Kate Mackenzie , Tim Sahay, and Lara Merling over at Polycrisis:

The United States will be a source of chaos and volatility for the next several years. The first month of 2025 has set the scene. Events so far have included imperial gangsterism against both a poor Latin American country (Colombia) and a rich northern European one (Denmark); a long-overdue ceasefire ending a genocidal military campaign (Gaza); the most expensive natural disaster in US history with climate-fuelled wildfires destroying homes (California); a trillion dollar sell off in the AI bubble in reaction to a Chinese firm’s innovation from behind the chips blockade; and the outbreak of a virus (H5N1) that has killed hundreds of millions of US poultry, sending egg prices soaring and raising concerns among scientists of another pandemic. OK, doomer.

It is hard to predict where exactly the administration’s stated goals of deporting immigrants, solidifying dollar strength, restoring trade surpluses, and maintaining low inflation will land—or how they may cause friction with the underlying agenda of authoritarian kleptocracy. Searching for a clearly defined, stably coherent ideology of the Trump administration may be a fool’s errand. In any case, it’s not as though the US has been known for providing stable, benevolent, or far-sighted hegemony; the rest of the world has been adjusting to an increasingly erratic US for many years.

But if a coherent worldview is out of reach, there are still patterns to be discerned in the order being formed around Trump, and the ways in which the rest of the world is bound to respond.

More here.

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