AS DONALD Trump’s second presidential inauguration nears, both his supporters and detractors are already making predictions about his second presidency.
Most of these are conjectures but Trump is only one of several inflection points of several multi-generational trends affecting the world.
I’ve written about this before, about the problems of Pax Americana, and the unsustainability of the post-war world.
On the long term, all this leads to a larger and more important trend which is the end of the modern world. There was a time when modernity did not exist, and there will come a time when it will no longer exist. I believe that we are headed in that direction, and although I won’t see it, I believe that it will come, if not in this century then in the next.
This transition may not be sudden or apocalyptic, but I think it will correlate with the decoupling of countries and regions. Where modernity brought regions and countries together, created trade networks and facilitated the rise of mass capitalism, the end will bring about the opposite of that.
We are already seeing it, with the rise of tariffs, and global disruptions to trade. There are also wars and the possibilities of wars. If China, for example, decides to start an invasion of Taiwan, that will be a terrible blow to the global order, regardless of the results.
But the greatest cause of the decline of the modern world, I think, is that Western nations have grown weary of it. It was Western nations who created Modernity by creating networks and the technologies that allowed it to happen.
Right now, Western populations, led by populists like Trump, want to close their borders and to reshore their industries, much to the frustration of Western elites. The end result of that is the weakening of international networks and a return to a kind of regionalism. That I think is the future.
Now, this return does not necessarily mean that we will go back to traditional societies or even to a post-apocalyptic setting. It’s likely that there will still be a lot of tech in the future, but I do think it will take place in closed regions or country blocs/alliances.
Trade will be more restricted between blocs and I think free travel and knowledge transfer will fade away. Whatever knowledge or technology is discovered in this new era will have to be stolen.
There will be wars but I think they will be limited conflicts over little borders and trade lanes; not the world spanning wars of World War II, and it’s very likely that the liberal order as well as the nation-state will be eroded in favor new forms of social organization. I think that is the world we can expect when the modern world fades away./PN
