5 ms·

Who are you imagining will step into the power vacuum if the US collapses economically?

• ehnto 1y ago
  China is by far the most likely candidate, if it navigates its aging demographic issue well.
  • ptero 1y ago
    China has many internal problems and is not looking for the world dominance, at least not in the medium term. It wants to continue building up its economy, not get involved in conflicts on the other side of the world. Rapid expansions lead to societal changes at home and is something China is really keen to avoid today. My 2c.
    • zrobotics 1y ago
      How does that square with belt and road? I would agree they aren't looking for world dominance, but from my POV they certainly are looking to be a more major player internationally. Especially in the '3rd world', they will likely end up with more influence than the US since we dropped USAID.
      • ptero 1y ago
        I see belt and road as orthogonal to the above. This is an initiative focused on a mix of PR and economy. While there are likely many layers of the intent behind it, I think the main one is to establish resource access as well as access to the markets for China exports and enable the stable growth of the Chinese economy. The success of the initiative still remains to be seen: it is definitely not a failure, but many things can derail it, both inside and outside of China. In either case I see very little desire from the China to throw its non-economic might around outside of what they consider to be part of the Greater China territorial area (Taiwan, South China and Philippine seas). My 2c.
  • bpt3 1y ago
    That's a huge if, and would not be good news for Canada if it did in fact occur.
  • kmeisthax 1y ago
    The US has the same demographic issue. Actually, every potential successor to US hegemony has the same issue. The only reason why it doesn't show up in the birth rates as bad here is because America takes in (or, used to take in) lots of immigrants from countries that still have babies. China takes in immigrants in numbers so tiny they might as well not have an immigration program. Either Korea is an authoritarian nightmare no one wants to immigrate to. Europe, and to a lesser extent Japan, takes in immigrants, fails to integrate them, and then engenders a bunch of far-right nutjobs calling for revocation of citizenship and other Hitlerwords. As a double irony, those immigrant communities also trend far-right, and the argument between the two is just big and little endianism[0]. The US was special in that it was the world's "backup democracy". Nobody is equipped to replace it. OK, but why doesn't China just fix the demographic issue instead of papering over it with immigration? Well, we already know the fix: uninvent birth control and trick horny kids into having lots of teen pregnancies. That's the circumstances of life in places with high fertility rates. Except that it unambiguously sucks to live life in a human breeding farm. Having a bunch of kids with absentee parents is extremely destabilizing to the social fabric of a country. That's the shit Nixon did to the Black community to spark a crime wave. That's why there's so many people emigrating from countries with high birth rates. And if you're thinking of further rules to prevent that, well, congratulations. You've just reinvented medieval Christian sexual mores. The cure is worse than the disease. [0] As in, the factions from Gullivers' Travels, not the byte order of CPUs
  • cmxch 1y ago
    And the US will make a point to ensure that doesn’t happen.