The Imminent Threat That Could Bring Down the United States

The United States is facing multiple threats: debt, inflation, civil war, climate… Yet, a terrifying threat could be imminent and lead to the downfall of the United States, in a historic upheaval comparable to 1945.

2024: a decisive year for the United States

This year, 2024, is an election year. Everyone is therefore even more worried than usual about the future of the American nation. Doom prophecies are succeeding at a frantic pace on social media.

Progressives fear that Donald Trump will destroy democracy, declare himself a dictator, and establish fascism with the help of a captive Supreme Court.

Conservatives are concerned about the border, immigration, and the transgender movement, while muttering about civil war.

Leftists are wringing their hands about the climate apocalypse.

Centrists decry the jungle of paperwork and inertia in America, and libertarians predict hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar.

In the background, everyone is worried about China and the risk of war. Of a World War III.

Existential perils

Most of these events are due to the usual American tendency to catastrophize everything.

If you go back and read what people were writing in any decade of our past, there were always many people warning that doom was imminent.

In fact, I think that even though this behavior is undeniably annoying, it can be very useful because it’s good to address problems before they become serious, and a wealthy country with well-established institutions has a lot of inertia.

It appears that the danger related to internal disturbances, civil war, and authoritarianism has passed, despite the probable election of Trump this fall.

The economy will probably do well, but the national debt is a huge and imminent problem that could hit hard if mishandled.

If most domestic threats are less serious than they are believed to be, the external threats facing the United States are serious and increasingly so.

The United States is facing an axis of bigger, more productive, and more technologically advanced enemies than those it has faced so far, and which are ideologically determined to degrade the wealth, stability, and autonomy of the United States.

The United States threatened by war

If the United States does not respond vigorously to this new axis, we risk ending up with a catastrophe, whether it is a defeat for the United States in the second cold war or a third world war that we fail to prevent.

This danger makes America’s internal problems much more serious than they would be otherwise, because these internal quarrels could weaken America and prevent it from facing real threats.

Democracy in danger

Donald Trump has extremely anti-democratic instincts. He denied the result of a free and fair election that he lost in 2020, he encouraged a mob of his supporters to physically storm the Capitol to try to prevent the ratification of the election, and he will almost certainly pardon those who were convicted for this coup attempt.

Trump considers any election he loses to be illegitimate. There is nothing more anti-democratic than that.

Biden’s age has made Trump the favorite, and Biden’s only real replacement is Kamala Harris, who is deeply unpopular.

Once in power, Trump will degrade American democracy a bit by trying to strengthen presidential immunity. Indeed, he has committed many crimes and would prefer not to be prosecuted and convicted for these crimes.

Even if Trump undoubtedly has no respect for democracy, his victory will not turn America into an autocratic or fascist state.

The health of the US economy

Overall, the American economy remains excellent – employment is near historic highs, and inflation has fallen to a tolerable level of about 3%.

Wealth is on the rise, the younger generation is significantly wealthier than their parents were at the same age, and income and wealth inequalities both seem to have plateaued.

The United States is experiencing much faster growth than other rich economies and could even keep pace with China.

It’s true that it’s more expensive to finance a home these days, but rates are not at historically high levels, and most people don’t buy homes every year anyway.

Meanwhile, most of the things that the prophets of doom predicted would collapse the economy in the years following the pandemic have ended up being contradicted.

When a handful of mid-sized regional banks collapsed in early 2023 due to rising interest rates, the government simply stepped in and guaranteed deposits for a while, and the whole crisis was forgotten a month later.

Inflation did not soar, thanks to the Fed’s decision to raise rates.

The migration risk

Regarding immigration, everyone is upset about the influx of asylum seekers crossing the border.

This problem will not be solved until the United States changes its asylum law to prevent people who entered the country illegally from applying for asylum.

Executive actions are being taken today in a bipartisan manner.

Biden is now just as tough on immigration as Trump was.

The weight of debt

Economically, the United States seems able to manage.

But there is one extremely concerning economic issue, which is the national debt.

The rise in interest rates has exploded government interest payments. The obvious solution is austerity, but neither party seems particularly interested in austerity, and Trump seems particularly unwilling to do what needs to be done.

Instead, Trump will likely pressure the Fed to lower interest rates, to support growth while reducing government interest payments.

But if he succeeds, it could result in an inflationary spiral. The fact that inflation remains above its long-term target suggests that there are underlying pressures in favor of rising prices that are currently being suppressed by 5% interest rates. If this lid is removed, the consequences could be very painful for America.

The Russian-Chinese axis

There is a threat that the United States cannot ignore, which is the threat from the China/Russia axis.

An obvious threat is the outbreak of a war between the United States and China, either over Taiwan or over the Philippines, US allies.

This would be World War III, even if it did not lead to a nuclear exchange.

There is a high chance that America will lose this war. The American manufacturing sector, and especially its defense industrial base, has atrophied while China now dominates the world.

Any war that lasted more than two weeks – which is the case with most wars – would heavily favor the country capable of producing more ships, missiles, drones, and munitions. That country is China.

If China were to invade Taiwan, it would be very unlikely for it to take the risk that the United States might intervene to stop it. This means that China would probably preemptively attack US bases in the region.

Towards a new Pearl Harbor

Even if a President Trump intended to defend Taiwan, the sudden and unprovoked death of thousands of American soldiers in a Pearl Harbor-type attack would make popular pressure for war overwhelming.

The only thing the United States would accomplish by not properly preparing for such a war would be to make itself more likely to lose quickly and ignominiously in the early days.

These dreams will survive Xi and Putin. And both China and Russia recognize that, Trump or not, the United States of America is their greatest rival and the biggest long-term threat to their imperial ambitions.

The new Russian-Chinese axis will therefore seek to weaken the United States by all possible means, in order to reduce the threat.

How the Russian-Chinese axis will attack the United States

To fully neutralize the long-term threat that America represents, these countries will want to impoverish the American economy, sabotage its infrastructure, and disrupt its internal social and political stability.

To impoverish America, it will need to be cut off from trade or forced to trade under unfavorable conditions.

China and Russia will therefore try to achieve this by controlling global trade routes.

The United States and its democratic allies are currently losing an information war.

America has shown some signs of waking up by adopting a bill ordering China to sell TikTok to an American company, but Trump will try to sabotage the divestment bill once he’s in power.

China and Russia are both deeply unpopular with the American public, but most Americans are focused on partisan political conflicts and economic issues. The broader geopolitical competition against China and Russia is not something most Americans realize, let alone something they understand the consequences of losing.