The (White) United States of Europe
John Sheehan
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(3 of 3) AMERICA The America we know is over. Like that of the Taliban, American culture is looking backward. America’s fights are with itself. People will vote all the time, via polls and computers, but the extremes and the techies will alternately have their ways because they have money, understand systems, and organize power. The government will be less and less concerned with promoting growth and development. The elite find America’s religious heartland too alien. Money and technology are not where the nation-state is. And the nation-state is not central to transnational Christian Evangelism. America is threatened by the decline of a healthy nationalism, crippling its ability to weave its many cultures, ethnicities, and social groups into one nation, thus diminishing its capacity to reinvent itself along the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment. America will increasingly mirror the world’s multicultural conflicts as it becomes less effective in resolving them. The less liberal it becomes, the more it loses its identity and sense of self, and the more it resembles the rest of the world. America’s appeal as a hopeful model will slowly but surely disappear. America will face two choices: protecting its access to overseas money and production by empire, or allowing itself to collapse from within. The elite and the heartland will allow it to collapse. American culture continues to bask in permanent adolescence. The imperial phase of American history will consequently never get off the ground. America has neither the vision nor the stamina for empire. The American moment in history will vanish. Only the 20th century will turn out to be the American Century. EUROPE Europe is not in terminal decline. Europeans will salvage the European project in order to save their culture, affirming Europe’s identity as white and Christian in a new constitution. Due to obstacles and fissures along the way, it will take many decades before Europe once again becomes a military superpower. In the meantime, as the European metropolis will extend across fifteen time zones, America will be critical to Europe’s security, to the success of the European project, to the survival of Russia as a nation-state, and to the containment of China. No more free trade; the WTO is gone. America, to Europeans, is an example to be avoided—ethnically, economically, and culturally. Russia—white, Christian, and no longer a threat— will be allowed to join the union primarily because it is also the land bridge between Europe and China. Turkey, to the extent that it is Muslim, will not be admitted to the union. Muslim guest workers will be expelled. Europe will be careful not to repeat the Holocaust, and European Jews will either integrate as pseudo-Christian “Europeans” or emigrate to Israel. OTHER COUNTRIES There won’t be any. Nation-states will become tribal—either small African quasi-states or super-large, super-cultural ethnic states. Islamic fundamentalism is not rising; it is in its death throes. It offers no reconciliation between modernity and spirituality. Growing western and Chinese appetite for oil will exert even greater pressure on the Arabian Peninsula. The fundamentalist brand of Wahabbism will be destroyed when the Arab World, the West, and China have ‘had enough.’ Israel will fall apart unless its destructive zeal for real estate is reversed and its borders are reconciled with the rights of the Palestinians and their birthrate. By 2050, an Africa devastated by AIDS will be increasingly swayed by Islamic and Christian evangelism. Most of the Andean countries and even parts of northern Brazil will be under the control of Venezuela. Japan’s population will be cut in half to 63 million due to its falling birthrate. Taiwan will be an independent country. Japan and Vietnam will be staunch American allies. India will be the largest country in the world with the largest GDP in Asia. China will become America’s most dangerous enemy, though less populous and relatively poor. America’s leadership in military technology will be wider than ever. The Upper Class will rule but not serve. The Middle Class will serve but not rule. The Underclass will be crushed. JOHN SHEEHAN is a bank economist who lives and works in Boston, where he focuses on international economic strategy. He is also the president of the Beacon Foundation. |
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