It’s common for media around the world to offer year-end packages that review the past 12 months. Sometimes celebrities are invited to comment or volunteer about the past year: Barack Obama’s highly anticipated list of the best books, movies, and music of the year. Sometimes, in a terrifying exercise in vision, the media also takes a stab at what could happen in the coming year.
It is in the latter spirit that Dmitry Medvedev, the former President and Prime Minister of Russia and a powerful ally of Vladimir Putin, has published a series of very interesting tweets predicting the evolution of the world in 2023. Together, Medvedev’s ten predictions can be considered. led to one desired outcome: the decline and end of Western civilization, particularly the United States, as we know it.
But the devil is in the details. In particular, Medvedev predicts that a civil war will break out in the USA, and California and Texas will become independent states, and the latter will form an alliance with Mexico; the largest stock markets and financial activity are leaving the US and Europe and moving to Asia; and the euro and dollar will cease to circulate as global reserve currencies and will be replaced by digital currencies.
In Europe, he also predicts that Britain will rejoin the European Union, resulting in its collapse and the creation of a German-led Fourth Reich that will go to war with France.
In another development, Poland and Hungary, which would become German satellites, would occupy the rest of Ukraine (presumably what Russia did not take); Northern Ireland secedes from Great Britain and joins the Republic of Ireland; oil price will exceed 150 dollars per barrel; and Elon Musk will remain the President of the United States.
Oh! That’s a lot to pack into one year – and a lot to unpack. At any other time and with anyone else, all this could be dismissed as the insults of a delusional dreamer, but Medvedev is not sad, although he artfully predicts his “modest contribution” and competes with “the wildest and wildest”. . the most absurd futuristic hypothesis”.
Apart from the escape clause, he has responsibilities as a thoughtful academic and government leader whose tenure in Moscow, albeit under Putin’s shadow, heralded liberal policies in Russia and warmer relations with the West.
What gave some credence to the predictions was the response (in Medvedev’s opinion) of former US President Elon Musk, who described the event as an “epic thread” to his 123 million followers, many of whom wondered if he had followed through on the predictions. support or not. and wished it all came true, even though under the current constitution, the South African-born Tesla-Twitter honcho is not eligible to run for the White House.
Of course, people change – leaders too. There was a time when Putin was also interested in the USA and even asked for NATO membership for Russia, and he was rejected. Medvedev’s apocalyptic prediction now indicates the loss of confidence of the Russian leadership in the West, although Western leaders doubt the survival of the leadership in Moscow.
Believing each other’s imminent destruction is not exactly conducive to any negotiations, so at least 2023 looks set to be another year of death and destruction on the Ukraine-Russia front.
The problem with Medvedev’s predictions is that history moves at a relatively glacial pace, even if current events seem powerful in the age of social media fever. Although some chroniclers of great events, including America itself, have speculated about the decline and fall of the US, the timeframe for such an event is wide. Empires and great powers rise and fall over years and decades, not months. Even the Soviet Union needed a few years, although 1988-1989 were decisive years.
Furthermore, the United States is nowhere near the state that the former USSR was in the 1980s, which was ravaged by food and commodity shortages, ethnic conflicts, and separatist tendencies. Of course, political and social tensions in the US are at an all-time high, and the economy is a sketchy house of cards. But perhaps more than Americans themselves, the rest of the world believes and trusts the United States.
Lines for would-be immigrants, tourists, entertainers, and businessmen remain at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world — longer than in any other country. And those who can’t make it legal follow the border — not just Latinos, but people all over the world.
It is not like a country to disappear and easily give up its global preeminence. Warts and all, America remains a shining city on a hill. By the time the rest of the world invests in the US and continues to register, any detection, if any, will be a long time coming.
– The writer is a senior journalist in Washington.
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