Plausibly Plausible

I thought it was obvious in 2018 that we were in a state of war with Russia. Undeclared, unofficial yet undeniable. But we – like the rest of Europe – did very little about it. We failed even to really acknowledge it. For as long as tanks weren’t crossing borders, fingers in ears and ‘la la la la’ seemed to be official policy. The truth of the matter, I suspect, is that these were governments scared of inflicting upon their electorates the hardships required to confront this reality. Alas, Putin has no such fear. Here we are in 2025 with nearly a million Russians maimed or dead, their economy shattered and isolated, hundreds of thousands of their brightest have fled, and yet Vlad will happily continue to inflict untold further suffering and sacrifice on the people he supposedly represents, all in the name of his legacy.

Even as tanks did start crossing borders when Russia invaded Ukraine, most of Europe did the bare minimum. And now there is surprise and alarm that the USA turns out to not be the most reliable ally. It’s not really a surprise. Is it? We’ve known this since late 2016, when Trump first acceded his throne. Alas, folk just tried to pretend he was saying something else. That the worst wouldn’t happen. That the obviously fascist tyrant in the east would be the first fascist tyrant in history to not behave exactly like fascist tyrants behave. And that the catastrophic political breakdown on the other side of the Atlantic would right itself. Fools. And a pox on all of them.

It seems to me that ‘American Decline’ is accelerating. Not long now, and it’ll be ‘American Nosedive’. The country has been taken over by a bonkers coalition of populists, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and the far right. Alternative facts won. The country is every bit as fascist as Russia. The break down of rule of law within its borders, respect for treaties and alliances externally and a growing debt pile is a whole bunch of stories headed to the same very unhappy ending. The rest of the world will find ways to do business without them. Trust – as we post-Brexit Brits know all to well to our cost – is easy to lose, much harder to regain.

Where do we go from here? How does 2035 look? I’ll make no predictions. But some things have become plausible. There are plausible scenarios that could have the US military mounting a coup and throwing Trump and his motley crew in the slammer. There are scenarios where the US triggers Article 5, likely in the Pacific, and gets ignored. Karma. There are even scenarios where US forces come into conflict against European forces. I think it’s very plausible that several European nations will seek to equip themselves with a nuclear arsenal. Poland and the Baltics in particular. It’s plausible that Russia will collapse entirely. It’s plausible North Korea invades South Korea. It’s plausible that there will be several humanitarian catastrophes in Africa with deaths in the millions.

It’s plausible that this would all suit China very nicely indeed. It’s plausible that even as Trump and Vance declare China to be the great enemy, they have conceded the world to them without firing a shot. I’ll see you back here in a decade and we’ll see how this went.