The Geopolitics of a Post American Collapse World, or, The World Over the Next Decade

Hi! How's everyone? Gather ‘ round, gang. We’re going to go deep today.

I’ve been discussing things at a mundane level lately. Money, finances, for obvious reasons. Hello, meltdown. We've been discussing it intently in sessions. Today we’re going to go up a level. I’m going to teach you what the world will look like over the next five years. In the Post-American Collapse Era.

I worry. These are difficult times. Sometimes, I feel like I’m alone and adrift in a turbulent sea. I toss and turn in a restless not-quite sleep. I feel the anguish of a civilization stuck and coming unmoored. And amongst the many things that keep me up at night, I worry that I’m not guiding you strongly, quickly, or confidently enough.

So today I am going to try and do that a little better.

What will the world look like over the next five to ten years?

America as Pariah State, or America’s Shadow

One of the many things that will begin to happen is that America will become a pariah state. Now, that means many things, it’s a spectrum, so don’t necessarily expect, say, North Korea.

Let me put that to you more technically. The world is now beginning a process of what many leaders are explicitly calling “decoupling” from America. That, too, means many things. We’ll discuss that in more detail, but for now, a brief overview goes like this.

The world will now have to decouple—and more to the point, wants to—decouple from America financially, socially, economically, and culturally. It is learning not just that “it can’t rely” on America, but that it can’t trust it. We’ll return to that.

So what does all that really imply? 

America will be isolated politically. Much of the world will deal with it only reluctantly, if at all. Would you want to “do a deal” with Trump? Would you trust him to make good on it at all? But that’s just a mere beginning.

The world will have to withdraw from American institutions, in many senses. And as it does, the mayhem in the markets is just a mere beginning. It will have to give up so much reliance on the American dollar. On Wall St. On American bonds, which are the currency the world does business and financial transactions in, behind the scenes.

And as all this occurs, markets will have a punctuated series of crashes, probably, along slow, steady declines. That’s not a “prediction,” so much as a process that’s already unfolding.

You see, this is different. Wall St and Silicon Valley and America’s power centers don’t understand it, but the world does. In the first Trump years, the world began to come face to face with America’s shadow. We’re speaking here in Jungian terms. It’s repressed dark side explode outwards, in a vulgar display of rage, hate, and destruction.

But that was mostly aimed at America. Think of Jan 6th. It happened at the US Capitol. Think of the many abuses of power, from packing the Supreme Court with fanatics and crackpots to violently repressing protest. America’s shadow in those days, the first Trump years, was aimed at itself.

But now things are completely different. America’s shadow is now aimed at the world. Trump has effectively nuked the global economy. He has aimed a series of nuclear bombs, in economic terms, at all those who thought they were friends with America, from Europe to Canada to South Korea and beyond.

They are a little stunned by this. Precisely because in the first Trump years, the shadow side of America was aimed at itself, not at them. Now it is aimed at them, too. 

And America doesn’t quite fully grasp the depth of feeling involved here. Canadians are upset. This isn’t some kind of late-night-show joke to them. Europeans are horrified, so much so that even their own far right parties are trying to distance themselves from Trumpism, because of course Trump has effectively declared thermonuclear economics war on them, too.

The world is bewildered, hurt, scared, and disgusted. By all this. It was in the first Trump years, make no mistake, but the stakes were different. They felt all those things for Americans. Now, they feel threatened existentially themselves.

And all this means that the world will never trust America, let’s capitalize that because it’s that Big, Trust America, the same way again. It will have to take measures to isolate itself from America. From it’s financial institutions, from it’s economic warfare, from the cultural ugliness that led here, to the social collapse that’s spreading. 

America will be a pariah state, most likely, on the current trajectory, and while that doesn’t mean North Korea, it probably does mean something more akin to Russia. A nation the world doesn’t want to deal with, doesn’t welcome, doesn’t want to hold the assets or currency of very much, and doesn’t like, accept, or trust.

So you must ask yourself what your plans are in this regard. I won't dwell on that, I just want to raise the question, because of course we are talking about being an Adult in the Room, not a passive bystander who merely reacts to this implosive process of isolation.

Let me continue now, because we’ve only scratched the surface, so far.

The End of American Capitalism, or, What Oligarchy Really Is

What is this tariffs debacle really about? In a sense, we’re seeing the end of capitalism. Let me explain, before you object.

When Trump and his team sit down to do “deals” with countries they’ve wounded badly, what’s really going to go on? They’re going to say, “now you buy more of our gas, steel, cars, appliances, clothes, and maybe we’ll lift the tariffs.” Maybe some countries will fall for it, too.

The point is that Trump and his team are now picking winners. On the other side, there’s no market process, really for who sells more of these things. Rather, it’s far more likely that Trump and his guys will make their friends the beneficiaries of all these “deals.” You’re the guy who gets to sell more clothes or gas or whatever.

And in that sense, this isn’t capitalism anymore. It’s oligarchy. Favors are curried, and then handed out, and wealth is shared with those with the most proximity to absolute power. 

You could argue, if you really want, that this is something like “authoritarian capitalism,” but why gild the lily? You see, American thinking failed to predict or explain all this because it’s always trying to make excuses. Let’s just cut to the chase and call it what it is, which is oligarchy, because any variant of capitalism, I’d say, has to involve some measure of free markets, and here we have pretty much none left, from tariffs, to favors, to picking winners, to dispensing of the losers.

So this is the transformation to oligarchy. In different countries, we’ve called this different things. Korea has “chaebol,” which aren’t corporations in the Western sense, but more agglomerations of economic entities closely linked with power, chosen by government as “champions.” 

American capitalism was always a profoundly unstable system. And here we finally appear to have reached its endpoint. Maybe if there are midterms or elections again, and that’s a big if, not because I say so, but because Trump himself wants a “third term.” there will be some form of it left, but more likely, oligarchy will now be the system that defines America, if it isn’t already, and hasn’t been for quite some time now, in looser ways.

Now. This isn’t an abstract point. I’m going to tell you why it matters, because we’re discussing the world, but you should also ask yourself: how safe are your investments in an economy like that? Here we have Macro Risk writ large. The authoritarian is deciding who gets the pie, not any form of competition, demand, innovation, leadership, etcetera. An economy like this isn’t just politically “bad,” it’s also unsound and unhealthy and doesn’t tend to grow very much or very far because it’s so risky.

The Axis of Social Democracy and the Axes of Authoritarianism

The world will likely now split into blocs. And that is a fissure that has been waiting to happen for a long time.

You see, America was part of the developed world, but it hasn’t felt like it for quite some time now. It’s living standards are far below European or Canadian levels, whether in terms of health, happiness, middle class stability, or social cohesion. America has felt more like…something else.

And that is because a real difference emerged since the 1980s or so. Europe and Canada built what are now mature social democracies. America, meanwhile, tried to stay a hyper capitalist liberal democracy. But liberal democracy is an unstable form. It has a low level of investment, a high level of inequality, and so tensions grow politically and economically and socially. It is unstable literally in the sense that liberal democracies in the American sense don’t stabilize with prosperous middle classes, functional politics, modern public goods, or sophisticated social norms (vs MAGA style rage.)

So this entity we’ve been used to calling “the developed world” has in fact been two different things, diverging, for quite some time now. European and Canadian social democracy, maturing and growing into itself. And America style liberal democracy, destabilizing, on shakier and shakier foundations as its failing systems eat away at those very foundations (like Wall St and Silicon Valley powering mega inequality and seriously deranged sociocultural standards and norms.) The point is just that there has been a growing fissure here, between America as a hyper-capitalist liberal democracy, and social democracies maturing.

Now that fissure is a gaping wound, thanks to Trump.

And what will happen is that the world will reorganize and restructure. Around axes of social democracy and axes of authoritarianism.

Europe and Canada will grow closer. If Mark Carney’s elected in Canada, it’s all but a sure bet that Canada will end up joining, perhaps, Europe’s single market, and there eventually probably the EU. That is the best way for both to defend themselves against a hostile America now. Together, they are a formidable bloc, with twice the number of people and more real GDP than America.

Meanwhile, on the other side, America will probably find itself growing closer to nations like Russia. That is already happening: guess who was “exempt” from the tariffs? And we will probably see a tension between competing axes of authoritarianism, China and its allies, and America, and its few allies left, with Russia perhaps trying to destabilize both, even if it “chooses” a side.

Even if America “returns to normal,“ there’s no going to back to normal with it for everyone else. No competent or sane global leader, whether in business, politics, finance, or more, is going to say, hey, everything’s fine now! Rather, they’re going to ask: what if this all happens again, in four years, but worse, just like last time? What if it’s President Vance and VP the-car-guy, and this time, they go even further? Relations with America will never go back to what they were now, and instead, America will have to quarantined and isolated, even if for now, other nations pretend to play nice with tariffs and whatnot for the sake of short-term stability. Wise leaders have no choice now but to never trust America the same away again, or at least not until, say, five or ten election cycles prove this will never happen again, and would you make that bet?

This is the political future. The world must now reorganize itself around blocs, which are based on its fundamental political forms. In politics, as in life, birds of a feather flock together. It is very, very difficult for mature social democracies to form alliances or partnerships with nations which have less developed and far less sophisticated political forms, for example, because of course, the goals and capabilities are very different. Social democracies must invest, nurture, care for, and prioritize development over hyper financial “growth.” But less sophisticated political forms prioritize risk, reduce investment, seek expansion, and turn readily to violence.

The question for many of you is which bloc and axis you will find yourself a part of. Is it going to be one you want to be a part of? What will your life be like in an authoritarian axis, versus a social democratic one?

In social democratic axes, we can expect something like the following. Living standards rise, after Trump’s depression sweeps the world. Investment levels rise, and fuel another era of prolonged rises in the quality and quantity of life. Stability, after a time, returns, especially as defenses, physical, economic, financial, social, and cultural, is strengthened. And people in these axes will a heightened sense of unity, because of the Trumps and other assorted authoritarians now openly threatening them with everything from depression to war.

In authoritarian axes, like those America’s about to form, life will be very different. Living standards will fall, sharp and hard, as transitions to oligarchy harden. Along that path, many will lose their life savings, because that is what oligarchy is, the ultimate upwards wealth transfer. As that happens, depressions will set in. And as those ensue, the cycle of expansionism will accelerate, because when an economy shrinks, authoritarians tend to want to snatch, seize, capturegrowth, versus create it. Life in authoritarian axes will be a desperate, flickering, animal pulse of economic contraction and violent expansionism.

Along this path, we may very well see a World War, but I’ll save that for another time, because I want you to sit with all this. Really take it in. Imagine it. Visualize it. Feel the emotions of the times ahead of you. Train your unconscious in that way to be ahead of the curve. 

Choosing Havens in a Destabilizing World

You have difficult choices ahead of you now. No matter where in this map you find yourself. The road ahead will not be easy for anyone. Even the survival of axes of mature social democracy is far from guaranteed—that, in a sense, is precisely what Trump is trying to destroy, along with his puppet masters.

So take all this in and experience it. The choices you make now, right now, in these next months, will echo down through the rest of your life, in bigger ways than you are imagining. Make them as deliberately as you can. Not reactively, not passively, and certainly not mindlessly. You must understand all this, and orient yourself with delicacy and care, understanding the nature of Macro Risk that now surrounds you at every turn, as the world reorganizes itself.

This reorganization will be the greatest shift since the 1930s, perhaps even greater than the one that came afterwards in the post-war era. Now we will see a very different world. One made of authoritarian and oligarchic nations, contesting power, like America, China, and Russia, and axes of mature social democracy, protecting and distancing themselves from these less sophisticated and intelligent sociopolitical forms. And as that happens, we will see it all punctuated by crashes and crises, marred by conflict and violence, touched by ruin and self-destruction. 

Where you will be on this map is up to you. But wherever it is, my suggestion is: it must be a Haven. Even if it’s one in an axis that’s growing ugly and risky. Above all, I have tried to teach you Havens Thinking without calling it that, so that you can see as clearly, and as far into the distance, as I am capable of helping you to. Perhaps now you see why I worry. 

It’s been a pleasure and delight getting to know so many of you in sessions. I’ve been humbled and amazed by you guys. As always, you’re most welcome to reach out if you need advice. 

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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