It’s a tradition for media around the world to come up with year-end packages that look back at the past 12 months. Sometimes celebrities, or they volunteer, are invited to share their thoughts on the past year: Barack Obama’s long-awaited list of the year’s best books, movies, and music. Sometimes, in a dangerous exercise in clairvoyance, the media also take a stab at what might happen in the coming year.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and prime minister of Russia and an ally of strongman Vladimir Putin, has made a rather surprising tweet predicting the global development of 2023. a desire turned into a result: the fall of western civilization and, ultimately, the United States as we know it.
But the devil is in the details. In addition, Medvedev predicts that a civil war will break out in the United States, and California and Texas will become independent states and form a union with Mexico; major stock markets and financial activity will move out of the US and Europe and into Asia; and the euro and dollar will cease to circulate as global reserve currencies and will be replaced by digital fiat currencies.
It also predicts that in Europe, Britain will rejoin the EU, its collapse and the creation of a fourth reich under Germany at war with France.
In other developments, Poland and Hungary, which would be Germany’s satellites, occupy the remnants of Ukraine (presumably not acceptable to Russia); Northern Ireland separates from the United Kingdom and joins the Republic of Ireland; the price of oil exceeds 150 dollars per barrel; and Elon Musk will be the remaining president of the United States.
Phew! That’s a lot to pack into one year – and a lot to uncover. In another time and with another person, all this could be dismissed as the ramblings of a deluded fantasist, but Medvedev is no deranged nut, though he skillfully foreshadows his “modest contribution” and says he will “compete with the wildest and wildest.” the most absurd futuristic hypothesis”.
The escape clause aside, he has a solid record as a thoughtful academic and responsible government leader who, while at the helm in Moscow has been overshadowed by Putin, has heralded Russia’s liberal policies and warm relations with the West.
What gave some credence to the predictions (in Medvedev’s view) was the response of presumptive US President Elon Musk to his 123 million followers, who described the stream as an “epic thread”. and to make it all come true, under the current constitution, the South African-born Tesla-Twitter honcho is ineligible to run for the White House.
Of course, people change – and so do leaders. Putin also favored the United States, and there was a time when he even sought and opposed Russia’s membership in NATO. Medvedev’s apocalyptic forecast now suggests that the Russian leadership has completely lost faith in the West, even as Western leaders doubt the survival of leadership in Moscow.
Believing that each other will be gone soon is not conducive to any negotiations, so at least 2023 looks like another year of death and destruction on the Ukraine-Russia front.
The problem with Medvedev’s predictions is that even as current events seem turbo-charged in the age of social media fever, history moves at a relatively glacial pace. Although some chroniclers of great events, including America’s, have predicted the decline and fall of the United States, the timeline for such an event is long. Empires and great powers rise and fall over years and decades, not months. Although 1988-1989 were decisive years, the Soviet Union also needed a few years.
Moreover, the United States is nowhere near the former Soviet Union, which collapsed in the 1980s due to commodity and food shortages, ethnic strife, 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 the Americans themselves, the rest of the world continues to have faith and trust in the United States.
Lines of prospective immigrants, tourists, entertainers and businessmen outside US embassies and consulates around the world remain longer than in any other country. And those who can’t legally do so stalk the border – not just Latinos, but people from all over the world.
It doesn’t look like a country that will fold and give up global supremacy so easily. Warts and all, America remains a shining city on a hill. As long as the rest of the world remains invested in the US and affirms its propaganda, any resolution will take a long time.
– The writer is a senior journalist living in Washington.
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