The World Without the United States

 

Photo Credit - Abandoned America

By fair means or foul Hillary Clinton will be elected POTUS next week. [Boy was I wrong about that! Ed'.....On the upside now hoping now the war with Russia will be called off.]

Consequently, the US now faces the likelihood of a nuclear exchange with Russia and thus faces an existential threat to its existence. At least, that is clearly the view from Moscow and they would know. It is time to ask “what would the world be like without the USA”. Is the United States in fact the "indispensible nation" it professes to be?

Actually the world would move on pretty fast. These are my thoughts: 

Media

Sci-fi would take a definite dive. So would Hollywood, CNN, Fox News, and a lot of other stuff that comes out of the US media complex. No more Star Wars prequels. No more zombie movies and gratuitous sex scenes. Could we, as a civilisation make it...?

Finance

The world would lose the major manufacturer, sponsor and exporter of toxic financial instruments, de-regulatory ideology, reckless speculation and economic crisis – 1929, 1987, 2008 etc. In short there would likely be more stability, greater prosperity and fewer wars but only if the same model was not imposed from elsewhere. Britain is a major fan (and victim). No one else is keen.

Major Brands

The brands that we associate with America – Coca Cola, Levi Jeans, Rip Curl, McDonalds, Ford, KFC, Microsoft etc represent truly trans national companies. If America does vanish in a blinding flash of light in the next four years, these companies will continue to operate. (….and like, Microsoft is awesome but do we really really need another upgrade to Windows?)

Manufacturing

Initially spare parts and replacement for much of the world’s heavy passenger and transport aircraft will become impossible. America is still a major centre of research and manufacture of high tech products particularly in the Aerospace sector. However, the initial crisis will open up other opportunities. Russia, Europe, Ukraine and China are all capable of manufacturing large passenger aircraft and even small countries like Australia could reverse engineer parts. China, Japan, Russia and Europe have the technical centres of excellence to replace the United States. The loss of US manufacturing would simply open up other opportunities and the world would move on.

Space

Major space enterprises would take a definite step backwards. However, once again, cooperative efforts between China, the EU and Russia could replace the US in space. Collectively they already operate numerous satellites, research probes and major observatories. The international space station relies entirely upon Russian rocket engines for re-supply anyway. We have been to the moon. We are not going to Mars. Move on.

Trade

If the US vanished, the world’s major corporations would lose both a sponsor and a political enforcer for their vision of a borderless, stateless, feudal world order in which they collectively make the laws for the one hundredth of one per cent of the world’s people. Bugga. They could perhaps convince China to fulfil the same role. Russia, South America and the EU on the other hand will politely tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier.

The Environment

Well nuking the US will not be good for the environment….but it won’t affect mineral resources. With 360 million Americans dead there will be a lot more to go around. Brutal yes…but the world is. 

Terrorism

Without the US both the Royal House of Saud and the Wahhabi head choppers will lose their major sponsor and protector. They will be obliged to set up base in Europe and Turkey where the liberal elites and Turkish military will protect them. The Russians and Chinese will show no mercy. It will be over for the Caliphate. The Gulan network will be vaporised. 

The Rights Movement

Yep, without Soros, the ACLU, the Democrats and the rest of them, gay rights, abortion, pornography and promiscuity, will lose a lot of financial and political sponsorship; and the social left’s long war against the traditional family will enter another phase. It will not be terminal though.

Religion

30 million messianic evangelicals and a lot of Jews would finally go to meet their maker. Would they be missed? Well they would in Israel since the Israeli state depends on American sponsorship for its survival and Evangelicals and the Israeli lobby are key. Israel would have to pay its own way in the world. But after all, that’s what real countries do.

Defence

Without the US keeping the world safe for democracy will we be overrun by the barbaric Russians led by the evil Vlad or subjugated by the yellow peril? OK, here is where we need to breath deeply from the diaphragm. Facts. Let’s look at those. Let’s start with Russia.

Russia is a thousand year old civilisation that has been invaded by the Mongols (the only ones who succeeded), the Poles, the Swedes, the French, the British, the Germans, and is now facing military pressure from the United States. Russia has never invaded Europe except in retaliation. The USSR occupied Eastern Europe to create buffer states after the Nazis slaughtered 27 million Russians and the Germans then helped set up NATO.  Russia has one seventh of the world’s land mass and grows most of the world’s wheat. They are not invading anyone. That said, the Russian army could, if it wanted to, drive to the West coast of France and there is no conventional weaponry in Europe that could stop them. Trump is right. If Europe is serious about defence it needs to take its hand and out of its pants and reach for its wallet instead. The EU has a bigger population and economy than Russia. It should not need the United States to defend it.

Similarly, with China. China has suffered brutal invasions by Mongolia and Japan and suffered much under colonial rule. China has not invaded anyone but is defending its national interests. However, with the US Navy out of the way China would almost certainly re-take Taiwan. China could also undertake a WWII style military campaign across the whole of South East Asia. Right now it’s busy buying the whole of SE Asia but could choose war instead. Collectively the countries of SE Asia and the South Pacific can counter China but it would require greater investment and the creation of a NATO style SE Asian security pact. Difficult but possible. For its part Australia is hopelessly exposed in military terms – less than 50 operational battle tanks, no modern artillery, an irrelevant air force, and barely 80,000 personnel under arms. For a middle income country with 23 million people that’s absurd. We would be obliged to return to a ‘defence of Australia’ strategy which would see half a million citizens under arms and the purchase of significant quantities of kit that actually works. For more on what that would look like see here.

Conclusion

The United States is no more "indespensible" than Britain was a mere 70 years ago.
 
If the United States were nuked tomorrow the world would move on without great difficulty. Wahhabism and other social movements would lose a major sponsor. The world would have more space to develop fairer relations based on trade and mutual development. However, this would require a realistic investment in defence by the world’s remaining democracies, and greater coordination between them on matters of mutual interest.