#Hard west scenarios free

A reformed financial system will allow British entrepreneurs to get the committed financial backing they need, becoming the capitalist leaders in Europe. Our leading universities will become powerhouses of innovation, world centres in exploiting the approaching avalanche of scientific and technological breakthroughs. In 2035, there is thus a good prospect that Britain will be the most populous (our birth rate will be one the highest in Europe), dynamic and richest European country, the key state in a reconfigured EU.

#Hard west scenarios free

Britain, in thrall to finance since 1945, will break free – spearheading a second Industrial Revolution. The consequent rebalancing of the British economy, already underway, will intensify. The popular revolt against bankers, their current business model in which neglect of the real economy is embedded and the scale of their bonuses – all to be underwritten by bailouts from taxpayers – will become irresistible. Confronted by a second trillion-pound bank bailout in less than 10 years, it will be impossible for the City and wider banking system to resist reform.

It will be a second financial crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove to be the remaking of Britain. Ian Morris, professor of history at Stanford University and the author of Why the West Rules – For Now (Profile Books) 2 The UK economy: 'The popular revolt against bankers will become impossible to resist'Ī view across the City at dusk. Here, the risk of Sino-American conflict will be greatest and here the balance of power will be decided. Most of the world's poorest people live here climate change is wreaking its worst damage here nuclear weapons are proliferating fastest here and even in 2030, the great powers will still seek much of their energy here.

The most serious threats will arise in the vortex of instability that stretches from Africa to central Asia. The danger of such an adventure sparking a great power war in the 2010s is probably low in the 2020s, it will be much greater. In 1999, for instance, Russia would never have dared attack a neighbour such as Georgia but in 2009 it took just such a chance. The same will happen as American power erodes in the 2010s-20s. America's financial problems will surely deepen through the 2010s, but the 2020s could bring another Roosevelt or Reagan.Ī hundred years ago, as Britain's dominance eroded, rivals, particularly Germany, were emboldened to take ever-greater risks. The critics who wrote off the US during the depression of the 1930s and the stagflation of the 1970s lived to see it bounce back to defeat the Nazis in the 1940s and the Soviets in the 1980s. Nevertheless, America will probably remain the world's major power. The large, educated populations of Poland, Turkey, Brazil and their neighbours will come into their own and Russia will continue its revival.

Even within its own sphere, the US will face new challenges from former peripheries. But in the short term – the next 20 years – the world will still be dominated by the doings of nation-states and the central issue will be the rise of the east.īy 2030, the world will be more complicated, divided between a broad American sphere of influence in Europe, the Middle East and south Asia, and a Chinese sphere in east Asia and Africa. It may even transform what it means to be human. The 21st century will see technological change on an astonishing scale. In the 1910s, the rising power and wealth of Germany and America splintered the Pax Britannica in the 2010s, east Asia will do the same to the Pax Americana. That, of course, is all history, but the Pax Americana that has taken shape since 1989 is just as vulnerable to historical change.