Geopolitical Futures

Before the midterm elections, I had several GPF subscribers asking if the Republicans lose control of the House or Senate, whether it will make much difference to the U.S.’s geopolitical actions globally. My field is geopolitics, and this is in a way a political question. However, in my work I have encountered an oddity in the United States, a demonstrable, consistent set of cycles. One is socio-economic, with a crisis occurring every 50 years, with the last one taking place in the 1970s. I also found a consistent cycle of institutional crises every 80 years, with the last one climaxing about 80 years ago, in 1945. I wrote a book on this, “The Next 100 Years,” forecasting that the 2020s would be the first time both cycles shifted at roughly the same time. It would therefore be a more disrupted cycle, with the disruption and restructuring of American society, economy and institutions creating massive tension. That was published in 2009. In a later book, “The Storm Before the Calm,” I forecast that the election of 2028 would signal the beginning of the end of both cycles and a radically new, increasingly stable and significantly different socio-economic and institutional system. Since then I have developed some thoughts on why the United States reinvents itself with such regularity, but I have not fully thought them out yet. In my view politics is the outcome of these cycles and not the cause of them. I think we are nearing the end of the instability that emerged during the first part of the decade, and will stabilize toward the end of the decade, beginning after 2028. So I do not look at the political tension we are experiencing as the cause of the current crisis, but as an outcome of the cyclical crisis. The U.S. has spent this decade reinventing itself, a disruptive and at times unpleasant experience, but one that is nearing its end, that will not be fully in place until nearer the end of the decade. As I have said, I am still working through the foundations of these cycles, but the political unrest is in my mind the product of the cycle and in that sense a clearing of the table in preparation for the beginning of a new and significantly different cycle. The political instability, along with the social, economic and institutional instability, is the effect, not the driver of this cyclical process.

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to halt combat operations in the city of Oleshky, a Russian-held town, in the Kherson region. Starting today, it will allow food and other humanitarian goods into the town and give residents an opportunity to leave. Ukrainian and Russian civilian officials directly negotiated the details of the agreement. This is not the first such #ceasefire of the war. What makes this one more interesting than the others is that it was said to have been initiated by President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, who was in direct contact with Russian officials on the matter. My full analysis is available to read and share here at @GPFutures: geopoliticalfutures.com/poss…

Recently a subscriber pointed out China's vast refining capacity, and that they use their oil reserves as a tool, drawing them down and waiting things out. They asked if I felt that with the U.S. midterm elections coming up, wouldn't hobbling the Trump administration be in their long-term interest. China has the world’s second largest economy. The World Bank says that 21 percent of China’s gross domestic product comes from exports, and the International Monetary Fund says that 11 percent of those exports go directly to the U.S. (This excludes indirect exports.) If there were a global recession based on the economic crisis triggered by the Iran war and oil prices, China would have a major domestic economic problem. The danger to China of losing up to 21 percent of its income far outweighs any short- or long-term impact it could have on the U.S. midterms.