Volition

I doubt even the early stages of this scenario could play out because the economy would crash before it got very far. The current balance is probably fragile, and I doubt the US would be able to enter another war without it causing a stockmarket crash, and by extension, revolution in what's currently the single-nation of China. Certainly, cancelling presidential elections in the US would lead to global catastrophe if nothing before that had managed to.

Posted by: Craig Turner on April 26, 2006 11:27 AM

Hang on, which of the (seven) scenarios do you mean? :)

Clearly they are all pure conjecture, but it is going to be interesting to see exactly what the US is going to do about Iran.

They have to do something before Israel reacts or before Iran strikes at Israel because if either does occur, the whole Middle East is going to go up in flames and will take all of its oil with it. With its dependency on cheap energy, the US economy might not suvive such an event. It might not crash completely, but it will certainly tank pretty badly.

What they do could vary, anything from diplomatic means to all-out nuclear war, but given the way Ahmadinejad is carrying on whatever it is will likely need to happen soon - maybe even in the next few years. With Bush in power until 2008, I really can't see anything useful happening on the diplomatic side of the scale, I'd be placing my bets somewhere closer to "armageddon".

Posted by: Mike on April 26, 2006 12:01 PM

"Clearly they are all pure conjecture, but it is going to be interesting to see exactly what the US is going to do about Iran."
The diplomatic route has been demonstrated to have worked in the past over the nuclear issue - the USSR, China, South Africa (I think) and the subcontinent all seem to have become stable over the past half century, even though at various times many of them have been the great enemy. And as bad as radical islam in general and Iran in particular are at the moment, I recon the soviet/china block would have been far more terrifying in their time - untested rival ideologies and decent resources.

Still, the series of leaders in the USSR appear to have been more strategic and less crazy than the current Iranian president. As far as I know his up-front 'death to Israel' political style is unprecendented. Very very scary.

So is the US administration to a lesser extent - I hope either they understand the economic impact ramping up would have or else that I'm wrong about it. It may just be bluff to get Iran to the table though.

Regarding scenarios, I'd only glanced at the first one and not noticed the others. The 'best case' says "The rest of the world pulls the rug out from under our economy, and we can no longer afford to occupy the colonies or import anything." It doesn't work like that. If the US collapses, China will go with it, and there's a real risk or suddenly a whole lot of much less stable small states having WMD. And just in terms of the human cost of an economic collapse - would be huge. This is no best case scenario.

I've been running scenarios a lot whilst getting involved in the share market. The best case is that my stocks do well and I get a good return on the China boom. The worst case is that we get caught in economic collapse and isolation during some sort of drawn out religious war in Europe and the Middle East. But I think I could do OK out of that as well. These are the advantages of living in a city like Adelaide (cheap and out of the way) and having hobbies that don't rely on you having any money (singing, cycling, walking reading, writing and programming). The "You" scenario is somewhat close to what I had in mind.

Posted by: Craig Turner on April 26, 2006 10:41 PM