2025 and beyond

Author’s note (November 4th, 2024): I wrote this text a couple of days before the 2024 US presidential election. It probably needs more work, but I wanted to publish it before the election. It may become moot or scary as soon as later this week. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it then, we’ll see.

 

“A few days ago you mentioned 2025 as a turning point. Why is that?”

“You may have some memories of the events that unfolded, but probably with little understanding. You were still a child, and we were quite far away and somewhat shielded from much of what happened; at least until the war came knocking on our doors.”

“The war didn’t start in 2025, did it?”

“No, not the one you experienced, but the events of that year are what ultimately triggered it, as well as much of what has happened in the world between then and now, though many of the dominoes were already being pushed and ready to fall.
Things started to unravel as early as the first weeks of January 2025, when Trump returned to power.”

“How could Americans vote for him again after his first presidency?”

“Because of a mixture of late-stage capitalism running its course and about to crash hard. Because of two decades of far-right media brainwashing, that has led to a certain eradication of the concept of facts among the least educated and least intelligent segments of the population. On top of that, the oligarchy was less and less comfortable with democracies and helped the side that would benefit them the most, regardless of the consequences for the country and the population. And the icing on the cake, if I may say so, is that Putin’s enterprise of sowing chaos in the West was bearing fruit even better than he had hoped.

I’m afraid I must also mention the lack of backbone and courage on the part of democracy side.

The sad thing is that it is unclear whether Trump actually won the election.
There were so many irregularities, intimidation and vote suppression, as well as some violent incidents, on election day and in the weeks that followed. Many votes were lost, destroyed, or simply not counted. Unrest began the day after the election. No clear winner had emerged, but Trump claimed victory, while the Democrats wanted to be the “good guys,” to remain peaceful, and to trust the legal process.
They had already had an election stolen from them in 2000 because they wanted to remain noble and not fight dirty, and sadly, they had learned nothing from those days. Even though Bush becoming president also changed the course of history for the worst. Can you imagine that his opponent, Gore, the actual winner, was serious about fighting climate change almost two decades before most of the world woke up to its consequences?

When the other side plays by different rules than those agreed upon, remaining peaceful and putting your fate in the hands of corrupt judges is the best way to let fascism win. And it did win.

So, in January 2025, Trump returned to the White House and wasted no time in enacting his agenda. Well, the agenda of his handlers and entourage. By this time, Trump’s mental health had deteriorated to the point where he had trouble putting two coherent thoughts together. He sought power again to avoid prison and out of megalomania. But the ultimate goal of the new administration was to end American democracy. Nothing less.

It happened faster than anyone could have imagined. On February 17, 2025, President’s Day, Trump signed a series of executive orders to assert his power and crush any possible opposition. The most shocking of all was the arrest of a number of Democratic leaders and influential figures for treason. Most were never seen again. Among them were former President Biden and former Vice President Harris, Trump’s opponent in the election.

The federal government quickly became an empty shell, rubber-stamping whatever the White House decided.”

“How was that even possible?”

“It was not improvised at all. In fact, it had probably been planned for years, most likely in the wake of the failed and improvised coup attempt of January 2021. This wave of arrests was made possible in large parts because the police had been infiltrated by the Magas long before.
Was it infiltration at all? Many of the police were Trump supporters from day one.”

“How did the world react?”

“They could only watch in horror or delight, depending on how they felt about the US and democracy. What could anyone concretely do? Nothing, really.”

“What about the rest of the country?”

“If you think the end of 2024 was chaotic, it was nothing compared to the weeks that followed the arrests.
Political violence erupted in every corner of the country. Maga militias took control of their communities with the help of the police – the two were often one and the same. The rule of law became a thing of the past in most of the country.
Many people disappeared. And soon enough, the thing that many people feared or hoped or refused to believe could happen happened: civil war.

You probably remember hearing about it on the news or just discussing it with me and your mom.
It was bloody. It seemed to go on forever – I mean, is it really over even decades later? I’m not sure if the different factions that live on the land that used to be called the United States are really at peace. From what I know, most of the fighting is over, mostly because the various countries that emerged from the disintegration of the United States have all collapsed and are no longer functional.

And that’s just the United States. The impact of Trump’s return to power was felt worldwide and was greater than most people imagined.

The first immediate consequence was that the US withdrew from NATO, stopped all aid to Ukraine, and lifted all sanctions against Russia.

Trump had been a Russian asset long enough, and at this point Putin had him on a tight leash: he was, after all, his greatest success. Putin also used his newer powerful useful idiot, Elon Musk, to sow even more chaos in the Western world, weakening it a little more every day. People often focused on Musk’s cars, his silly dreams of space colonization, or his failing social network (which only failed in appearance – it was also successful in helping Trump and Putin achieve their goals). But what made Musk powerful and useful in the hands of the two dictators was his vast array of communications satellites.

Without the support of the United States, Ukraine fell in a matter of months – after resisting for three full years – and Putin annexed all of it at the beginning of the summer.”

“Didn’t the European countries also help Ukraine?”

“They did help, but when the U.S. abandoned Ukraine, Europe was unable or unwilling to step up and get more involved than it already was. That turned out to be a costly mistake.

Putin didn’t stop at Ukraine.
Russia quickly regained control of most of its former zone of influence, either by invasion (Moldova, Georgia, etc.) or with the rise of “strongmen” working for him (Hungary, Azerbaijan, etc.).

The EU never fully recovered. The rich Western countries were unwilling to openly go to war against Russia, and the Eastern part of the EU never forgave them for their inaction when Russia was on their doorstep.

But we can’t blame Western Europe entirely. The truth is that they had serious problems at home, with climate disasters becoming a regular occurrence.
The first full-blown hurricane to reach Europe hit Portugal, Spain, and France in the summer of 2027, and they were woefully unprepared. The financial, human, and logistical resources needed to deal with storms and floods alternating with heat waves and droughts didn’t really allow Europe to deal with anything else.

Another reason they didn’t confront Putin was that while Trump was his first and most prominent political asset, Putin had many more in the political circles of most Western countries.

Climate disasters, the wars in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the U.S., and the ever-increasing number of climate refugees trying to reach Europe as their own countries became uninhabitable led to many far-right groups gaining power in Europe. They all worked more or less directly for Putin. After some of these countries left the EU, especially France, the Union quickly lost all relevance.

Putin’s death in 2031 took everyone by surprise. He had managed to hide his cancer from everyone except his doctors. Of course, rumors of an assassination could never be proven or disproven. He had no obvious successor, and Russia soon fell into political chaos as well. And because Putin personally oversaw the operations to destabilize the West, most of them eventually ended. But the damage was done, and it was irreversible, at least in the short or even medium term.

Putin didn’t live to see Russia become a superpower again – it never did – but he did see the fall of the Western empire, a fall for which he was largely responsible.

But as you know, the worst came from China. The West, always so self-centered (well, for once it had some excuses), tended to forget that Asia was home to more than half the world’s population and almost all of its factories.
What used to happen here was usually dismissed by the West as minor and almost never having a global impact.

Well, when all the turmoil in North America and Europe began to grow in intensity, Xi decided that China was finished playing nice.

 

 

Taiwan was quickly invaded, with no one to protect it but itself. Again, in its hubris, the West didn’t see this as critical, preoccupied with its own problems and oblivious to the fact that China taking control of Taiwan would have more than just regional implications.

With the area unsafe and under Chinese control, many international shipping routes were disrupted. Western cargo ships were not welcome, and China decided to stop providing much of the rest of the world with many of the things they had become dependent on, since almost everything had at least parts made in China.

People all over the world, and especially in countries hostile to China, were suddenly reminded of the realities of a globalized economy that is really centered on China.

First, Xi blackmailed the West into staying put during the conquest of Taiwan. Then, supply lines to Europe and North America were cut anyway to help Putin.
At the same time, China asserted its control and “officialized” its sphere of influence over most of the rest of the world; either through soft power, as it had been doing for decades in Africa, right under the noses of the former colonial powers who still thought the continent was their playground, or by threatening countries that were friendly to China’s enemies.
Australia, for example, had no choice but to agree to various “agreements” with China if they wanted to maintain their way of life.
I’m not sure what life is like there today, but for a while Australia and New Zealand were the only two Western countries that maintained a semblance of normalcy as long as they stayed in their corner of the world and didn’t try to get involved in much of anything. Today, while China’s grip has ended, I’m not sure there are many livable places left in Australia. Tasmania, maybe?
There are rumors that New Zealand is still a functioning country (one of the last), but there is no way to be sure.

I don’t need to remind you what happened here in Japan, but for the sake of completeness, and because it’s also indirectly related to Trump’s rise to power, I’ll mention the main points anyway.
Because of its civil war, the US withdrew from the rest of the world. In our case, it was a literal retreat. All the American military that had occupied Japan since World War II quickly returned home, most likely to fight for one side or the other. For the first time in many decades, Japan was on its own and had no choice but to finally change its constitution. The SDF became a real military, although it already was one in all but name and law. The country’s right-wingers could hardly hide their glee, and it didn’t go unnoticed in China and North Korea either.

Still, Japan didn’t intervene in Taiwan, at least not openly and not enough to make a difference.
What about North Korea? With the world in chaos, it thought it could seize the opportunity to take over South Korea before the dust settled in Taiwan. What it didn’t expect was that Russia could not send the promised support because of Putin’s untimely (?) death.
The second Korean War was almost as bloody as the first. North Korea could have won if they hadn’t decided to nuke Seoul. Except that the missile misfired and the launch pad exploded, wiping out the entire area, including an important military base.
The war left no winner, just two countries in ruins.
China took the parts it was interested in and left the rest in shambles.

Next, Xi set his sights on the Ryukyu Islands, which were poorly defended after the U.S. withdrawal.
China had always considered the archipelago part of its sphere of influence, but could only bite its tongue about it because of the previous state of the world.
It’s a mistake to think that before China’s invasion, Japan was largely unscathed by all the crises everywhere.
The disruption of trade routes was an enormous burden on its already weakened economy.
With its aging population and nearly empty countryside, Japanese governments since the beginning of the century had pretty much abandoned the country’s agriculture (with a few symbolic exceptions such as rice production) and had begun to rely on imports at unsustainable levels. When food shortages became a global problem in the 2030s, it became a serious threat to Japan.
At that time, most of the population led hyper-urban lives, and their knowledge of nature was limited to well-kept gardens. When food became scarce, tens of millions of people were affected, and Japan was the first of the formerly rich countries to face famine.

So the country was already on the verge of collapse when China decided it was the right time to “reclaim” the Ryukyu Islands, claiming the country’s main islands.
Kyushu fell just as quickly as Okinawa.
The Japanese people were too diminished to resist the invasion.
Rumors of massacres in Naha and Kagoshima (in retaliation for Japan’s crimes during WWII) soon spread throughout the country. The other rumor was that Chinese forces had promised to take over the other cities peacefully if they surrendered. In addition, the threat of nuclear bombing quickly extinguished any intention of resistance, especially as the front was in northern Kyushu and moving toward Hiroshima.

What “saved” Japan, if we can consider that saving, was ironically not too dissimilar to what saved the country from the Mongol invasion centuries earlier.
The summer and autumn of 2036 saw a record number of typhoons of unprecedented strength, the majority hitting the most densely populated areas of China. Some parts of the country were so damaged (and huge floods also devastated the inland regions that spring) that China had to put its invasion of Japan on hold, leaving only troops in Kyushu and southern Shikoku to defend the bases it had built there.
The idea was to resume the fight later, but as incredible as it sounds, the Nankai earthquake struck at the end of that year. The massive tsunami that followed devastated the southern coast of Japan, destroying most of the Chinese forces stationed there.

Neither country really recovered, as further climatic events prevented any serious attempt.

You were an adult for the rest of it, no need to remind you. But yes, all these events would have happened very differently or not at all, and maybe the world would have remained functional enough to mitigate the worst consequences of the climate crisis if Trump hadn’t become president again in 2025.”