The Old-World Order has ended; a New World Dis-Order is just beginning. The major factor causing this dramatic change is declining demographics in industrial societies. A significant secondary cause is America’s reduced capability and commitment for the U.S. Navy to guarantee the protection for all shipping lanes around the world. The U.S. no longer feels universally committed to allow goods from most trading to enter freely into our country without mutual reciprocity.
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the populations of the world’s nations have experienced a major shift from young to old. Birth rates declined when nations industrialized, and populations moved from farms to the cities. The large families that provided inexpensive labor for farm work became liabilities in crowded cities.
This current downward population trend is most pronounced in those nations that went through industrialization longer ago, however, China, that industrialized relatively recently, acerbated the problem with its one-child policy making it now one of the world’s oldest populations. For at least the last two years, China’s total population has stopped growing and has been in decline. China now has a fertility rate near 1.0 child per female, way below the level of 2.1 replacement level generally thought necessary to sustain population growth.
Peaking at around 1.4 billion, China’s population is forecast to decline to between 525 and 766 million by 2100. Russia’s current population of 145 million is forecast to decline to 112 million, or as low as 74 million, by 2100. The Europe Union’s population of 453 million peaks next year with an expected decline to 420 million between now and 2100.
In contrast, the forecasted peak in U.S. population will not be reached until 2080 at 369 million up from 336 million in 2024. A slight decline thereafter will give our nation an expected population of 366 million in 2100.
In 1944 at Bretton Woods near the end of World War II, the U.S. established and guaranteed a post WWII international trading order. America’s navy provided for protected trading lanes, and our country was opened to products from most of the world’s nations. In 2000-2001 the U.S. government sponsored China to join the world’s free trade system. This agreement was especially detrimental to American manufacturing jobs because American workers had been losing jobs to low-cost Asian products for the past two decades, long after U.S. policy was needed to rebuild friendly economies devastated by WWII.
Unfortunately, after accepting this unearned largesse and then by refusing to play nicely with its new trading partners, China instead perfected a self-serving, aggressive mercantilist economic model under its autocratic dictator, Xi Jinping, Using the profits from its unbalanced trade policies around the world, China vastly enlarged its military. China concluded military and economic agreements with Russia, Iran, and North Korea making a new Axis of Evil that now challenges the existing U.S. guaranteed world order.
As a result of the demographic changes, slower world growth, unprotected trading lanes, and foreign policy errors by the U.S. and the West, many nations will be scrambling to find new trading arrangements to fill gaps in their lost supply chains. Imported food and energy sources to keep the lights on will be a challenge for many. The losers will be those nations with the greatest dependency on imported necessities, especially food and energy. Those nations will include China and Germany, both with major world economies.
Simultaneously with the challenges of an aggressive, but declining, China and Russia, the world’s nations have vastly increased their national debts and burdened their citizens with high inflation. Combined with populations that are declining and with fewer younger and more older citizens which will reduce economic growth, governments will be challenged to fulfill their minimum-security requirements.
With critical old supply chains disrupted, civil unrest should be expected to challenge governments throughout the planet. News from the loser nations will report lower standard of living, uncertainty, governmental collapse, chaos, and outbound immigration flows of desperate citizens seeking safe new havens.
The more self-contained economies will be the winners. In Europe this would include France and Sweden, both with self-containing resources and geography. The biggest overall winner should be the United States with its protected ocean borders, a nation used to accepting immigrants as an answer to an aging population, and the young population in Mexico as backup lower cost labor.
If this U.S. – Mexico economic juggernaut is to dominate the rest of the twenty-first century, two problems must be solved. In America, its politically divided partisan population must revert to some semblance of its prior political normalcy. In Mexico, its government must cleanse itself of its internal corruption, one-party political dominance, and reduce the hold of the drug cartels – with or without major American help!
The U.S. Navy is no longer guaranteeing safe shipping around the globe to keep the Suez Canal/Red Sea water routes from the European Union. This is a visual signal that the previous American-defined Old World Order following WWII no longer exists.
For our Republic to move forward with a newly elected old/new president, Donald Trump’s Administration must recognize the changes taking place in the world and mold its policies to match these changing times.
We, the People, should judge this new ruling group on how well they meet the challenges of the demographic shifts and the other challenges inherent in this New World Disorder just beginning to unfold.
TW3
John Whitmore Jenkins
November 30, 2024
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