It's a bit foolish to try to predict the future, but it's not unreasonable to assume that, sooner or later, there will be other successful 9/11-type strikes inside the United States.

This, I think, is the biggest Joker in the deck. Even Bushco may realize on some level or other that they need such a strike to further consolidate their power.

As long as we breed enemies and plutonium, it seems inevitable anyway.

Obviously, I don't know what form such a strike will take - it could range from low-tech IRA-like bombings or suicide bombers to something more grand, involving dirty bombs or even nuclear explosion a la 24 -- as hard as that may be to achieve, surely it's not entirely impossible.

I believe that the US will then respond in kind, and I think the probabilities of a limited nuclear strike (using tactical nukes or so-called bunker-busters) is actually fairly high.

Taking into account the economy, the looming energy crisis and the political divide, I don't think the US can make it in its present form. Massive changes are on the way.

The model that strikes me as the most likely to apply to the US is the Fall of the USSR -- primarily because bothy countries suffer from the same problems.

Best case scenario: a "smooth" Brezhnev/Andropov/Gorbachev transition (Kerry was arguably a Gorbachev figure without the charisma); worst case scenario: a nukular nightmare (see above).

If this was SIMEARTH you'd come to the conclusion you're fucked and there is very little you can actually do at this stage (within realistic settings)that would save your planet.

As I have written before on other blogs, we must now think beyond the inevitable collapse of the Empire and plan the transition beyond.

Posted at May 31, 2005 10:10 AM in response to Diplomacy 101