Planet Earth without the USA

[Vesayen]

Didn't you get the memo?

Yeah, sorry.

[SlowwHand]

I'd say fire your secretary, but wtf does it matter now?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Look, it's all well and good for you guys to dream up dire scenarios. It doesn't matter to you; you'd be gone.

But can we think about me for a minute?

I'd find myself Singapore, stateless, jobless (my employer just vanished from the face of the earth), and broke (all my money was in a bank in a place that used to be called "San Antonio" but is now just a river valley). I'll be okay for a couple of weeks -- my wife has a Singapore bank account with the equivalent of ~1,000 Euros in it (no sense in calculating that in dollars anymore), but, given that my employer also paid my rent, it looks like I'll be homeless soon, too.

Now, I could just throw myself on the mercy of the Singaporeans -- I do know a couple of people in the government, after all -- but Singapore has an absolute ban on taking in refugees. Looks like I'll be leaving -- but to where? And how? It's not like a have a useable passport anymore, after all; neither of my passports (diplomatic or regular) is any more valid than my grandfather's old passport from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nor, obviously, can I be deported to my home country.

So screw the world grain markets. Could I get a little help here, guys? Anybody?

Anybody?

[Vesayen]

Your passport will proboably still be good, for a while anyway.

Besides that, you are ####ed .

I don't think you really qualify as a refugee, do you?

What is Singapores immigration policy? Do you have any valuable job skills?

[onodera]

You know, that's one of the most interesting threads I've read here.
I doubt we'll have much problem with the Chinese northern expansion.
a) they've just lost their largest trade partner and their economy is falling apart (which probably means Maoists come to power).
b) with no USA and its nuclear threat we can use some of our nukes to severely reduce the urban population of PRC.
*10 minutes later*
Damn, I've just checked and it seems PRC have some nukes of their own. I guess we will have problems with their expansion.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
That brings up an interesting question, what happens to the NA continent in the economical long term? How long would it take to have agricultural outputs comparable to current levels? And what kind of an economy would different courtiers develop there?

Its not clear how long. My first gut response is, thats a helluva lot of infrastructure to replace, just to get the grain sector going again. OTOH, with the Chinese economy in a severe depression (at best) stuff like steel and cement and construction equipment is gonna be pretty cheap

I think thats the issue. Youve got 3 main negative effects from this that differentially impact different parts of the world. They are 1. The sharp spike in grain prices 2. The loss of the USA market 3. Political instability - not just in places where the USA was an explicit protector of the status quo, like Taiwan or Saudi Arabia, but in places like Mexico where it was the implicit backstop, and some folks might be tempted to take more direct action in the absence of the US.

Some places will be effected mainly be one of these - EU will lose a valuable market, but is otherwise insulated from direct effects.

Some places will have two or more.

Mexico and Central America will have all three. They will face sharp rises in food costs, loss of product markets (and remittances from legal and illegal migrants) and face a radically different political-strategic situation, ALL AT THE SAME time. I would expect sci-fi levels of horror from the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal, at least.

South America outside of Arg-Urug-Brazil will be severly hurt, but not quite to such an extreme. I would expect some failed states though.

Arg-Urug-Brazil have lost some important markets, but grain price increases are an offset, and they may keep relative political stability. It wont be fun, but they will survive and in the medium term (after the initial trade shock is adjusted to, and before the USA grain industry is restarted) they may thrive. Though they may be tempted to intervene in their unstable neighbors, and that could end badly.

Canada is MORE severly hurt, and will go into depression. Fortunately their polity is much stronger.

East Asia will be very complex. Japan, Korea etc are very hurt by the grain thing. OTOH they make money to bid for any available grain. Or they did, before the world trade recession. They will struggle, or they (esp Japan)may be tempted to use their force to pressure grain production areas.

Australia is not as badly off as Canada. An island of stability, though hurt by the secondary effects, as Asian markets suffer.

China is basically self-sufficient in food, but will be very hurt by the market loss. Its not clear their polity can make it.

India is probably hurt less than China, and will emerge relatively strong, though their first priority will be dealing with the mess in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Mideast in general will be a mess, due to rising grain prices, falling oil prices, and religious-political-military turmoil. Iran wont attack Israel first, they will go for the gulf oil.

Russia is perhaps hurt least of anyone. the tension there will be between folks who want to pragmatically use their gain in relative power, and folks who think this is Russias moment, and who, in a frisson of apocalyptic emotion, overreach.

EU, if it holds together is the 300 lb gorrilla. They are not unhurt - theyve lost an important market( plus secondary market impacts) . In the long run they can gain markets, but thats probably dominated in the short run by the trade recesssion. their unity will be strained. Differential impacts of grain prices, market changes, etc, will mean different power relations among the big countries in the EU.

EU priorities, aside from maintaining unity, are stabilizing the Med, and "doing something" about Russia.

Sub-saharan africa wont be pretty. given how many of its states and societies are weak even now, one would expect mass state failure and worse, some it reaching even the stronger states.

[lord of the mark]

the most productive grain lands are in the lower midwest, central Illinois across to Iowa, IIRC. Excellent soil, very valuable. You want those back in the world economy right away. Rail to site of former Chicago, then Canadian lakeboats to Montreal for shipment overseas? (How many lakeboats for carrying grain exist?) Or rebuild rail to hook up to CN at Windsor? (easier than rebuilding across the Appalachians and rebuilding ports)

Oh, and you'll have to deal with thousands of Mexican squatters/subsistence farmers who've fled the horrors south of the Rio Grande.

[DinoDoc]

Who serves to keep the threat of pirates in check in this bizzaro world where the US goes poof?

[General Ludd]

Re: Planet Earth without the USA

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Imagine the territory of the US, in an instant reverting to its natural condition. All of the people and infrastructure are gone.

What exactly does this mean? Natural condition, meaning time travel to a pre-colonial period? Removal of people meaning everyone, or everyone except the indigenious, or everyone and a new batch of ppre-colonial indegenious who are unfamiliar with the rest of the world? Or into prehistoric times? Or simply a disapearance of everything manmade?

[Riesstiu IV]

We would know for sure god opened the cheat menu and used the "kill civilization" option.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Who serves to keep the threat of pirates in check in this bizzaro world where the US goes poof?

It is good as, how the church of the flying spaghetti monster was able to show, the gllobal warming can be attributed to the sinking number of pirates on the world


So, finally we will hopefully get rid of the global warming if the numbers of pirates rise due to the vanishing USA

[Vesayen]

I raised a major issue I think most of you are underestimating. How much of the worlds databases flow through, or are in, the U.S.? If you wake up tommorow in the U.K. and more then half the worlds financial records are simply gone.... besides non financial records? In the short term I think this will be catastrophic, even worse then the price of grain spiraling out of control. LOTM makes an interesting point. Can we expect a flood of impoverished Mexicans into the lower states to engage in subsistance farming?

Everyone seems to have also forgot about the U.N.

Well it is ignored for the most part anyway, but it will be well, gone. The secetary general, all the represensatives, all the infastructure will go poof, it is all in New York. Not that this really matters.

How much of the worlds sattelite grid is operated from the U.S.? We might have many networks of sattelites effectivley dead as no one has the controls for them.

[Riesstiu IV]

There would also no longer be freedom in the world.

[Tingkai]

Christ, if the Americans disappeared, who would buy all the useless pieces of plastic crap made in Asia?

God bless the American consumer.

[Patroklos]

That is a good point Vesayan. How many of the worlds specialists in particular fields, research institutes, and simple stores of knowledge are here.

I am not saying by any stretch of the imaginiantion that Europe and Japan and others don't have institutions of the same calibre, but a disproportionate amount of technological development and innovation happens here. Couple that with the general chaos brought on by everthing else discussed, would there be a general backslide in technology?