The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

by George Friedman

The balance of powers that were created achieved three important things: first, it made the passage of laws enormously difficult; second, the president would be incapable of becoming a tyrant; and third, Congress would be limited by the courts in what it could achieve. The founders’ remarkably inefficient system of government did what it was designed to do; it did little, and the little that it did, it did poorly. The government had to protect the nation and maintain a degree of internal trade. But it was private life that would create a cycle of creativity that would allow society, economy, and institutions to evolve at remarkable speed yet not end up tearing the country apart, save for some near misses.

This was the meaning of the idea of the right to pursue happiness. The state would not hinder anyone. A person’s fate would be determined only by his character and talents. The founders did more than separate the state and private life.

When I say that the regime was invented, I am therefore saying that it was invented by men who were lifelong inventors. They were technologists. They tried to create things that would manage nature and ease human existence. Invention was not only part of the regime. It was built into American culture. Jefferson and Franklin questioned all political premises. They also questioned all things and how to improve them. This inventiveness can be seen throughout American history, from farm implements to smartphones.

Whoever found a route to India that took them around the Ottomans would solve Europe’s problem and become wealthy. The Portuguese succeeded first, going around Africa. The Spaniards, delayed by their war with the Muslims, sought a route toward the west. It was a good move in theory. In practice, it failed because the Spaniards didn’t know that the Western Hemisphere blocked their way.

As for the technocrats of Google and Goldman Sachs, the vast accumulation of money that increasingly could not be efficiently reinvested, but still created a vast gap in wealth that had been alleviated to some extent after World War II, has become a defining characteristic of society. The accumulation of wealth by experts, combined with the decreasing efficiency of technocracy, is creating this third institutional crisis. But because it’s early in the crisis, those who in some way recognize it are still impotent to change it. President Trump came into office promising to “drain the swamp,” a metaphor for attacking technocracy, but he had neither the clarity as to how to proceed nor the political base from which to do it. The country was still divided down the middle, with the technocrats successfully defending their institutions.

The problem was that the financial crisis in 1873 still resonated, creating a capital shortage. Hayes and his Treasury secretary, John Sherman, a much more significant figure, chose to stabilize the currency but in a different way than Jackson had done. Jackson used silver as well as gold to back the dollar. Silver was more plentiful, both in citizens’ hands and in the ground. Backing the currency with silver would have stabilized it without making it inflexible. Hayes’s problem was a currency that had lost all confidence at a time when investment in industrialization was essential. Investors and bank depositors had to be certain that the value of their investment would not be undermined by runaway inflation.

The social foundation of this era was an urban industrial working class. That class comprised many migrants from Ireland and southern and eastern Europe, or their children and grandchildren, and southern whites who were struck by the Depression but actually had never recovered from the Civil War. They were either already organized or organizing into labor unions, which were allied with big-city Democratic machines. They demanded transfers of wealth. The Republicans were appalled. It didn’t matter.

The theory of free trade is that it increases the wealth of nations. Left open are two questions. First, how long will it take to achieve this end? Second, how will the increased wealth be distributed? Free trade, and capitalism in general, are constantly creating new wealth and on the whole drive the economy forward. But “on the whole” excludes those who lose their jobs as the economic revolution takes place and never find a new job. In the abstract theory of the free market, this is a price that has to be paid. In the real world of society and politics, where the displaced have more power than they have in the economy, the reality is that this process can destabilize important and powerful sectors of the economy.

The postwar generation could buy homes, as well as furniture, cars, or trips, and pay for them on anticipated income. From the point of view of the prior era, this was the height of irresponsibility and even immorality. From the standpoint of the well-to-do, suburbia was poorly constructed housing without culture or a soul. The urbanites looked at the suburbs as they had been looked at by small-town America. Small-town America saw the urbanites as the essence of irresponsibility. New social forms are always held in contempt by those in previous eras. But the technocrats, who were created along with the suburbs, understood that their task was to serve the emerging reality.

The president surrounds himself with experts, with the cabinet no longer playing the role of chief advisers, and Congress acts more or less as an onlooker. The experts are focused on the issue at hand rather than on the broader question of American interests. Or more precisely, they confuse the area in which they are experts with the area the United States should focus on. As with domestic matters, the public loses not just control but also an understanding of what is going on, and under the presidential power of secrecy the confusion is institutionalized.

Donald Trump won the election by grasping the alienation of broad sectors of society, not only from the federal government, but also from those who serve in it. There was a collision between the federal technocracy and those who had experienced and distrusted it. And Trump faced a party organized around Hillary Clinton, who was the quintessential advocate of federal power and technocracy. The election determined nothing more than that the crisis of distrust was beginning.

As I discussed previously, technocracy was built on the concept of nonideological solutions for government. Yet technocracy has now developed into an ideology in itself. Its vision of the world is that it is understandable and can be perfected by those who have the knowledge to understand and manipulate the world. And it follows from this assumption that these people should be permitted to manage the system.

But what is their definition of the oppressed? It is not the economically oppressed that they have come to defend but the culturally oppressed. African Americans, regardless of their economic status, suffer from the effects of racism. Hispanics suffer from xenophobia, as do Muslims. Those who deviate from the sexual norm are the victims of homophobia. Women are the victims of misogyny. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny are all defects in the victimizer. Therefore, they believe, it is the victimizer who must be constrained and reformed, by reshaping his thinking and punishing those who cannot abandon the thoughts of oppression.

One of the political crises we will see coming to a peak in the 2020s will be a revolt against the primary system, which empowers minority ideologies

In its broadest sense, technology is the means of changing humanity’s relationship with its past and with nature.

Throughout this period of the 2020s, the economic pain will increase, felt most by the industrial workers, who will sink from middle class to lower-middle class. They will lose even the minimal elements of American success in homes, vacations, tuition for children in college. These will slip away from them and from their children. The technological gap between the microchip and the follow-on core technology will continue to cut into productivity and continue to discourage investment. It will be a period in which the technocracy will continue to live well, while the rest of the country stagnates at best and more likely declines.

During the 1920s, there were alternatives to a university degree. There were jobs to be had and small businesses to start. That was no longer true during the 1930s. The alternative was to either open the institutions of the elite to the poor or create a permanent underclass. World War II and the GI Bill solved the dilemma. That dilemma is back. Either the rapidly declining white working class will gain access to the credentials needed to rise, or a permanent underclass will be created. The danger in the 1930s of such a class was real, as it is now.

the president will face significant economic and social problems, and what he will do is apply the basic principles of the Reagan era: lowering taxes and reducing regulations. This will be the case with either party. But the problem that the Reagan presidency was solving was capital shortage, and lower taxes helped with this. The problem at the end of the Reagan cycle is that capital has successfully expanded, but is no longer able to drive the economy, and has left a large part of society increasingly unequal. The solutions imposed will make matters worse rather than solve the problem.

The commander lays down his intention to a certain level and then expects subordinates to apply that with awareness of the reality he is facing. Subordinates are not free to deviate from the intent. Nor are they free to apply the intent mechanically regardless of the reality they encounter. The commander is responsible for making his intent not only clear but understood. He then seeks to reach his intended goal by devolving initiative to his junior officers and NCOs. This is not true of all armies. For example, the Soviet army was a technocratic army. But the U.S. Army was always an army that demanded initiative based on intent.

The problem of the third institutional cycle is that the hyper engineering of the technocrats created very rational solutions in general, but only at the cost of ignoring the endless idiosyncrasies that life consists of. Large corporations can hire lobbyists to change the engineering process itself. But individuals have no recourse. They have lost the political boss who interfaced with the government. The price for honesty is impotence. The technocrats’ alternative creates the reality of unanticipated harm and inflexibility in managing a society that from its founding is all about flexibility without excluding the possibility of corruption. There is no recourse to the regulations that have been engineered, and the operators of the system are not free to exercise initiative based on commander’s intent.

Focusing on the university as the battleground of this cycle’s crisis may seem odd. Yet the university is increasingly controversial simply in its internal values and emphasis on ethnic, but not necessarily intellectual, diversity. But that is not the shift that will take place. What will happen is an assault on the system that limits upward mobility. And this battle will ultimately change the shape of American society.

The dominant political forces will be those beneath median income and those in the upper quarter, with the rest being between the two. There will also be an ideological realignment of a retreating Reagan-era free-market group, a resurgent class who are focused on outcome, and the outcome they will want is a redistribution of income and even of already earned wealth. The culture wars that define politics in the fifth cycle will continue but will no longer be linked to economic demands and will instead diffuse over various factions.

What is evolving is a collapse of traditional marriage and massive uncertainty regarding relationships. Some studies report a decline of sexual activity, decline of emotional commitment, and so on. What is created then is the anguish of freedom. When there is no rule as a guide, you confront the problem that it is not clear what to do. This represents a fundamental restructuring of deeply held rituals of life and the intense resistance of traditionalists to this process. This will be a part of the sixth cycle’s politics but a declining part. Traditional marriage was an economic necessity, aligned with religious beliefs. With the end of the bond of economic necessity, the birth rate will obviously decline.

This goes back to our early discussion of the invention of the United States. The founders sought to balance liberty and obligation. For them it was a political question. In the sixth cycle, it will be an existential one, defining who we are as individuals. The United States will face this more deeply than other countries, because American wealth creates many possibilities and those possibilities become endless.

What will actually happen is the transcendence of the microchip culture and an aggressive reassertion of community, not perhaps with the old rituals, but with a culture that has at its center the avoidance of loneliness. The self-imposed loneliness of the microchip cannot sustain itself in human relations. It imposes rituals as all things human do. But they are rituals that may be addictive but can’t be satisfying.

from the more recent past. It is in the nature of rituals to flow from traditions, and traditions to reach back to the past. It is also in the nature of those honoring traditions to want to universalize their principles and rituals, first through persuasion and then through law. In other words, the new rituals, to some extent mimicking the old, will seek a legal standing. Rituals can be religious but presented as secular. Rules on the number of spouses permitted, the rights of property in a divorce, and the treatment of children are secularized impositions of moral values.