2015: Flashpoints Abound
December 17, 2014 11:41 AM   Subscribe

A Pessimist's Guide to the World in 2015. Skirmishes in the South China Sea lead to full-scale naval confrontation. Israel bombs Iran, setting off an escalation of violence across the Middle East. Nigeria crumbles as oil prices fall and radicals gain strength. Bloomberg News asked foreign policy analysts, military experts, economists and investors to identify the possible worst-case scenarios, based on current global conflicts, that concern them most heading into 2015. [Bleah interface; interesting content.]
posted by ZenMasterThis (33 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
A number of these (India/Pakistan, North Korea) seem to hinge on leaders reacting differently to repetition of events that have already happened. It'd be nice to have some more info on why they think that might be more likely now.
posted by echo target at 11:50 AM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, some more background and actual analysis would be helpful. I mean shit's been going down in the Middle East for decades; why should 2015 be any different?
posted by monospace at 11:52 AM on December 17, 2014


The present-tense of the 2014 garbage year list is bad enough.

Also, I'm not a foreign policy expert, but aren't ISIS and the Taliban enemies? Is them joining up to fight the Western alliance realistic?
posted by codacorolla at 11:53 AM on December 17, 2014


I will be interested to see whether "anti-Euro opposition leader" Alexis Tsipras, who seems to be a perfectly decent moderate Greek leftist with a pretty solid political background can...dun dun dun....bring down the eurozone. He would be delighted and astonished to know he had that much power, I bet. It's a sign of how far right nearly everyone in the media is that SYRIZA is written about in terms that would better suit the KPD in its Spartacist Uprising days.
posted by Frowner at 11:57 AM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Pessimism can be dangerous because it places unjustified confidence in the likelihood of events that excite the imagination, as does optimism; the difference is that pessimism appeals to the vanity of bitter wisdom, but it is still more confident in unfalsifiable universal laws (that is, in this case, that things will go badly because that is the nature of events) than empirical evidence, and as such is an unreliable way to think about what's likely to happen.

A lot of these predictions are just vague extrapolations of current states of affairs, anyway, and some seem inattentive to actual conditions on the ground; e.g., the Russian-related predictions don't seem to be taking the circumstances surrounding the ruble's precipitous nose-dive into account, which render them less than plausible.
posted by clockzero at 12:04 PM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


AKA any comment section of any social media site ever that 'talks' about things going on in the news.

I notice they are missing the wave of ebola carrying illegal ISIL children at the southern boarder.
posted by edgeways at 12:04 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Dismayed by changes to the MeFi stylesheet, the revolutionary leader known only as SquintyMcTrouserPress launches a boycott of breakfast cereal which eventually leads to Jeb Bush marrying a raccoon.

Hey, these 2015 madlibs are fun

But yes, the opportunities (!) for things to get worse always exist. But doomsaying without context avails us little.
posted by fallingbadgers at 12:14 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Gotta love the illustration of Putin doing his best Mr. Burns impression.
posted by edheil at 12:14 PM on December 17, 2014


HEADLINE: "Bad things happening somewhere" -- let's all get upset, get scared, make excuses for our middling lives as we wallow in self-pity, blame someone else, and try to indoctrinate someone online with our own cheap brand of DIY propaganda.

Looking for happy, confident, and level-headed people averse to scare-mothering sophistry to cover the news, thanks...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 12:15 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I thought that was a Dick Cheney impression.
posted by DigDoug at 12:16 PM on December 17, 2014


hmmm has anyone actually seen Cheney and Putin in the same room?
posted by edgeways at 12:19 PM on December 17, 2014


It'd be nice to have some more info on why they think that might be more likely now.

To be fair, they were explicitly asked for the worst-case scenario. Doesn't mean they actually think it will happen. I would have liked to see Bloomberg ask for estimates on probability though, and/or tell us who's making these predictions. Otherwise it's not much use.
posted by Pink Frost at 12:29 PM on December 17, 2014


I'm kind of disapppointed that the biggest threat of all didn't make it:

London, UK: the drop in the price of oil results in oil producing countries having difficulty meeting their debt obligations. Sovereign Wealth Funds maintained by oil exporters therefore begin to liquidate their investment portfolios, triggering a collapse in the London property bubble (where inflation ran at over 15% during 2014, driving the cost of an average 2 bedroom apartment to over US $500,000). The collapse sends shockwaves through the British banking sector (where 5 of 8 major banks were unable to pass their Bank of England mandated stress tests in December 2014), triggering a chain reaction financial crisis on the same scale as 2007/08—only in a much weaker global economy still gripped by the turmoil left by the previous crisis.

Whackiness ensues (and not in a good way).
posted by cstross at 12:29 PM on December 17, 2014 [18 favorites]


If Admiral Poindexter's little experiment of betting on future tragedies wasn't terminated, I'd be interested in his thoughts.
posted by Renoroc at 12:34 PM on December 17, 2014


The only way to describe what is happening with Russia at the moment is economic warfare. It seems very risky. Happy New Year!
posted by Nevin at 12:35 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


They don't even touch on the actual worst-case scenario in which the universe winks out of quantum existence.

Or what if the increasingly technologically-advanced Formula One cars gain sentience, launching a Decepticon-style offensive against the governments of Earth?

What if the megadrive being developed on the dark side of the moon activates prematurely, plowing the moon into the earth and plunging our combined masses into the Sun?

What if Rick Perry continues to exist?

Hey, this is easy! I'll work for cheap, Bloomberg!
posted by cmoj at 12:43 PM on December 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


The way 2014 turned out, this list looks more like the Optimist's Guide to the World in 2015
posted by surazal at 12:51 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


If you are looking for something positive, nice people, people who are content, then here's a nudge to the video in this thread.
posted by Wordshore at 12:53 PM on December 17, 2014


London, UK: the drop in the price of oil results in oil producing countries having difficulty meeting their debt obligations. Sovereign Wealth Funds maintained by oil exporters therefore begin to liquidate their investment portfolios, triggering a collapse in the London property bubble (where inflation ran at over 15% during 2014, driving the cost of an average 2 bedroom apartment to over US $500,000).

I was under the impression that most of that bubble came from individual rather than institutional investment.
posted by clockzero at 12:58 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


What if Putin drives up the price of Russia's energy exports by irradiating Saudi oil?
posted by infinitewindow at 1:45 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


clockzero: AIUI the high end of the London property market is driven by speculative investment -- real estate as an alternative to oil or pork bellies or whatever. While much of the money comes from working schmucks who simply need somewhere to live (and therefore have to buy somewhere, whatever the price, or be priced out of their own town), the "pace car" for the race is set by big investors. Which is why you have entire streets of multi-million pound listed buildings falling into ruin (nobody lives in them), and folks like Eric Schmidt (former CEO of google) can't afford a house (in the right part of town, at the specs they want).
posted by cstross at 1:57 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


What if everybody keeps fighting over stupid shit?
posted by sidereal at 2:11 PM on December 17, 2014


I'd rather it were flashpants.

Cheney's pants finally catch on fire from stress points created by a continuous current of self serving lies and poses. In the conflagration he confesses to being the architect of 9/11, and takes everyone down with bim, in the negotiations with the firemen, who lost brothers in the mission. The firemen, hearing the full confession, let him burn. In the ensuing bafflement Chub Bush gets lost trying to keep his brother out of prison. Rick Perry wins the nomination, promising to establish a permanent "Adam and Eve Pet the Dinosaurs," display, on the Whitehouse lawn. North and South Korea rejoin and create a giant universal controller, and simply turn off the world, then lose the controller in the sofa on their way out to dig kim chee.
posted by Oyéah at 2:14 PM on December 17, 2014


Awwwww, Denmark's made it. Finally! After 400 years we will once again emerge as a major player on the global stage. KAPOW.
posted by kariebookish at 2:32 PM on December 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


AIUI the high end of the London property market is driven by speculative investment -- real estate as an alternative to oil or pork bellies or whatever.

Yeah, markets like that seem to be attracting a lot of foreign capital lately; I'm not sure it's speculative, though. It's actually a smart investment for people who basically have far more money than they know what to do with. Until the housing bubble pops, I guess!

While much of the money comes from working schmucks who simply need somewhere to live (and therefore have to buy somewhere, whatever the price, or be priced out of their own town), the "pace car" for the race is set by big investors. Which is why you have entire streets of multi-million pound listed buildings falling into ruin (nobody lives in them), and folks like Eric Schmidt (former CEO of google) can't afford a house (in the right part of town, at the specs they want).

I think those investors are mostly individuals.

But I think there's a different, relevant point to be made: one of the reasons that sovereign wealth funds exist in the first place is to insulate entities like oil-producing nations from the vagaries of the international oil market. The existence of those funds means that those nations don't have to worry as much about a temporary (albeit dramatic) drop in the price of oil.
posted by clockzero at 2:51 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


EbolaEbolaEbolaEbolaEbolaEbolaEbola!!
posted by sexyrobot at 2:53 PM on December 17, 2014


Surely the nemesis scenario for 2015 is Russia defaulting on its sovereign debt obligations triggering - as it did in 1998 - panic in the global financial markets?
posted by dmt at 3:38 PM on December 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


You could have predicted a standoff between Japan and China, or India and Pakistan, or the Koreas, or another Intifada, or another Hamas/Israel flare-up in pretty much any year in the past decade or more and have a reasonable chance of getting at least one of them right.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:57 PM on December 17, 2014


So, with significant military presence elsewhere in the middle east to protect oil, I don't get why Israel even matters to anyone anymore. It's kinda like the old ranting racist uncle at a family reunion; wouldn't most of the world actually quietly smile a sigh of relief if they left the party? Seriously, why does a flashpoint in Israel matter more than a flashpoint in Ferguson? It seems like a provincial backwater with an overblown sense of self importance.
posted by astrobiophysican at 5:34 PM on December 17, 2014


Awwwww, Denmark's made it. Finally! After 400 years we will once again emerge as a major player on the global stage. KAPOW.

It's pretty funny to consider Denmark and Canada of all countries going to war over the North Pole.

Our lawyers can totally beat up your lawyers, though.
posted by Nevin at 5:41 PM on December 17, 2014


Knock yourself out; foreign policy analysts, military experts, economists and investors. Reality already exceeds your most pessimistic predictions. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami leading to a nuclear disaster that keeps leaking disasters into the pacific should still be winning disaster of the year awards. The fact that it falls into our memory hole while still burning is just one of those Bloombergian things.
posted by vicx at 6:33 PM on December 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Vastly more people died in 2014 in school shootings that the Fukushima Reactors have killed since 2011. Both numbers pale in comparison to the number of people who died in that quake/tsunami, and those number pale in comparison to the Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more people in one day than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb did.

So, yeah, you go worry about nuclear reactors. Us adults are far more worried about a country with a collapsing economy, a ruler of questionable stability, and the ability to nuke every city in the world, or the way the Middle East remains the glider gun in the game of terrorism, or the concentration of wealth leaving an increasingly large, poor, starving and desperate class who's also well armed?

And Fukushima is your big disaster? Let me guess: #2 on your list is the cat peed in your bed.
posted by eriko at 6:38 AM on December 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


Well lets just say I'm not as invested in a Bloomberg puff piece as much as you are.
posted by vicx at 5:05 AM on December 22, 2014


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