When Justin Trudeau meets Joe Biden at the G7 summit in Italy this week, Trudeau will probably not ask whether the United States is at risk of erupting in civil war in the next few years.
A think tank housed within Trudeau’s government is already pondering that question.
In a spring report titled “Disruptions on the Horizon,” a quiet office known as Policy Horizons Canada proposed American civil war as a scenario that Ottawa should consider preparing for.
This hypothetical was tucked into the middle of the 37-page document, which sketched the possibility in 15 spare words: “U.S. ideological divisions, democratic erosion, and domestic unrest escalate, plunging the country into civil war.”
It’s an unsettling thing to find out your immediate neighbor is getting nervous about the possibility of gruesome violence in your home.
There has been no shortage of apocalyptic forecasting about Trump-era American politics. Since the 2016 […]
This is something that Canada should be worried about; however, in addition to a US Civil war the article indicates “Other scenarios in that general category included the proliferation of homemade biological weapons; the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, leading to mass death and food shortages; and the outbreak of World War 3.” All of these things are possibilities, with WWIII being the most disturbing. As the article continues: “Some of our states, like Texas and California, are quasi-national entities already. The next president is sure to be loathed by much of the country, and likely seen as illegitimate by at least a large minority.” This is the crux of the issue. Our system of government is designed to be so non-representative that an increasing number of citizens see the winner as non-legitimate. The political homelessness in this country is coming to an inflection point. It’s not as if the citizens have abandoned the parties, its that the parties have abandoned the citizens to move to the extremes. The United States needs a multi-party system that is truly representative. The concept that two political parties can adequately represent 330 million people is ludicrous on its face.