Predictions for 2023

 

My record for predictions is appalling. Just like everyone else. Who, looking forward to 2022, predicted the Freedom Convoy? The declaration of the Emergency Act? The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Ukraine’s ability to push back? That the UK would run through three prime ministers? That Elon Musk would buy Twitter and open its files? That the US Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade?

But it is my tradition to make my predictions at the New Year, so what the heck. 2023 looks particularly unstable. I have an intuition that we have reached a watershed, and 2023 will be a year of change. 

The regimes in Iran, Russia, and China all look shaky. If any one of them tumbles, this will make the fall of the others more probable. If all three go, we may have a new world.

Russia perhaps looks most likely. It seems now as though Putin cannot win his war, and losing a war usually means the fall of an autocratic government. Wise men say that, if Putin goes, it will be a palace coup, and he will be replaced by somebody more hard line than he is. But this does not seem viable: Putin is not losing in Ukraine due to lack of trying. What could a harder line produce? War against NATO? Given that Russia cannot deal with Ukraine, expanding the war simply looks like suicide.

It seems to me the only path open to Russia is to dump Putin, blame the war on him, withdraw all troops from Ukraine, and pursue a new policy of rapprochement with the West. If you can’t beat them …

Iran looks next most likely. My Iranian contacts all seem confident the regime cannot survive the current wave of protests. And if that regime falls, its successor is again likely to be pro-Western. Just as the reaction to the pro-Western and secularizing shah was to go fundamentalist and Islamist, the reaction to an Islamist regime will likely be to go pro-Western. Rumours are that mosque attendance in Iran is low, and there are many secret conversions to Christianity.

If Iran goes pro-Western, and Russia pulls in its horns, we may have peace in the Middle East.

I have been predicting the fall of the CCP since 1992. It looked shaky then. I think the original appointment of Xi and his strongarm tactics were themselves acts of desperation. They are now coming unglued: Xi had to back down over zero Covid. All he had was fear, and now fear is not working.

Worldwide, there is a struggle between government elites everywhere, who see the internet as an opportunity for Big Brother-style control, and the people, who see the internet as an opportunity to organize themselves without the need for government elites. The Freedom Convoy in Canada was a set-piece example. It is getting nasty, and could get nastier. But I am hopeful that the essential logic of the internet, improved communication, leads in the direction of greater democracy and freedom, not more government control. As did the invention of printing, or the Industrial Revolution, for parallels. Technology favours freedom.

Economists predict worldwide recession, and inflation slowly easing. This is beyond my area of expertise. Broadly, though, I think the improvements in technology through computerization ought to continue improving general prosperity, even if there are bumps in the road, and the effects of the Covid lockdowns, like those of the Spanish flu, ought to be transitory. If the war in Ukraine has been costly, there ought also to be a “peace dividend” if any or all of the three bellicose regimes actually fall.

Housing prices are crashing all over the place. They needed to; housing costs were unrealistically high. It was an investment bubble. 

It might be an unexpectedly good year, after a string of bad ones.