Unless there's some critic event like a civil war, I'm guessing it will be a slow decline of the U.S. I don't think any country stands to replace it, at least not in the same amount of dominace that the United States had. I think two or three countries, including the U.S., will dominate economic and military power for quite a number of years with a great deal of shuffling between them.

With international banking freely printing money in much of the world (debt and taxation via inflation), I'm guessing we will have more and more frequent boom/bust cycles followed by a massive rug pull that will finally break the system's back, death by banking.

Then China will run the show for our lifetimes, which means we'll finally get fast rail.

My hope is that when the USA falls, it will take global capitalism with it. I've been speculating about the post-capitalist world on Mastodon lately.

https://kolektiva.social/@Quasit/115710698245440299

Post-Soviet Union Russia

Safer, regardless of whatever atrocity-defending propaganda y'all have been eating. And once the dollar goes from reserve currency to just another coin to exchange with, America's privileges will be gone. That's gonna be interesting to see.

The coasts will be wealthy and independent. The middle will be poor and warlike. Two coastal countries and a lot of warlording in the middle.

China will be the dominant world superpower for a while and their standard of living will drastically increase. Middle East will be unlikely to stabilize any time soon. Africa might be put into play as serious economic competitors to fill the gap in skilled labor and services that the United States will leave behind in its wake. South America might finally have a chance to heal from the destructive regime meddling of the USA.

We just gonna have other bully. That’s how power vacuums works

The US Empire has a small chance of Balkanizing, which the map drawers would love. The global south would develop far more rapidly, though this process has already started thanks to countries like the PRC. Europe will be forced into working with Russia and/or China. Countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and the DPRK that are heavily sanctioned will do a lot better with the US Empire out of the way, and Korea may even reunify down the road. Countries with strong socialist sentiment in the populace will better be able to become socialist and rapidly develop.

In the short (next couple lifetimes) term, the US will continue receding from different geopolitical arenas, followed by some political jostling to change that region's power balance.

As the empire shrinks, the politics of scarcity will become more pervasive, entrenching clientelism and mistrust in an already fairly low-trust society.

It's not a hot take to say that mask-off fascism is on the menu given how fascism-shaped the US is, but given how autocanibalistic this particular right wing wave is, I have no idea what to expect.

Don't know whether the new boss will be the same as the old boss; while India and China don't seem particularly empire-inclined, few countries do until they're the one with the biggest stick. Both have been drumming up nationalism internally for the last decade, so if they can't defuse it safely they'll point it at each other, to everybody's detriment.

I expect there will be more wars as countries no longer have a nation to enforce current borders. My guess is that the next international order will look more like the Concert of Europe with varying spheres of influence.