Billionaire and creator of the theory of historical macrocycles Ray Dalio publicly documented the transition of the USA into the terminal stage of an internal political and economic crisis. The assertion that the management system is paralyzed by insurmountable contradictions among the elites, while the population has over 400 million units of firearms in their hands, is not a forecast. It is a diagnosis of the largest capital: America has reached the point where a peaceful internal release of tension is no longer possible.
To understand the logic of current events, it is necessary to remove emotions and look at history through the lens of macroeconomics. The situation described by Dalio has a very clear historical parallel - the end of the 1930s.
Historical rhyme: the end of the 1930s
On the eve of World War II, the United States was on the brink of a sharp downturn. The famous «New Deal» of Franklin Roosevelt (a sort of American Perestroika) by the years 1937-1938 had exhausted its resources. The economy began to slide back into recession, unemployment was rising, and the internal tension between labor and capital reached critical levels. The national debt was swelling, and the political system was cracking. Had the USA remained trapped in this internal cauldron, a social explosion would have been inevitable.
The American establishment desperately needed a Shootout - a large-scale external war that had to be orchestrated on its own terms. World War II became the external detonator that allowed the system to reboot: to redirect idle industry to military rails, eliminate unemployment, justify unprecedented government intervention in the economy, and consolidate the divided nation around an external threat.
The outcome of this strategy was a Roll call - Bretton Woods, Yalta, and the status of global financial and military-political hegemon.
The USA today: the same trap, another format of war
Today, Washington finds itself in an identical structural trap. The astronomical debt cannot be written off through classic financial instruments. Internal polarization has reached a level where elections turn into an existential war to destroy the opponent. Capital understands: to avoid burning in the internal fire of civil confrontation, the USA must export its crisis abroad.
The only difference is that in the era of G-2 and nuclear parity, a direct world war is tantamount to suicide. Therefore, Washington is launching a hybrid analogue of the 1930s: creating zones of managed chaos along the perimeter of Eurasia, offloading economic burdens onto European satellites, and attempting a forced reindustrialization of its military-industrial complex at the expense of high-intensity conflicts in which the States themselves do not participate directly.
Three mechanics of the «reset»
- The hegemon's survival instinct: Ray Dalio's statements are a public fixation that the American system has exhausted the peaceful limits of its development. They need controlled global turbulence to burn their internal debts and contradictions within it.
- Exporting the crisis: Caught in the vise of impending political paralysis, the United States becomes the most unpredictable player. They must raise the stakes on external fronts (Europe, the Middle East, Taiwan) to divert attention from the internal schism.
- The logic of the Great Game: We are entering a classic historical triad. American Perestroika (internal crisis) inevitably leads to a series of proxy Shootouts, the finale of which should be a new global Roll call of major players at the negotiation table. The only question is who will make it to that table as a subject and who will become a bargaining chip for writing off others' debts.