Predictions and Prophecies for 2025

Everything... Something... A couple of things are proceeding as I have foreseen

In a few days we’ll be ushering in the 2,025th Year of the Lord. At times such as these, it is customary for armchair generals, pajama-clad pundits, and demoralized doomsayers to offer up their predictions for the year(s) to come.

I am a man of custom, or, at least, a man who wanted to be able to re-use the boilerplate he wrote in his 2022 and 2023 article of the same name. Today, then, I will offer my prediction for 2025 AD.

But first, let’s review my prior prognostications to see how well I’ve done so far.

Assessing the 2023 Prediction

In Predictions and Prophecies for 2023, I made exactly one prediction for the year ahead:

The Petrodollar System will end! As I explained in my series Running on Empty, the petrodollar is the centerpiece of American hegemony. I predict that in 2023, at the latest 2024, that system will end. Its demise may be disguised by the mainstream and financial press, but it will be self-evident in the transactions themselves, and its aftershocks will be mighty.

I have already documented that this prediction came true so I won’t repeat my earlier findings. That said, I knowledge that not everyone agrees with me. Let me quickly address the two main criticisms.

“You can still buy oil with dollars!”

Yes, you can. But the petrodollar system was never premised on the ability of the US to buy oil with dollars. The petrodollar system was premised on the requirement for other countries to buy oil with dollars even when both parties would have preferred to use their own currency. At the peak of the petrodollar system, the share of global oil contracts settled in USD was close to 100%. Today it is around 80% and falling. In the 1990s, we went to war over less.

“The US dollar is still the globe’s reserve currency!”

Yes, it is. But a reserve currency is nothing more than a foreign currency held in large quantities by international banks to stabilize exchange rates and maintain liquidity. Both the British pound (in the 19th century) and the US dollar (in the mid-20th century) were reserve currencies without being petrocurrencies.

A reserve currency is mostly accumulated and held, not spent on vital goods; and as such it does not entail recycling (as the petrodollar did entail) nor does it necessarily permit the mass deindustrialization combined with asset inflation that the petrodollar system permitted.

If that’s too difficult to parse, let me use an analogy.

The dollar circa 1950 - 1970 was a hot Barbie you really wanted to get with because she was the sexiest thing around; the dollar circa 1970 - 2020 was a plain jane Brittney-Sue with an angry shotgun-owning Uncle Sam who forced you to marry her even though you didn’t want to; and the dollar today is an overweight Karen that you’re still married to technically but you’ve put the wheels in motion for the divorce so you can marry your hot Chinese mistress.

Assessing the 2024 Prediction

In Predictions and Prophecies for 2024, I again made just one prediction:

The long-awaited Third World War will begin (at least insofar as America is concerned).

Did this prediction come true? Here’s the hard facts.

• The fighting between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah got more intense. Following Hamas's attacks in October 2023, Israel launched a series of military campaigns targeting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. By the end of the year, we’d seen actions ranging from the assassination of Hamas Deputy Leader Saleh Al-Arouri, to the launch of “Operation Summer Camps” in the West Bank to the detonation of thousands of Hezbollah electronic devices.

• Iran and Israel engaged in direct military confrontations. In April 2024, Iran launched drone attacks against Israel. In October 2024 it followed up with ballistic missile strikes. Israel then conducted retaliatory airstrikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure.

• The Russo-Ukraine War expanded into Russia itself. In August 2024, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive into Kursk, bringing the fight from the contested regions of Ukraine into Russia itself.

• A new belligerent entered the Russo-Ukraine war. In November 2024, North Kora sent over 11,000 troops to engage in combat operations on behalf of Russia in Kursk.

• NATO authorized Ukraine to escalate against Russia. Shortly after Trump was re-elected, outgoing President Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to use Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike targets within Russian territory.

• The Assad regime in Syria was overthrown by rebel forces. In December 2024, Syrian rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad's regime, leading to significant regional instability and concerns over the future political landscape of Syria.

• Israel then invaded Syria. Following the overthrow of the Assad Regime, Israel invaded Syria, seizing control of parts of the buffer zone established after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

• Overall, global conflicts reached unprecedented levels. A report from the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney revealed that there were 56 active conflicts worldwide – an unprecedented figure since World War II. Data from the non-profit group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) showed that conflict-related deaths surged from approximately 180,000 in 2023 to nearly 234,000 in 2024, marking a 30 percent increase.

But does all of that add up to the beginning of the Third World War? It depends who you ask.

Some prominent commentators believe the Third World War has already begun:

• Israel Katz, Foreign Minister of Israel, proclaimed in January 2024 that “We’re in the middle of World War III against Iran [led] radical Islam, whose tentacles are already in Europe.”

• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, remarked in October 2024 that “World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries.”

• Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's former military Commander-in-Chief and current envoy to the United Kingdom, stated in November 2024 “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun."

But these pundits seem to be in the minority. Newsweek asked a panel of prominent defense experts whether World War III had begun and they all said no:

• “I would strongly agree that we are somewhere in the very final stages of a pre-World War III situation. In my opinion, this is still kind of a Cold War, at extremely high but still tolerable temperatures, which is about to "boil" anytime soon if not prevented.” - Olevs Nikers, President of the Baltic Security Foundation

• “No, we are not in a third world war yet, though the risk of one is substantial.” - David Stevenson, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics

• “We are not in a state of World War III traditionally understood, or on the brink of this (yet).” - Edward Newman, Profession of International Security at University of Leeds

• “World War III has not begun, and with a modicum of prudence on all sides, it could be avoided once again.” - Ian Ona Johnson, Professor of Military History at University of Notre Dame

• “No, WWIII has not already begun. And it won't start soon as long as the United States adopts prudent policies toward the world's other major powers, China and Russia.” - Stephen Van Evera, Professor of Political Science at MIT

• “No, WWIII has not begun. World wars are cataclysmic events where the majority of nations are officially at war and are engaged in open warfare. They send their soldiers into combat across large fronts.” - Walter Dorn, Professor of Defence Studies at Royal Military College

• “I do not think it is warranted to say that WWIII has already begun for a number of reasons.” - Kristian Gleditsch, Professor of Political Science at University of Essex

Since I am writing this from the comfort of my air-conditioned breakfast nook while sipping coffee delivered to me by Instacart, rather than broadcasting it over a pirate radio in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of nuclear-irradiated Bull City, I am forced to agree with the majority of experts: World War III did not begin in 2024.

My prediction was wrong. It’s a devastating blow. My ever-supportive wife tried to comfort me by saying “Don’t worry honey, there’s always next year!” And she’s right; it’s entirely possible this prediction will come true in 2025. But it didn’t in 2024.

Assessing the American Eschaton

In addition to my two end-of-year prognostications, I made one other major prediction. The American Eschaton is a term I coined to describe the end of America as we know it, and back in September 27, 2023 I predicted it was 16 months away.

Sixteen months from now (472 days, to be exact), on January 25 2025, the next President of the United States will be sworn into office. In an ordinary year in an ordinary decade in an ordinary nation, the next President would be obvious. It would be Donald Trump…

But this is not an ordinary year, or an ordinary decade, or an ordinary nation, and so it’s not going to play out like that…

I predict an American Eschaton: The end of America as we know it. It will be a Fourth Turning, but it will be a Fourth Turning that goes against us. The exact manner in which our eschaton will occur is much harder to predict. The end of America as we know it doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear apocalypse, government collapse, or secession. It could simply mean a transformation of America into something Unamerican. (The Russian Revolution of 1918 was the end of Russia as the Russian of the time knew it, for instance.)

And here was my rank ordering of the likelihood of what will come, from most to least likely:

• Managerial triumph followed by a slow, grinding degeneration that reveals itself as collapse only in retrospect;

• Managerial triumph followed by near-term collapse;

• Global war;

• Civil war;

• Peaceful national divorce;

• Trump’s triumph followed by a renewal of America.

Following the failed assassination attempt against President Trump, I penned a follow-on article and updated my world:

Trump is now so far ahead in the polls that it will be hard for anything short of utterly blatant fraud, or even complete cancellation of the elections, to keep the Left in power. Given the Right’s simmering resentment over the 2020 election, repeating than fraudulent antics of 2020 in an even more egregious manner, when Trump is so far ahead now, seems much more likely to lead to national divorce or civil war from the Right than was the case 11 months ago.

On the other hand, if that level of election fraud is not pursued (and he is not killed in a second attempt) Trump will almost certainly win, and then we have to imagine national divorce or civil war being possible from the Left.

Is there a peaceful path for Trump to take power and implement his agenda? In my original article, I didn’t see one because I didn’t see any circumstance under which the Left would simply capitulate. But I do see such a possibility now.

Obviously, Trump did get elected by a margin that made fraud impossible. He won’t be officially confirmed as the 47th President of the United States on January 6, 2025, when the new Congress performs the ministerial task of counting the electoral votes; and he won’t be sworn in as president until January 20, 2025. But at present it seems likely those events will take place as scheduled.

So was I wrong — is the American Eschaton cancelled? Maybe - but may not. As I wrote back in July 2024, it’s entirely possible that Trump is being allowed to take power peacefully because of what’s coming:

Imagine, if you will, that the smartest members of the ruling class have concluded that Trump is very likely to win; imagine, further that they believe economic calamity is unavoidable or global war is inevitable or necessary. If so, then it would make sense to allow Trump to be elected and then “accelerate” progress towards these events. Why?

If there is an economic collapse under Trump’s administration (perhaps due to de-dollarization), he will be blamed in the same way that Herbert Hoover was blamed for the Great Depression; and just as Hoover’s economic policies were utterly discredited for generations, so too will Trump’s. Moreover, the resulting economic conditions might pave the way for a new Roosevelt on the Left with the usual socialist promises to make things better.

On the other hand, if there is a global war, then having Trump in office is virtually the only means by which young white men — the core of our fighting force — are likely to be persuaded to accept a draft or go to war. Not many men would die for Biden or globohomo, but if Trump issues the call and the cause seems patriotic, many (not all, but enough) will respond.

How such a war might break out; I’ve already discussed. Trump does not seem likely to escalate against Russia, but it seems entirely possible he might support Israel if its war breaks out into a wider war, perhaps triggering a cascade into global war; alternatively, there remains the possibility of Chinese action against Taiwan. Regardless, as I’ve previously explained, we’ll likely lose the war for lack of industrial capacity, positioning Trump as the fall guy for our military failure.

Obviously it’s too soon to evaluate whether this prediction was on point or way off.

In the Coming Months…

So that brings us to the moment at hand. I was right in my 2023 prediction (petrodollar ended); I was wrong in 2024 prediction (WWIII didn’t start); and I dismissed a major possibility in my original American Eschaton prediction that now seems to be coming true (Trump might be “allowed to win”).

What’s my prediction and prophecy for 2025?

I predict Trump will take office peacefully but he will be confronted by a combination of global war and/or economic collapse intended to trigger the expected American Eschaton. This is essentially a double-down bet on my prediction from American Eschaton III.

Despite that dire prediction, I actually wish all of you a Happy New Year. I hope 2025 is filled with health, joy, and prosperity for all of us; I hope our civilization will enjoy the beginning of an Aenean renewal of courage and wisdom. I hope I’m as wrong about doom in 2025 as I was about doom in 2024.

But, just in case I’m not wrong, be sure to subscribe to Tre… well maybe to something like Vault-Co Communications where substacker

Texas Arcane

offers useful prepper advice for the discerning doomsayer. I assume you’ve already subscribed to the Tree, but if you haven’t, you know what to do!

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