The danger to democracy in the United States is growing. The Trump administration is clearly tempted to influence the forthcoming midterm elections on November 3 so that the Republicans will be able to declare victory despite disastrous polling results.
President Trump knows that if the Democrats regain control of both chambers of Congress, he will be in serious trouble. The numerous and increasingly corrupt practices of his administration would be investigated thoroughly, potentially leading to yet another impeachment proceeding. A successful impeachment process against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, clearly one of the administration’s most incompetent cabinet members, would also be in the cards.
Trump’s problems are also mounting dramatically on the global stage, pushing potential solutions further and further out of reach. Climate protection, for instance, has become a term of abuse within the Trump administration, despite the growing number of severe storms, floods, and other natural disasters, many of which can clearly be attributed to global warming caused by rising CO₂ emissions and other forms of environmental destruction.
The Threat of a Global Economic Crisis
Neither can it be ruled out that the rapidly increasing indebtedness of most countries around the world, not least the United States, may well soon trigger the next global economic crisis. After all, not only did the 1929 crash originate in the United States, but so did the Great Recession of 2008, both with devastating consequences.
Global debt now stands at an astronomical $365 trillion. This is more than three times the combined economic output of every country in the world. In the United States, the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product currently stands at 126 percent—that is, more than a quarter higher than the annual economic output of the country. U.S. government debt had already exceeded $40 trillion by August 2026. More than half of that amount—$21 trillion—was accumulated during the almost ten years in office of both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. By contrast, over the preceding 200 years, from 1789 to 2016, the United States accumulated just $19 trillion in debt.
The current US budget deficit exceeds $2 trillion annually. Of that amount, 68 percent—$1.36 trillion—goes toward interest payments alone. Moreover, Trump’s war against Iran has already cost American taxpayers more than $44 billion since February, and that is a conservative estimate.
This is an unsustainable situation. Despite the relatively healthy economic growth of just above two percent currently recorded in the United States, it threatens both the stability of the American financial system and, given the country’s enormous importance to the global economy, the stability of the international financial system as well.
The last time the United States managed to balance its federal budget was under Bill Clinton, whose administration achieved this for four consecutive years. There is reason to fear that the German-American economist Rüdiger Dornbusch was right when he famously observed: “In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.”
A Precarious International Security Situation
The global security situation is also extraordinarily precarious. Some observers believe that we are already experiencing a kind of Third World War. There are currently 130 interstate and regional conflicts raging around the world—twice as many as 15 years ago.
Russia’s war against Ukraine, the military operations conducted by the United States and Israel in the Middle East, particularly against Iran, and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes, together with those of the Iran-aligned Houthi militias, against the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, could easily escalate and draw an increasing number of countries, including European nations, into the conflicts. France and the United Kingdom are already involved.
Under Trump’s leadership, the pursuit of personal financial and business interests and strategic incoherence have replaced the United States’ role as the world’s policeman of last resort and ultimate guarantor of international order. No one can rely on Washington any longer—not the Europeans, not Saudi Arabia, and ultimately not even Israel.
How will all this end? Will there be a massive explosion, as in 1914, leading to a world war and a global economic crisis? Or can we continue to muddle through in the coming years? Will we somehow manage and keep our many overlapping crises under control? With a little luck and skill, I believe, the latter outcome is possible, for four main reasons.
1. Nuclear Weapons Still Deter the Great Powers
The nuclear arsenals of the great powers continue to prevent the various wars from escalating, whether in Eastern Europe or in the Pacific, where China is asserting its claims over Taiwan and various uninhabited rocks and islands in the South China Sea.
2. Today’s Dictators Retain a Certain Capacity for Rational Calculation
There is currently no nationalist ideologue as fanatical as Adolf Hitler anywhere in the world—not even in Moscow or Tehran. Despite our current autocrats’ determination and ruthlessness, and their disregard for virtually every legal norm, today’s dictators retain a certain capacity and willingness for rational calculation. From time to time, the various parties to these conflicts even engage in talks and negotiations, although so far with little success.
3. Economic Interdependence Makes a Major War More Difficult
Before the First World War, it was widely assumed that the close economic interdependence of European countries would make war impossible. That assumption proved to be a tragic mistake. Today, however, the argument may well hold true. The logistical and technological connections linking the world’s most important countries make the conduct of a major protracted war almost impossible. All the major nations are so mutually dependent on each other’s oil and natural gas pipelines, semiconductor technology, artificial intelligence and not least on critical minerals, including rare earth elements, that embarking on a global war would be hardly feasible and also self-defeating.
4. The Rapidly Changing Nature of Warfare makes Military Victory increasingly Unlikely
Most world leaders have recognized the economic and military connectedness of their respective countries, particularly since Russia’s horrific war against Ukraine and the ill-advised bombings of Iran by the United States and Israel. These two terrible wars as well as the bloody conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, and many other regions, have demonstrated that military confrontations can no longer be won quickly, even against much weaker states or terrorist organizations, due to fast-changing military technology and the rapidly evolving nature of modern warfare. Inexpensive drones and autonomous missile systems, artificial intelligence, electronic jamming devices, hypersonic weapons, and unmanned vehicles operating on land and in water have made warfare extraordinarily easy to initiate, yet exceedingly complex to conduct. This serves as a deterrent.
The Prospect of a Global Catastrophe May Still Be Avoided
For these reasons I hope that with a little luck the massive global explosion I mentioned earlier will not occur anytime soon. We will instead have no other option but to continue muddling through. Given the alternatives, however, that may not be the worst possible outcome.