The year 2020 could emerge as the start of the era of relative global chaos or major upheaval. It is the era we have been anticipating, as the impact of core population decline meets economic dislocation, and security and structural uncertainty. Changes in the fundamental sociological framework of global society, due to the end of the population growth cycle – and with it the end of the economic growth cycle based on expanding market size – were beginning to become evident by the beginning of 2020. It was apparent that 2020 was likely to see a major evolution in this transformation. The three “inevitable” trends which had been promoted in recent decades – the “inevitable” rise of the People’s Republic of China; the “inevitable” decline of the United States of America; and the “inevitable” consolidation of the European Union into a strategic superpower — had all, by 2020, retreated […]