Only a fool would make firm assertions about the future. How many pundits writing at the dawn of 1913 predicted the oncoming first world war, let alone two such wars that almost finished off European civilisation? What one can do is examine the implications of trends already in evidence.
It may be worth starting with the German writer Oswald Spengler who published in 1918-1923 an alarmist book, The Decline of the West . He was not so much wrong as premature. And like many “declinists” he failed to see that a decline in relative position was compatible with high and even rising western living standards.
Indeed, what has to be explained is not the west’s looming relative decline but its temporary pre-eminence. Of a world population approaching 7bn, the US and western Europe together account for a mere 770m. Their gross domestic product per head – a very approximate guide to living standards – is three times the world average. Such discrepancies can hardly be expected to last in an increasingly globalised planet. In 1500, just after Christopher Columbus’s voyages of discovery, China and India were both estimated to have had a total GDP considerably higher than western Europe’s and GDP per head only slightly lower. Earlier still, in about 1000, living standards were fairly uniform – and low – throughout the world but the estimates show China slightly in the lead.