RRU in the Media: Trump chaos will probably be worse than you think

Philip Steenkamp, president and vice-chancellor of Royal Roads University and Thomas Homer-Dixon, founder and executive director of the Cascade Institute wrote about analyzing how a second Trump presidency could affect the polycrisis using a stress-trigger-crisis lens and the sobering results it produced in an opinion piece in Vancouver Sun.

Cascade Institute Researchers highlight the range of potential risks from a second Trump presidency: disease, democratic collapse, a drastic economic slowdown, accelerated climate change and even all-out war. 

Here is an excerpt from the article: 

"Trump is returning to power in a world reeling from a series of interlocking crises: pandemic fallout; major wars in Ukraine, Gaza and now Lebanon; the threat of a global recession; climate-related disasters; the rise of authoritarian regimes — and many more.

"Each of these crises often amplifies the others. For example, wars disrupt supply chains, weakening economies and decreasing the public’s faith in their government’s ability to improve their lives. The term for this network of interlocking, interacting crises is a polycrisis.

"Many of the policies Trump promises to introduce would both increase those stresses and generate a flurry of new trigger events — at a time when the world’s systems are more fragile than they have been in a long time. The drought has been severe; the forest is tinder-dry.

"Some potential trigger events include authoritarian measures like mass deportations; politicizing the military; targeting political opponents through the justice system; or economically disastrous tariffs that could easily provoke retaliation from American trading partners, leading to a global trade war.

"The impact on the U.S. of these measures would be severe. But they also risk spiralling out of control with global implications, including emboldening authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping and inflaming conflict in the Middle East. U.S. withdrawal from international cooperation and weakening institutions could affect our collective ability to address global challenges such as climate change, while sparking arms races and raising the risk of war."

Read the full opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun.