America remains a shining city on the hill

It is customary for media across the world to come up with year-end packages examining the past 12 months gone by. Occasionally, celebrities are called on to give -- or they volunteer -- their take on the year gone by: Barack Obama's list of best books, movies, and music of the year is much looked forward to. Sometimes, in a dodgy exercise in clairvoyance, the media also takes a stab at what could transpire in the year ahead.

It is in the spirit of the latter that Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and prime minister, and strongman Vladimir Putin's comrade in arms, has put out a rather remarkable series of tweets predicting global developments in 2023. Taken together, Medvedev's ten prognostications can be distilled into one wishful outcome: The decline and end of western civilisation, specifically the United States, as we know it.

But the devil is in the details. Among other things, Medvedev predicts a civil war will break out in the US, with California and Texas becoming independent states, the latter forming a union with Mexico; the largest stock markets and financial activity will leave US and Europe and move to Asia; and the Euro and dollar will stop circulating as global reserve currencies and will be replaced by digital fiat currencies.

He also predicts that in Europe, the UK will rejoin the EU resulting in its collapse and the formation of the Fourth Reich under Germany, which will fight a war with France.

In other developments, Poland and Hungary, which will become Germany's satellites, will occupy the remains of Ukraine (presumably what's not taken by Russia); Northern Ireland will separate from UK and join the Republic of Ireland; the price of oil will cross $ 150 a barrel; and Elon Musk will become president of the remnant USA.

Phew! That's a lot to pack into a year - and a lot to unpack. At any other time, and with anyone else, all this could have been dismissed as the ravings of a delusional fantasist, but Medvedev is no deranged nutcase, although he artfully prefaced his “humble contribution” by suggesting he was competing with the “wildest and most absurd futuristic hypothesis.”

The escape clause aside, he has a well-chronicled record as a thoughtful academic and a responsible government leader whose time at the helm in Moscow - albeit under Putin's shadow - heralded more liberal policies in Russia and warmer ties with the west.

What gave the forecasts a modicum of credibility was the response of (in Medvedev's eyes) America's putative president Elon Musk, who described the outpouring as an "epic thread," to his 123 million followers, leading many to wonder if he was endorsing the predictions and wishing it all came true, although under the current constitution, South Africa-born Tesla-Twitter honcho is not eligible to run for the White House.

Of course, people change - leaders too. There was a time when Putin too was well-inclined towards the US and even sought Nato membership for Russia -- and was rebuffed. Medvedev's apocalyptic forecast now suggests the Russian leadership's total loss of confidence in the west, even as western leaders doubt the survivability of the leadership in Moscow.

Believing in each other's imminent demise is not exactly conducive to any negotiation, so at the very least, 2023 looks like another year of death and destruction on the Ukraine-Russia front.

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