With a new year and a new Congress upon us, paid prognosticators are out in full force. This week, we at TAI sat down with our own crystal balls to predict what may lie in store for America and the world in 2019.

View From The Swamp

• The Mueller probe brings to light some collusion-adjacent activities but no smoking gun, putting the Democrats in a bind: On the one hand, their base will regard anything less than impeachment as a craven act of surrender; on the other, Muller’s findings probably won’t be enough to justify a Republican abandonment of Trump, which means a serious impeachment attempt could backfire. It would certainly devolve into political theater—the question is whether Democrats can avoid a storyline in which they are villains subverting democracy. Don’t count on it. (Note that the optics of a failed impeachment could be even worse amid an economic downturn.) [AS]

• While the Syria withdrawal probably won’t happen in anything more than a cosmetic sense, President Donald Trump is likely to succeed in getting the United States to significantly reduce its presence in Afghanistan, perhaps as soon as this year. This will represent a real turning point for America’s self-perceived role abroad. Internationalists like Robert Kagan and Tony Blinken are already very nervous that there is a strong bipartisan consensus for a less hawkish posture, and given Elizabeth Warren’s recent statement, they’re right to be. If Trump succeeds where Obama failed and ends the longest war America has ever fought, he will have guaranteed himself a place in the history books. [DM]

• Constrained on his domestic agenda by a newly Democratic House, President Trump indulges his own impulses on foreign policy all the more. The President does indeed pick a Secretary of Defense whose views are more aligned with his own—or at least one who chooses the Pompeo route of prioritizing his relationship with his boss over any disagreements. The withdrawal from Syria is just the first step, followed by a massive troop reduction in Afghanistan, loss-cutting talks with the Taliban, and eventually a full pullout by year’s end. Taking a page from Jimmy Carter, Trump also orders a drawdown in South Korea, alarming and overruling nearly all his advisers. Tariffs fly with abandon, hitting friend and foe alike: Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea in particular come under fire, amid much outcry. Less able or willing to restrain him, Trump’s national security team seeks to minimize the damage with allies while focusing on their own particular hobby horses, away from his gaze. John Bolton continues merrily on, denouncing his usual bêtes noires (the UN, the ICC, virtually any international body known by its acronym) in fiery speeches and consoling himself that at least he agrees with Trump’s hawkish Iran policy. In short, the Trump foreign policy in 2019 looks a lot like it did in 2018, only amped up, bigly. [SK]

• Reform conservatism—including its more Trump-friendly variants—continues to gain steam, while the old neocon consensus continues to implode, helped along by Trump’s likely drawdown in the Middle East. As for progressives, Current Affairs more than doubled in size this past year, and Jacobin is enjoying its own miniature renaissance. Expect these trends to continue into 2019, with the intellectual energy on the Left coalescing around anti-establishment candidates and policies. Will the demos follow suite? That is less clear. But as 2020 heats up, institutionalists in both parties will be under increased pressure to disown the status quo. [AS]

Across the Pond, and Beyond

• Things may be a lot more durable than they seem, especially in Europe. Even a Hard Brexit will likely hurt the United Kingdom less than the prophets of doom would have you think, and Britain’s divorce from the EU won’t be that cataclysmic for Brussels either. And while populist upstart parties will likely make further gains in the upcoming European parliamentary elections, they are still unlikely to get the kind of majorities to make a meaningful difference. At the same time, don’t expect a “liberal wave” to materialize any time soon, either. 2018 ended with Hungary’s President Viktor Orban facing down scores of protesters across the country; but what too few pundits noted is that he was in the main being opposed not by “European values” liberals, but by workers peeved at his changes to a labor law. Even if Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche underperforms and National Rally (neé Front National) overperforms in May, look for the main outcome to be more strident predictions that the end is nigh for the European Union, but not much more. [DM]

• As the trade war with the United States grinds on, and an economic slowdown hits China, Xi Jinping rattles sabers on China’s periphery. The likeliest target is Taiwan. As Michael Mazza explained in these pages last year, Beijing’s pressure campaign against Taipei has been building for years, and even the more Beijing-friendly KMT party has soured on reunification as growing numbers of Taiwanese embrace independence. Frustrated by these trends and calculating that his window of opportunity will not grow more propitious, Xi will seek to assert China’s prerogatives by aggressive displays of militarism in the Strait: more (and more frequent) naval and air operations, missile cascades à la 1996, and perhaps much more depending on the U.S. reaction. Expect Trump and team to waffle on the response, with confused and contradictory messaging and a president torn between his China hawkishness and his gut instinct that Taiwan isn’t worth a single American life. [SK]

• 2019 could be the year that China has that “hard landing” everyone has been predicting for years. Chinese statistics are notoriously unreliable—figuring out just what is going on is a parlor game that China hands play to pass the time in Beijing. No one, not even the Chinese authorities, has a perfectly solid grasp on reality. Tim Cook’s letter to shareholders about Apple Computer missing its earnings forecast was therefore especially jarring for its… empiricism. And it needn’t be a full-on hard landing to be devastating to the global economy. China might be too big even to slow down. [DM]

Culture Wars

• At least one other prominent American cardinal or archbishop will be caught up in the ever-widening sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, whether for a cover up or because of accusations of abuse. The collective efforts of American bishops to address the ongoing crisis will be panned in the press, by both the Catholic laity, and even by lower ranks of the clergy. Even more state attorney generals will open up investigations into past episcopal handling of abuse cases (to be fair, this isn’t really a prediction; it’s already happening). Coupled with further revelations about the Chinese Communist Party’s broad-based crackdown on religion, which will cast a pall over Pope Francis’s efforts to seek an accommodation for Chinese Catholics, the mainstream media, along with a critical mass of his progressive boosters, will decisively shift to narratives describing a papacy in disarray. [DK]

• Twitter’s “Safe Space” crusade continues to expand, leading to the de-platforming of more of the usual self-avowed alt-right types. But the ban-hammer also strikes a smattering of garden-variety conservatives and intellectual dark web types, including Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson, who fall prey to increasingly organized campaigns to purge the social media network via a clever combination of mass-reporting for terms of service violations and coordinated attacks via networks of woke millennial journalists and bloggers. The success of these campaigns comes with an ironic cost, however. Through processes of natural selection, the remaining right-leaning voices on Twitter evolve ways of getting their message out while evading the censors, thus increasing the appeal of a large spectrum of right-leaning politics. [DK]

• The debate over #MeToo becomes more fraught than ever, as several of the accused celebrities claw their way back to the spotlight. Louis CK continues to fan the flames of notoriety with his New York stand-up acts, then releases a comedy special to herald his full return. The Harvey Weinstein trial becomes the most eagerly watched public spectacle since O.J. Simpson, with a partial acquittal for Weinstein at the end. Either way, #MeToo becomes a defining issue in the Democratic presidential primary, where Kirsten Gillibrand brands herself the #MeToo candidate, Joe Biden is raked over the coals for his handling of the Anita Hill hearings, and a live debate emerges over whether Bill Clinton should continue to be embraced as a party elder. [SK]

• Avengers: Endgame marks the end of the superhero bubble. After a climactic battle featuring 30 overpowered fighters, subsequent releases feel like let-downs, causing ticket sales to decline. DC doesn’t fill the void left by Marvel: The Justice League had its chance to be competitive and blew it. Antman is squashed, Aquaman drowns—an era draws to a close. [AS]