Nouriel Roubini on 1/6/21 and America after 1/20/21...
Whether the storming of the US Capitol was an attempted coup, an insurrection, or an assault on democracy is merely a question of semantics. What matters is that the violence was aimed at derailing a legitimate transition of power for the benefit and at the behest of a dangerous madman.
Even before the election, US national-security agencies were warning that domestic right-wing terrorism and violence would remain the primary home-grown threat to the US. With Biden in office, this risk will be higher still. For the last four years, heavily armed white-supremacist militias have been kept relatively at bay by dint of the fact that they had an ally in the White House.
But once Trump is gone, the groups whom he has instructed to “stand back and stand by” will not simply accept Democratic control of the presidency and Congress. Trump, operating from Mar-a-Lago, will continue to incite the mob with more lies, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods about a stolen election.
The US will thus most likely be the world’s new epicenter of political and geopolitical instability in the months and years ahead.
America’s allies will need to hedge their bets against a future return of Trumpism, and strategic rivals will continue to try to destabilize the US through asymmetric warfare. The world is in for a long, ugly, bumpy ride.
