Ferguson sees the arrival of the third variable of decline

Niall Ferguson warns that the world is heading for political and economic calamity.(Ht-Andrew Sullivan)

Writing in the March addition of foreign policy he says that

Forget Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—Bush’s “Axis of Evil.” As economic calamity meets political and social turmoil, the world’s worst problems may come from countries like Somalia, Russia, and Mexico

For Niall the current economic crisis is the third variable in the volatility of the world after ethnic disintegration and empires in decline

After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, the global economy will almost certainly sputter along in 2009, though probably not as much as it did in the early 1930s, because governments worldwide are frantically trying to repress this new depression. But no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming upheaval.