Given the current status quo, it is impossible. However, I can imagine the political world developing into an atmosphere where Esperanto might be made the lingua franca. Imagine that American and British power continues to decline, and Russia and China and German, and maybe India, become more influential, leading to a new status quo, a stalemate. Given sufficiently long stalemate, like decades, Esperanto might once again become a politically viable situation.
Well, anything’s possible. But I’m struggling to imagine a halfway-plausible scenario in which this actually happens. In the situation you describe, what’s the actual mechanism by which Esperanto becomes widely used? I mean, let’s say we have a bunch of roughly equal Great Powers (perhaps they’re the Trump States, the Islamic Caliphate, the United States of Europe, China and Russia, with favoured languages The Best English, Arabic, German, Mandarin and Russian). Within each power’s sphere of influence its favoured language (or languages) will be dominant. So now imagine someone in, say, the Trump States. Obviously they need to know The Best English. They might want to learn Spanish in case their military service is at the Wall; or Russian, of course. But what’s going to make Esperanto more useful to them than those?
Are you thinking that Esperanto might be imposed as a lingua franca? That there’d be some sort of international treaty where all these mutually-mistrustful Powers agree that they will use Esperanto as a second language, or for negotiations, or something? Why would any of them do that?
Given the current status quo, it is impossible. However, I can imagine the political world developing into an atmosphere where Esperanto might be made the lingua franca. Imagine that American and British power continues to decline, and Russia and China and German, and maybe India, become more influential, leading to a new status quo, a stalemate. Given sufficiently long stalemate, like decades, Esperanto might once again become a politically viable situation.
Well, anything’s possible. But I’m struggling to imagine a halfway-plausible scenario in which this actually happens. In the situation you describe, what’s the actual mechanism by which Esperanto becomes widely used? I mean, let’s say we have a bunch of roughly equal Great Powers (perhaps they’re the Trump States, the Islamic Caliphate, the United States of Europe, China and Russia, with favoured languages The Best English, Arabic, German, Mandarin and Russian). Within each power’s sphere of influence its favoured language (or languages) will be dominant. So now imagine someone in, say, the Trump States. Obviously they need to know The Best English. They might want to learn Spanish in case their military service is at the Wall; or Russian, of course. But what’s going to make Esperanto more useful to them than those?
Are you thinking that Esperanto might be imposed as a lingua franca? That there’d be some sort of international treaty where all these mutually-mistrustful Powers agree that they will use Esperanto as a second language, or for negotiations, or something? Why would any of them do that?