A recent report from US intelligence agencies concludes that US dominance in the fields of economy, military and politics will very likely decline in the upcoming two decades. The new emerging powers of the world will be China, India and Russia, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) concluded in its report.
“The next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks,” notes Global Trends 2025, A Transformed World.” The 121-page document is the latest of the reports that the NIC prepares every four years in time for the next presidential term.
The dollar may no longer be the world's major currency, but Washington will retain its considerable military advantages, but scientific and technological advances; the use of “irregular warfare tactics”; the proliferation of long-range precision weapons; and the growing use of cyber arfare “increasingly will constrict US freedom of action.”
The report forecast the most powerful players being Brazil, Russia, India and China. It also described an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the West to the East, and a staggering population increase of 1.5 billion people, which would put pressure on increasingly scarce resources such as energy, food and water.
The report also identified three potential up and coming powers, all from the Muslim world but not Arab nations: They are Indonesia, Turkey and Iran.
Political and economic reform in Iran, along with a stable investment climate, “could fundamentally redraw both the way the world perceives the country and also the way in which Iranians view themselves.” “Under those circumstances, economic resurgence could take place quickly in Iran and embolden a latent cosmopolitan, educated, at times secular Iranian middle class,” it said.
The question of Turkey's ultimate EU membership will be “a test of Europe's outward focus between now and 2025. Increasing doubts about Turkey's chances are likely to slow its implementation of political and human rights reforms.”
“Any outright rejection risks wider repercussions, reinforcing arguments in the Muslim world — including among Europe's Muslim minorities — about the incompatibility of the West and Islam,” the reports states. The report represents the US intelligence community's most comprehensive examination to date of long-term security issues, and warns of a likely increase in terrorist violence even as support for extremism begins to wane.
Conflicts and resource shortages could lead to the collapse of governments in Africa and South Asia, and the rise of organized crime in Eastern and Central Europe, it adds. And the use of nuclear weapons will grow increasingly likely, the report says, as “rogue states” and militant groups gain greater access to them.
The document warned that terrorist organizations are likely to become more deadly because the spread of chemical and biological technologies “will place some of the world's most dangerous capabilities within their reach.”
The report also warned that “the potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East,” and apart from the US, countries such as Russia, China and India will play greater roles as negotiators.
The new assessment by US intelligence agencies also predicted that independent entities including tribes and criminal networks, will gain international clout.
“Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the US' relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and US leverage will become more constrained,” said the NIC report.
Moreover, the document warns that the international alliances and networks that have dominated global affairs since the end of World War II “will be almost unrecognizable by 2025.”
Global warming, along with rising populations and economic growth will put additional strains on natural resources, it warns, fuelling conflict around the globe as countries compete for them.
“Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments and technological innovation and acquisition, but we cannot rule out a 19th Century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion and military rivalries,” the report says.
The report also predicts that the spread and influence of organized crime in the eastern reaches of the bloc could see one or more member state governments in Eastern Europe being taken over by criminals by 2025.
Europe will also face the acute challenge of integrating immigrants, particularly from Muslim backgrounds, at a time of economic difficulties. The report warns that Europeans could resort “to narrow nationalism ... as happened in the past” if they feel threatened by the continued and increasing influx of immigrants.
