Global Trends 2025

The year 2025 isn't so far away. And, things then could be pretty much as they are today, or there could be a discontinuity in the flow of events and we could be viewing a very different world.

The Director of National Intelligence has a National Intelligence Council, which recently published a look at 2025.

Of course I didn't get here on my own. I came via Instapundit, who pointed me to the Volokh Conspiracy. You can catch some highlights of the report there.

The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front):

The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors.

And this comment from the Executive Summary

This is a story with no clear outcome, as illustrated by a series of vignettes we use to map out divergent futures. Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States’ relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and US leverage will become more constrained. At the same time, the extent to which other actors—both state and nonstate—will be willing or able to shoulder increased burdens is unclear. Policymakers and publics will have to cope with a growing demand for multilateral cooperation when the international system will be stressed by the incomplete transition from the old to a still-forming new order.

The bolding is theirs and not mine.

Distinguishing from the G-7, the authors use the term BRIC to refer to Brazil, Russia, India and China. They see those four equaling the G-7 in GDP by 2025. (When I was a kid people still talked about the ABC countries--Argentina, Brazil and Chile--and each of them had a battleship, as I recall.) The authors also see China as the largest importer of natural resources (read that as prices go UP) and the largest polluter of the planet.

I will be checking out the scenarios in the report and will be racing my vast reading audience in seeing what is promised for our future--I will be 83 at the time of this report's future. I hope the Baby Boomers don't mess it up for the rest of us.

Regards -- Cliff