[Reader-list] 2025: the end of US dominance

[Rana Dasgupta]

2025: the end of US dominance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/20/barack-obama-president-intelligence-agency

• US intelligence: 'We can no longer call shots alone'
• European Union will be 'hobbled giant' by 2025
• Triumph of western democracy not certain

The United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the 
world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in 
which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and 
some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal 
networks".

The global trends review, produced by the National Intelligence Council 
(NIC) every four years, represents sobering reading in Barack Obama's 
intray as he prepares to take office in January. The country he 
inherits, the report warns, will no longer be able to "call the shots" 
alone, as its power over an increasingly multipolar world begins to wane.

Looking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the 
US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict 
over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" 
international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in 
the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely.

"Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed" warns that the spread of 
western democratic capitalism cannot be taken for granted, as it was by 
George Bush and America's neoconservatives.

"No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic 
liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to 
be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term," the 
report warns.

It adds: "Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is 
concentrating more under state control," giving the examples of China 
and Russia.

"In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state's role in 
the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world."

At the same time, the US will become "less dominant" in the world – no 
longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold 
War, but a "first among equals" in a more fluid and evenly balanced 
world, making the unilateralism of the Bush era no longer tenable.

The report predicts that over the next two decades "the multiplicity of 
influential actors and distrust of vast power means less room for the US 
to call the shots without the support of strong partnerships."

It is a conclusion that meshes with president elect Obama's stated 
preference for multilateralism, but the NIC findings suggest that as the 
years go by it could be harder for Washington to put together 
"coalitions of the willing" to pursue its agenda.

International organisations, like the UN, seem ill-prepared to fill the 
vacuum left by receding American power, at a time of multiple potential 
crises driven by climate change the increasing scarcity of resources 
like oil, food and water. Those institutions "appear incapable of rising 
to the challenges without concerted efforts from their leaders" it says.

In an unusually graphic illustration of a possible future, the report 
presents an imaginary "presidential diary entry" from October 1, 2020, 
that recounts a devastating hurricane, fuelled by global warming, 
hitting New York in the middle of the UN's annual general assembly.

"I guess we had it coming, but it was a rude shock," the unnamed 
president writes. "Some of the scenes were like the stuff from the World 
War II newsreels, only this time it was not Europe but Manhattan. Those 
images of the US aircraft carriers and transport ships evacuating 
thousands in the wake of the flooding still stick in my mind."

As he flies off for an improvised UN reception on board an aircraft 
carrier, the imaginary future president admits: "The cumulation of 
disasters, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health 
problems, and the like are taking a terrible toll, much greater than we 
anticipated 20 years ago."

The last time the NIC published its quadrennial glimpse into the future 
was December 2004. President Bush had just been re-elected and was 
preparing his triumphal second inauguration that was to mark the 
high-water mark for neoconservatism. That report matched the mood of the 
times.

It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 
2020 when it projected "continued US dominance, positing that most major 
powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US".

That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. 
Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies "in the ground" were 
"sufficient to meet global demand". The new report views a transition to 
cleaner fuels as inevitable. It is just the speed that is in question.

The NIC believes it is most likely that technology will lag behind the 
depletion of oil and gas reserves. A sudden transition, however, will 
bring problems of its own, creating instability in the Gulf and Russia.

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow 
in influence at America's expense, the same cannot be said of the 
European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be 
"losing clout" by 2025. Internal bickering and a "democracy gap" 
separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU "a hobbled 
giant", unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.
Disaster diary

An imaginary diary entry written by a future US president, produced to 
illustrate a climate-change disaster:

Those images of US aircraft carriers evacuating thousands in the wake of 
flooding stick in my mind. Why must the hurricane season coincide with 
the UN general assembly in New York?

It's bad enough that this had to happen; it was doubly embarrassing that 
half the world's leaders were here to witness it. I guess the problem is 
we had counted on this not happening, at least not yet.

Read the full National Intelligence Council global trends review (pdf):

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2008/11/20/GlobalTrends2025_FINAL.pdf