An American think-tank has finally come out and said what many observers have been postulating for years, and unfortunately, Americans probably won't like it.

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), a group of experts drawn from government, academia and the private sector, has just released one of its periodic reports on where it thinks the world is going. It is quick to point out that it is not trying to predict the future, merely attempting to provide a look ahead to stimulate thinking about what is likely to happen. That disclaimer might be a bit of a cop-out because the report contains some very interesting and disturbing forecasts.

The report looks at what our world might look like in the year 2030, less than 20 years from now. In a forecast that will surely rile Americans, the report predicts the US will no longer be the world's premier economic or military power and will no longer be the world's policeman. On this, it doesn't mince words saying "Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030. Meanwhile, the economies of Europe, Japan, and Russia are likely to continue their slow relative declines."

This conjecture is tempered somewhat by the concept that there will be less emphasis on the status of individual countries than on regional groupings, but that will be scant comfort to the Americans, most of whom haven't seen this coming and none of whom will want to chant their new mantra, "We're number two". It just won't sit well.

The report, almost inevitably, postulates both good news and bad news. It says, for example, that "individual empowerment will accelerate owing to poverty reduction, growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, widespread use of new communications and manufacturing technologies, and health-care advances." It says there will be more international migration than at present as people from heavily populated countries move to those with lower populations to fill job openings caused, in part, by an aging population in many places. Most likely, these are positive trends. However, it also suggests that the world's increasing population, climate change and the strains those two shifts will place on natural resources could lead to shortages of food and water. It avoids predicting that international conflicts will be based on these inequities, although the suggestion is there.

Overall, the report, without making firm predictions on what will happen, outlines where we are, what forces are currently in play and those that seem to be emerging. It is based on the fact that change is inevitable and it raises some very disturbing questions.

For example, it asks whether "global volatility and imbalances among players with different economic interests [will] result in collapse," and whether "greater multi-polarity will lead to increased resiliency in the global economic order." It goes on to wonder if governments and institutions will be able to adapt quickly enough to harness changes instead of being overwhelmed by them and calls for increased globalization to avoid the dangers of nationalist parochialism.

According to the report, the most plausible worst-case scenario for the world in the next 20 years is for the risk of interstate conflict to increase, and this is not simply because of the actions of governments. One particularly scary passage in the report says "individuals and small groups will have greater access to lethal and disruptive technologies (particularly precision-strike capabilities, cyber instruments, and bioterror weaponry), enabling them to perpetrate large-scale violence - a capability formerly the monopoly of states."

The NIC report does sound a very hopeful note in all this, although it may require some substantial and perhaps not altogether palatable ways of thinking. It says the likeliest best-case scenario for 2030 will occur if China and the US collaborate on a range of issues, leading to broader global cooperation. It also says that, like it or not, the genie of change is out of the bottle and it is possible that inequalities will explode as some countries become big winners and others fail. There is a possible rosy future, but unless we collectively get our act together we might have great difficulty reaching it.

As mentioned, most Americans are not going to like the idea of being on the losing side or the reality of having to get into bed with China to make the world a better place. At the moment they're too preoccupied with their headlong rush towards the so-called fiscal cliff to cogitate much on the NIC report, but it is out there and sooner or later they'll have to come to grips with it. Perhaps that chant of "We're number two" isn't so faint after all.

Brad Franklin is a former political reporter, newscaster and federal government employee in Canada. He is a regular columnist for China's English Salon magazine and lives on Vancouver Island.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn

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