Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (PDF - 33.5 MB) is the fourth unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. The report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible "futures," the report offers a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments that might otherwise be missed.
Several preliminary assessments are listed below:
1. The whole international system - as constructed following WWII - will be revolutionized. Not only will new players - Brazil, Russia, India and China - have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
2. The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
3. Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources - particularly energy, food, and water - raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
4. The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.
As with the earlier NIC efforts - such as Mapping The Global Future 2020 - the project's primary goal is to provide US policymakers with a view of how world developments could evolve, identifying opportunities and potentially negative developments that might warrant policy action. The NIC also hopes this paper stimulates a broader discussion of value to educational and policy institutions at home and abroad.
In the News:
Nuclear Arms, Scarce Resources as Seeds of Global Instability - Washington Post
NIC Expects Al Qaeda's Appeal to Falter - New York Times
NIC: Sun Setting on the American Century - The Times
NIC Says US Influence will 'Substantially' Decline - Daily Telegraph
The Year 2025: Oil, Dollar Out; Russia, Islam In - Associated Press
US Power, Influence will Decline in Future, Report Says - CNN News
US Influence Will Fade By 2025 - CBS News
US Global Dominance 'Set to Wane' - BBC News
Intelligence Study Sees Risks in Rapid Global Power Shift - McClatchy
US Clout Down, Risks Up by 2025 - Reuters
Nuclear War Threat to Grow by 2025 - Agence France-Presse
Europe: a Hobbled Giant - Financial Times
New US Intelligence Report: A Gloomy Future - Military Watch
Comments
For your information I send you this link to the papers: "Self-Organized Characteristics of the International System" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.0348), and "Social Expansion versus Social Fragmentation" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.5196). This research focuses on the longer term development of the International System, and on the war dynamics of this system. Interesting is the regularities that can be identified.
Ingo Piepers
Amsterdam