“Stratfor has 11
chilling predictions for what the world will look like a decade from now” by Armin Rosen, Business Insider, June
16, 2015
The private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, recently published its Decade Forecast in which it projects the next 10 years
of global political and economic developments.
In many ways, Stratfor thinks the world of 10 years from now
will be more dangerous place, with US power waning and other prominent
countries experiencing a period of chaos and decline.
Russia will collapse...
"There will not be an uprising against Moscow, but
Moscow's withering ability to support and control the Russian Federation will
leave a vacuum," Stratfor warns. "What will exist in this vacuum will
be the individual fragments of the Russian Federation."
Sanctions, declining oil prices, a plunging ruble, rising
military expenses, and increasing internal discord will weaken the hold of
Russia's central government over the world's largest country. Russia will not
officially split into multiple countries, but Moscow's power may loosen to the
point that Russia will effectively become a string of semi-autonomous regions
that might not even get along with one another.
"We expect Moscow's authority to weaken substantially,
leading to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia" the report
states, adding, "It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive
in its current form."
...and the US will
have to use its military to secure the country's nukes.
A deactivated Soviet-era SS-4 medium-range nuclear-capable
ballistic missile.
Russia's nuclear-weapons infrastructure is spread across a
vast geographic area. If the political disintegration Stratfor predicts ever
happens, it means that weapons, uranium stocks, and delivery systems could end
up exposed in what will suddenly become the world's most dangerous power
vacuum.
The breakout of Russia's nuclear weapons stockpile will be
"the greatest crisis of the next decade," according to Stratfor.
And the US will have to figure out what to do about it, even
if it means dispatching ground troops to secure loose weapons, materials, and
delivery systems.
"Washington is the only power able to address the
issue, but it will not be able to seize control of the vast numbers of sites
militarily and guarantee that no missile is fired in the process," the
Decade Forecast states. "The United States will either have to invent a
military solution that is difficult to conceive of now, accept the threat of
rogue launches, or try to create a stable and economically viable government in
the regions involved to neutralize the missiles over time."
Germany is going to
have problems...
Germany has an export-dependent economy that has richly
benefitted from the continent-wide trade liberalization ushered in by the
European Union and the euro, but that just means the country has the most to
lose from a worsening euro crisis and a resulting wave of euroskepticism.
The country's domestic consumption can't make up for this
dip in Germany's export economy or for a projected decline in population. The
result is Japan-style stagnation.
"We expect Germany to suffer severe economic reversals
in the next decade," the Decade Forecast says.
...and Poland will be
one of Europe's leaders.
Look a little to Germany's east, and things won't be quite
so bad. "At the center of economic growth and increasing political
influence will be Poland," the report says.
Poland's population won't decline as much as those of the
other major European economies. The fact that it's the largest and most
prosperous European state on Russia's western border will also thrust it into a
position of regional leadership that the country could leverage into greater
political and economic prestige.
And it only helps to have the kind of close, longstanding
strategic partnership with the US that Poland enjoys.
There will be four
Europes.
It wasn't long ago that European unity seemed like an
unstoppable historical force, with political and economic barriers between
countries dissolving and regionalism and nationalism disappearing from the
continent's politics.
In 10 years, that may all seem like a distant memory. The
Decade Forecast talks about four Europes that will becoming increasingly
estranged from one another: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and
the British islands. They will still have to share the same neighborhood, but
they won't be as closely connected as they were before.
"The European Union might survive in some sense, but
European economic, political, and military relations will be governed primarily
by bilateral or limited multilateral relationships that will be small in scope
and not binding," the report says. "Some states might maintain a
residual membership in a highly modified European Union, but this will not
define Europe."
Turkey and the US
will have to be close allies but for an unexpected reason.
Several Arab countries are in a state of free fall, and the
Decade Forecast doesn't see the chaos ending anytime soon. The major
beneficiary from all of this will be Turkey, a strong, relatively stable
country whose borders stretch from the Black Sea all the way down to Syria and
Iraq.
Turkey will be reluctant to intervene in conflicts on its
borders but will inevitably have to, according to the forecast. As Ankara's
strength and assertiveness increases relative to its neighbors, the country
will become an indispensable US partner.
But Turkey will want something in return: a line of defense
against a certain powerful and aggression-minded country on the other side of
the Black Sea that has military bases in neighboring Armenia. Turkey will
want the help of the US in keeping Moscow out of its backyard.
"Turkey will continue to need US involvement for
political and military reasons," the report says. "The United States
will oblige, but there will be a price: participation in the containment of
Russia. The United States does not expect Turkey to assume a war-fighting role
and does not intend one for itself. It does, however, want a degree of
cooperation in managing the Black Sea."
China will face one
huge problem.
China may have a rough decade ahead as economic growth
slows, leading to widespread discontent toward the ruling Communist Party. But
the party will not liberalize, which means its only viable option for
controlling the gathering chaos while remaining in power will be to increase
internal oppression.
Beijing also faces another, perhaps even bigger problem:
China's growth hasn't been geographically distributed very evenly. Coastal
cities are thriving, but China's interior has less access to international
markets and is comparatively much poorer. That problem will only get worse as
China continues to urbanize.
"The expectation that the interior — beyond parts of
the more urbanized Yangtze River Delta — will grow as rapidly as the coast is
being dashed," the report says. And the growing rift between China's coast
and its interior could presage even deeper, more ominous splits.
As the report notes, regional fissures have been a
persistent driver of political chaos throughout China's history, and there is
an unlikely but "still conceivable outcome in which political interests
along the coast rebel against Beijing's policy of transferring wealth to the
interior to contain political unrest."
Japan will be Asia's
rising naval power.
Japan has a maritime tradition going back centuries, and as
an island nation it is pretty dependent on imports. China is building a
state-of-the-art navy of its own, and it may become even more aggressive in
controlling shipping routes in the East China Sea, South China Sea, and Indian
Ocean that Japan depends upon.
Japan will have no option but to project power into the
region to counter China and protect its supply routes. With US power waning, it
will have to do this on its own.
"Right now [Japan] depends on the United States to
guarantee access," the forecast states. "But given that we are
forecasting more cautious US involvement in foreign ventures and that the
United States is not dependent on imports, the reliability of the United States
is in question. Therefore, the Japanese will increase their naval power in the
coming years."
The South China Sea islands won't start a war — but there's
a catch.
Asia Maritime
Transparency Initiative
The regional powers will decide that South China Sea island
disputes aren't worth a major military escalation, but they will still be a
symptom of a hazardous power dynamic.
"Fighting over the minor islands producing low-cost and
unprofitable energy will not be the primary issue in the region," the
report predicts. "Rather, an old three-player game will emerge. Russia,
the declining power, will increasingly lose the ability to protect its maritime
interests. The Chinese and the Japanese will both be interested in acquiring
these and in preventing each other from having them."
Dangerous great-power dynamics are returning to East Asia,
even if it may not result in armed conflict in the South China and East China
seas.
There will be 16
mini-Chinas.
China's economy will slow down, and growth in its production
capacity will flatline. That's actually good news for a handful of countries.
The entry-level manufacturing jobs that China used to gobble up will migrate to
16 emerging economies with a combined population of 1.15 billion.
So while China's growth will stall, leading to unforeseeable
political and economic consequences, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic,
Peru, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Laos,
Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia could see improving economic
fortunes over the next decade as more manufacturing jobs arrive.
US power will
decline.
With the world becoming an even more disorderly and
unpredictable place over the next 10 years, the US will respond by being
increasingly judicious about how it picks its challenges rather than taking an
active leadership role in solving the world's problems.
A growing economy, surging domestic energy production,
declining exports, and the safety of being in the most stable corner of the
world will give the US the luxury of being able to insulate itself against the
world's crises. While this more restrained US role in global affairs will make
the world an even less predictable place, it's a reality that other countries
will just have to deal with.
