Memo to the United States Central Intelligence Agency: You may not be prepared
for time-travel, but welcome to 2025 anyway. Your rooms may be a little small,
your ability to demand better accommodation may have gone out the window, and
the amenities may not be to your taste, but get used to it. It's going to be
your reality from now on.
Okay, now for the serious version of the above: In November 2008, the National
Intelligence Council (NIC), an affiliate of the Central Intelligence Agency,
issued the latest in a series of futuristic publications intended to guide the
incoming administration of Barack Obama.
Peering into its analytic crystal ball in a report entitled Global Trends 2025,
it predicted that America's global preeminence would gradually disappear over
the next 15 years - in conjunction
with the rise of new global powerhouses, especially China and India. The report
examined many facets of the future strategic environment, but its most
startling, and news-making, finding concerned the projected long-term erosion
of American dominance and the emergence of new global competitors.
"Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor
[in 2025]," it stated definitively, the country's "relative strength - even in
the military realm - will decline and US leverage will become more
constrained."
That, of course, was then; this - some 11 months into the future - is now and
how things have changed. Futuristic predictions will just have to catch up to
the fast-shifting realities of the present moment. Although published after the
onset of the global economic meltdown was underway, the report was written
before the crisis reached its full proportions and so emphasized that the
decline of American power would be gradual, extending over the assessment's
15-year time horizon. But the economic crisis and attendant events have
radically upset that timetable. As a result of the huge economic losses
suffered by the United States over the past year and China's stunning economic
recovery, the global power shift the report predicted has accelerated. For all
practical purposes, 2025 is here already.
Many of the broad, down-the-road predictions made in Global Trends 2025 have,
in fact, already come to pass. Brazil, Russia, India, and China - collectively
known as the BRIC countries - are already playing far more assertive roles in
global economic affairs, as the report predicted would happen in perhaps a
decade or so. At the same time, the dominant global role once monopolized by
the United States with a helping hand from the major Western industrial powers
- collectively known as the Group of 7 (G-7) - has already faded away at a
remarkable pace.
Countries that once looked to the United States for guidance on major
international issues are ignoring Washington's counsel and instead creating
their own autonomous policy networks. The United States is becoming less
inclined to deploy its military forces abroad as rival powers increase their
own capabilities and non-state actors rely on "asymmetrical" means of attack to
overcome the US advantage in conventional firepower.
No one seems to be saying this out loud - yet - but let's put it bluntly: less
than a year into the 15-year span of Global Trends 2025, the days of America's
unquestioned global dominance have come to an end. It may take a decade or two
(or three) before historians will be able to look back and say with assurance,
"That was the moment when the United States ceased to be the planet's
preeminent power and was forced to behave like another major player in a world
of many competing great powers." The indications of this great transition,
however, are there for those who care to look.
Six pointers on the road to ordinary nationhood
Here is my list of six recent developments that indicate we are entering "2025"
today. All six were in the news in the last few weeks, even if never collected
in a single place. They (and other events like them) represent a pattern: the
shape, in fact, of a new age in formation.
1. At the global economic summit in Pittsburgh on September 24
and 25, the leaders of the major industrial powers, the G-7 (G-8 if you include
Russia) agreed to turn over responsibility for oversight of the world economy
to a larger, more inclusive Group of 20 (G-20), adding in China, India, Brazil,
Turkey, and other developing nations. Although doubts have been raised about
the ability of this larger group to exercise effective global leadership, there
is no doubt that the move itself signaled a shift in the locus of world
economic power from the West to the global East and South - and with this
shift, a seismic decline in America's economic preeminence has been registered.
"The G-20's true significance is not in the passing of a baton from the G-7/G-8
but from the G-1, the US," Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University wrote in the
Financial Times. "Even during the 33 years of the G-7 economic forum, the US
called the important economic shots."
Declining American leadership over these last decades was obscured by the
collapse of the Soviet Union and an early American lead in information
technology, Sachs also noted, but there is now no mistaking the shifting of
economic power from the United States to China and other rising economic
dynamos.
2. According to news reports, America's economic rivals are
conducting secret (and not-so-secret) meetings to explore a diminished role for
the US dollar - fast losing its value - in international trade. Until now, the
use of the dollar as the international medium of exchange has given the United
States a significant economic advantage: it can simply print dollars to meet
its international obligations while other nations must convert their own
currencies into dollars, often incurring significant added costs. Now, however,
many major trading countries - among them China, Russia, Japan, Brazil, and the
Persian Gulf oil countries - are considering the use of the euro, or a "basket"
of currencies, as a new medium of exchange. If adopted, such a plan would
accelerate the dollar's precipitous fall in value and further erode American
clout in international economic affairs.
One such discussion reportedly took place this summer at a summit meeting of
the BRIC countries. Just a concept a year ago, the BRIC consortium became a
flesh-and-blood reality this June when the leaders of the four countries held
an inaugural meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
The very fact that Brazil, Russia, India, and China chose to meet as a group
was considered significant, as they jointly possess about 43% of the world's
population and are expected to account for 33% of the world's gross domestic
product by 2030 - about as much as the United States and Western Europe will
claim at that time. Although the BRIC leaders decided not to form a permanent
body like the G-7 at this stage, they did agree to coordinate efforts to
develop alternatives to the dollar and to reform the International Monetary
Fund in such a way as to give non-Western countries a greater voice.
3. On the diplomatic front, Washington has been rebuffed by both
Russia and China in its drive to line up support for increased international
pressure on Iran to cease its nuclear enrichment program. One month after Obama
cancelled plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe in
an apparent bid to secure Russian backing for a tougher stance toward Tehran,
top Russian leaders are clearly indicating that they have no intention of
endorsing strong new sanctions on Iran. "Threats, sanctions, and threats of
pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be
counterproductive," declared the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,
following a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Moscow on
October 13.
The following day, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the threat
of sanctions was "premature". Given the political risks Obama took in canceling
the missile program - a step widely condemned by Republicans in Washington -
Moscow's quick dismissal of US pleas for cooperation on the Iranian enrichment
matter can only be interpreted as a further sign of waning American influence.
4. Exactly the same inference can be drawn from a meeting in
Beijing on October 15 between Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Iran's
first vice president, Mohammed Reza Rahimi. "The Sino-Iran relationship has
witnessed rapid development as the two countries' leaders have had frequent
exchanges, and cooperation in trade and energy has widened and deepened," Wen
said at the Great Hall of the People. Coming at a time when the United States
is engaged in a vigorous diplomatic drive to persuade China and Russia, among
others, to reduce their trade ties with Iran as a prelude to toughened
sanctions, the Chinese statement can only be considered a pointed rebuff of
Washington.
5. From Washington's point of view, efforts to secure
international support for the allied war effort in Afghanistan have also met
with a strikingly disappointing response. In what can only be considered a
trivial and begrudging vote of support for the US-led war effort, British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown announced on October 14 that Britain would add more
troops to the British contingent in that country - but only 500 more, and only
if other European nations increase their own military involvement, something he
undoubtedly knows is highly unlikely.
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