Sobering forecast of change in balance of world power

Sobering forecast of change in balance of world power
Publish Date : 1/22/2005 6:23:00 PM Source : Legal News
http://www.expressnewsline.com/0605/fullstory0605-insight-Sobering+forecast+of+change-status-21-newsID-11.html

Last week the National Intelligence Council, the CIA's think tank, released a 119-page report
pondering the world the United States might face in 2020.

In a reflection of the myopia of our times, the Washington Post's front-page story focused almost
entirely on the CIA's prediction that Islamic terrorism would still be with us 15 years from now.

Left for bare mention was the far more stunning vision that was the main focus of the intelligence
report. By 2020, the document forecasts, the US will have to share global domination with the rising
Asian powers - China and India.

"The likely emergence of China and India, as well as others, as new major global players -- similar
to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful US in the early 20th century --
will transform the geopolitical landscape," the CIA report concludes.

If the 1900s were the American Century, the authors say, "the 21st century may be seen as the time
when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own".

This is not news for those of us who live in Silicon Valley. But the rest of the country is still
catching up to this reality.

The report, "Mapping the Global Future", reflects not only the views of the intelligence community
but also academics, business people, government officials and other experts around the world. The
map is worth studying.

Asia's rise starts with economics. By 2020, China's economy will exceed all others except the US in
size. India will likely have overtaken Europe.

Other would-be powers such as Brazil and perhaps Russia may follow in their wake.

Europe and Japan face a huge demographic breakdown, with aging populations and shrinking workforces.
They must allow large immigration from the south or face economic stagnation.

Globalisation, the growing cross-border flows of information, technology, capital and people, is the
"mega-trend" shaping everything else. Those countries best able to access and adapt new technologies
will benefit most from this trend.

While the US currently sets technology standards for the rest of the world, "there are signs this
leadership is at risk". The report details the decline of science and engineering graduates in the
US and the shrinking of privately funded research and development.

"Asia looks set to displace Western countries as the focus for international economic dynamism," the
CIA forecasts.

Asia's multinational corporations -- from Sony and Samsung to China's Huawei -- will drive global
integration. The trend of outsourcing jobs to Asia will only accelerate, expanding to more
occupations.

"The transition will not be painless and will hit the middle classes of the developed world in
particular," an alarming idea for those who have already felt this impact.

The "Asian face" on globalisation may create a rival financial system, one less dependent on the
dollar.

The currency reserves of Japan, China, Korea and India, now three-quarters of global reserves, will
change the way business is done. And economic and cultural ties across Asia will grow, at the
expense of Europe and America.

"By 2020," the CIA predicts, "globalisation could be equated in the popular mind with a rising Asia,
replacing its current association with Americanisation."

This Asian century does not only have an economic and technological dimension. China is set to
overtake Russia as the second largest defence spender after the US. In the next two decades, China
will emerge as a "first-rate military power".

"The key question that the United States needs to ask itself is whether it can offer Asian states an
appealing vision of regional security and order that will rival and perhaps exceed that offered by
China," the CIA concludes.

Unfortunately, American attentions are focused elsewhere.

"The US preoccupation with the war on terrorism is largely irrelevant to the security concerns of
most Asians," participants told the intelligence council.

"US disengagement from what matters to Asian allies would increase the likelihood that they would
climb on Beijing's bandwagon and allow China to create its own regional security order that excludes
the United States."

It is a sobering vision of not only the world ahead, but the world we are living in right now.

(Daniel Sneider is a foreign affairs columnist for the Mercury News. He can be reached at
dsneider@mercurynews.com )

==========================

Mapping The Global Future: Report Of The National Intelligence ...

Warning to Washington: ‘Project 2020’
ISN, Switzerland - Jan 25, 2005
It would be naive to believe that the UN National Intelligence Council’s "Project 2020" was not part of the ongoing struggle between the CIA and State ...
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=10634

Warning to Washington: ‘Project 2020’

It would be naive to believe that the UN National Intelligence Council’s "Project 2020" was not part of the ongoing struggle between the CIA and State Department, and the neoconservative elements in the Defense Department and White House. Nonetheless, the NIC’s warnings about the consequences of neoconservative strategy are realistic.

By Dr. Michael A. Weinstein for PINR (25/01/05)

On 13 January, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) released the report of its "2020 Project", which is aimed at describing the possible configurations of world politics 15 years from now. Although the report is informed neither by a coherent analysis of the balance of global power nor by a rigorous assessment of the dominant players' interests, its subtext is a sober and realistic warning to decision makers committed to a unipolar vision of the world, in which the US is the arbiter of globalization through wielding preponderant military power or, at the extreme, the first global empire. With the mission of providing "policymakers with the best unvarnished and unbiased information regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to US policy," the NIC reports to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but is independent of the CIA and is charged with preparing analyses based on the findings of the entire US intelligence community. Almost all of its reports - "National Intelligence Estimates" - are classified and concern specific policy issues. Every five years, the NIC goes public with a general look at the medium-term global future. As was the case with the two previous public reports, "Project 2020" is based on consultations with a variety of experts from inside and outside the US government. Preparations for the latest report involved the widest outreach yet - more than 1,000 specialists were consulted from around the world. From the multitude of divergent judgments and specialized perspectives gathered in its inquiry, the NIC attempted to identify the dominant "trends" that will determine the pattern of global politics, projecting "scenarios" - rather than formulating strategies - based on the development of one or more of those trends. That trends substitute for paradigms and scenarios for strategies in "Project 2020" reflects less on the report's eclectic methodology than on the NIC's political situation as an agency charged with speaking truth to power. It can presumably serve its master with a forthright objective analysis when its reports are secret, but it must take account of political sensitivities when it goes public. NIC chairman Robert Hutchings resolved the predicament by steering clear of analyzing the impact of US policy - indeed, the policy of any international actor - on global trends. The approach of exclusion was taken, Hutchings told reporters, so that the agency would avoid involvement in partisan politics. The result is a document that implies conclusions about US policies that lie nearly on its surface once the imaginative scenarios are set aside and the myriad counter-trends that invariably and justifiably qualify the major ones are put in the background. Neither political science nor propaganda, "Project 2020" appears to be an effort to sneak through the NIC's best judgment of the truth for anyone who is willing to dig a little for it.
Geostrategy

Although the report identifies the release of a weapon of mass destruction - particularly a major bio-terrorist attack - as the greatest danger to global security, it does not place trends in the "war on terrorism" front and center. That position belongs to economic globalization, the only "mega-trend" named in the report. According to the Council, globalization - "growing interconnectedness reflected in the expanded flows of information, technology, capital, goods, services, and people throughout the world" - is "a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends in the world of 2020". Politically, globalization means that everyone everywhere is drawn into the same great game of determining the balance of power in an era of fundamental readjustment: "At no time since the formation of the Western alliance system in 1949 has the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux." Under such conditions, geostrategy becomes the indispensable discipline of political analysis because "the nation state will continue to be the dominant unit of the global order" and will be charged with mediating the multifarious interests impacted by economic globalization. High politics come to the forefront when the future configuration of world power is indeterminate and multiple actors jockey for advantage, with rising powers seeking their places in the sun and status quo powers trying to avoid being pushed into the shade. Although it shuns geostrategy scrupulously, the report realistically and precisely does the necessary preliminary work of describing the emerging world balance of power. Its major conclusion is that China and India, along with possibly Brazil and Indonesia, will be "new major global players" that "will transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries. In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the 'American century,' the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own". The result of the rise of Asian powers will be the erosion of US power, although the US "will remain in 2020 the most important single country across all the dimensions of power" - "an important shaper of the international order", but not its architect. The relative decline of US power is the most certain political trend identified by the report; it has an air of inevitability that places it beyond decisional control. Here the Council issues an implicit warning to Washington - attempts to assert US world hegemony are doomed to failure and US interests will be best served by policies of "balancing" and "reconciling" the conflicting interests of other great powers, and moving towards intelligent retrenchment. Although it keeps clear of mentioning the term, the report in so many words adopts the thesis that the configuration of world power is shifting inexorably from unipolarity to multipolarity, in which the US is no longer the undisputed superpower, but becomes, at best, first among equals. Refusing to draw strategic conclusions, the report, instead, draws out "policy implications". Surprisingly, when the report turns to policy, it passes over the "war on terrorism" to state that "Washington may be increasingly confronted with the challenge of managing - at an acceptable cost to itself - relations with Europe, Asia, the Middle East and others absent a single overarching threat on which to build a consensus." Washington can "bank on" readjusted "alliances and relationships with Europe and Asia," as the EU, with its own geostrategic interests, eclipses NATO, and China and India move to be "fully integrated into the international order" on their terms.
Military vs. diplomatic power

In particular, in Asia, "Tokyo may have to choose between 'balancing' against or 'bandwagoning' with China". The report concludes that US-Asia relations will be shaped by states in the region from the configuration of power that they create among themselves more than they will be by what Washington does: "One could envisage a range of possibilities from the US enhancing its role as balancer between contending forces to Washington being seen as increasingly irrelevant." At the same time that US power is eroded, the country will become more sensitive to changes in the global economy and increasingly dependent on foreign oil supplies for which competition for secure access will grow. As it strives to pursue its economic and strategic interests, "more countries will be in a position to make the United States pay a heavy price for any military action they oppose". Even success in the "war on terrorism" will depend on "the capabilities and resolve of individual countries to fight terrorism on their own soil". In its closest approach to geostrategic advice, the report notes that Washington "will have many opportunities to extend its advantages, particularly in shaping a new international order that integrates disparate regions and reconciles divergent interests". The Council's message is clear, if not explicit: realistic pursuit of US interests will involve a shift from military to diplomatic power; rather than trying to become the arbiter of globalization, Washington is best served by becoming an honest broker, a conflict resolver and a reconciler. Even then, the report warns, the costs - especially of "balancing" - may be too great for Washington to bear, given its economic constraints and limits on support from a strained US public. If the Council rejects the scenario of US-dominated unipolarity and, along with it - by implication - a unilateralist foreign policy, neither does it foresee a return to multilateralism, in which Washington leads a permanent and stable Western-oriented coalition against the opponents of Western-dominated globalization. It is already too late to move toward that scenario, not because of the failures of the US intervention in Iraq, but because other power centers - including the EU - have grown strong enough not to have to accept Washington's leadership or have it imposed on them. Washington is now constrained to cooperate and compete in the global great game, not as leader, but as the most powerful player. What works most in its favor, according to the Council, is a broadly shared interest by major powers in peaceful economic globalization that militates against "the likelihood of great power conflict escalating into total war". Otherwise, the picture is more sobering - the persistence of Islamism, the rising prospects of bio-terror, the possibility of more local wars, the appearance of more failed states, the possibility of nuclear proliferation, possible challenges to globalization in major powers caused by shifts in world labor markets, and conflicts over scarce strategic resources, among many others mentioned in the report, none of which can be managed by Washington alone, and all of which can be addressed successfully only by multinational and international initiatives.
Doubts about Iraq

Wire services around the world covered the release of "Project 2020" with brief stories outlining accurately its main conclusions. Prestige newspapers in the United States - notably The New York Times and The Washington Post - focused on the two paragraphs on Iraq buried in the report that suggest that the US intervention there has laid the basis for providing "recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself. At the Council's press briefing on the report, the Post's Dana Priest quoted Hutchings as say