Stratfor.Com just provided their 2008 forecast. Below is a longer-term forecast that will allow you to put things perspective.
Overall, I think that giving us general trends for the next five to ten years, then giving us the 2008 forecast in context with the larger trends would be better. Although, this might lead to different conclusions than the Stratfor.Com’s forecast.
One lesson about making long-term forecasts: The current trend extrapolated into the future will be the one scenario that will not happen.
For example, George informs us that the “jihadist war” is all but over. I couldn’t disagree more. We may be winning the current battles, but the war is far from over. Look at the names of baby boys in major European cities to understand what the long-term future is going to look like. Think Mohammed and Islam.
If you’ve spent much time researching Islam, then it’s clear to you that making war on the West is what all good Muslims must do.
Long term trends concerning Iran show a nation intent on building sophisticated multi-stage, solid-fuel rockets that before long will be capable of reaching Europe.
Iran is also focusing on the development of thousands of centrifuges. Enough, in fact to create 15 nuclear bombs a year.
So Iran may play our game in any given year, but in the next 20 to 30 years it will have enough military might to destroy Europe.
China has now changed direction. Instead of quietly biding it’s time, it will be increasingly challenging the United States. It will continue to quietly provide support to our enemies such as Iran and North Korea. But it will start to openly criticize us more often and seek to stick its thumb in our eye when possible. Think about the recent Hong-Kong experience with our navy.
China faces a host of significant problems that means it has no chance of catching up to the present United States economy, probably ever. At least not with a communist government.
China experiences 1000s of protests each year because there is no system of redress of grievances. China has severe demographic problems due to the one-child policy. Pollution is rampant and is literally destroying large segments of the population. Corruption is endemic to the current communist party governing system.
All of these factors mean that China is in for a rough ride probably in the next five to ten years. It’s not clear if it will survive in its present form. I certainly have my doubts about that.
The status quo has changed between China and Taiwan. While the policy of the American government is that the status quo should not change, it is the Chinese military that has changed it due to its constant military build-up across from Taiwan. Each year the Chinese military quietly adds more and more missiles aimed at Taiwan.
It is doubtful that mainland China can launch a war against Taiwan for many years for two reasons: Oil and ammo. China just doesn’t have enough oil to sustain operations for more than a week. It’s ammo will begin to run out in about the same amount of time. So mainland China must completely defeat Taiwan within about a week or it’s going to run into significant problems.
Events concerning Russia show that a new cold-war is upon us. Russia is aggressively hostile to the United States. Unfortunately for Russia, it too has significant problems. Think of a wounded bear that is just getting weaker. In some ways it still has a lot of power, but long-term trends don’t look good.
Russia has a significant demographics problem: It is dying. In the next 20 years it will start to feel the affects of this demographics problem. It has disease problems. It has a Muslim problem.
Russia’s military is also falling apart. While they are trying to upgrade parts of their military, overall it is falling apart faster than they can fix it. That means in the next 10 to 15 years, Russia is going to lose much of its military might. The implication of this is that Russia is going to be the most dangerous between now and around 2020.
Russia will continue to be a thorn in America’s side. It supports our enemies due to economic reasons such as Iran and Serbia. Pay attention to Kosovo. This will be an excellent of how Russia is against the West. Of course, Russia wants a payoff from Serbia in the form of oil control - It seeks to gain control of Serbia’s oil assets.
Economically, Russia is too dependent on oil. Once oil prices start to go down, then Russia is going to get squeezed economically.
Events concerning Israel are what you should be most concerned about. While there are indications that a major war will NOT break out in 2008, I would not be surprised to see a major war occurring in 2009. There are two questions that need to answered:
1. Will this war involve Syria?
2. Will it turn nuclear?
We know that Syria was working on the development of nuclear weapons with the help of North Korea and probably Iran. While that development has been slowed down considerably thanks to Israel, it is Syria’s possession of chemical weapons that is of great concern. Should Syria launch chemical weapons at Israeli cities, then Israel will respond with nuclear weapons.
Israel almost used nuclear weapons during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Israeli use of nuclear weapons before 2015 in response to the Syrian use of chemical weapons.
Brazil is going to start getting more of our attention. It discovered significant oil deposits off its coast in the last year. This was only recently reported. By significant I mean massive. Interestingly, Brazil is now talking about nuclear power. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Brazil secretly working on a nuclear weapons program. I think Argentina and Venezuela will be paying more attention to events in Brazil over the next decade or longer.
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