Intelligence Report: Say Farewell To American Supremacy

WASHINGTON — Global warming could be a boon to Russia, a European country could be overrun by organized crime and the U.S. and its dollar could further decline in importance during the next two decades, says a U.S. intelligence report with predictions for the world in 2025.

The report, Global Trends 2025, is published every four years by the National Intelligence Council to give U.S. leaders insight into looming problems and opportunities.

The report says the warming earth will extend Russia and Canada's growing season and ease their access to northern oil fields, strengthening their economies. But Russia's potential emergence as a world power may be clouded by lagging investment in its energy sector, persistent crime and government corruption, the report says.

Analysts also warn that the same kind of organized crime plaguing Russia could eventually take over the government of an Eastern or Central European country. The report is silent on which one.

It also says countries in Africa and South Asia may find themselves unstable and ungoverned, as state regimes collapse or wither away under security problems and water and food shortages brought about by climate change and a population increase of 1.4 billion.

The potential for conflict will be greater in 2025 than it is now, as the world's population competes for declining and shifting food, water and energy resources.

Despite a more precarious world situation, the report also says al-Qaida's terrorist franchise could decay "sooner than people think." It cites its growing unpopularity in the Muslim world, where it kills most of its victims.

"The prospect that al-Qaida will be among the small number of groups able to transcend the generational timeline is not high, given its harsh ideology, unachievable strategic objectives and inability to become a mass movement," the report states.

The report forecasts a geopolitical rise in non-Arab Muslim states outside of the Middle East, including Turkey and Indonesia, and says Iran could also be a central player in a new world order if it sheds its theocracy.

The report, a year in the making, also suggests the world may complete its move away from its dependence on oil, and that the U.S. dollar, while remaining important, will decline to "first among equals" among other national currencies.

U.S. global power also will likely decline, as Americans' concerns about putting resources into solving domestic problems may cause the United States to pull resources from foreign and global problems.

___

On the Net:

Global Trends 2025: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html

Comments

[omop]

America's downfall accelerated when the Bush Administration adopted the neocons plan of: A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm commonly referred to as the "Clean Break" report, was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then-Prime Minister of Israel.

The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values". It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy and advancing right-wing Zionism.

According to the report's preamble, it was written by the Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000, which was a part of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle was the "Study Group Leader", but the final report included ideas from James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser.

Implementation began with the [in]famous "cakewalk" into Baghdad that was to last less than 6 weeks and to be paid for by Iraqi oil but is costing the US billions every month for over 6 years and impacting a historical world wide trillion dollar economic disaster.

It will take years and an 180 degree re-orientation of US policies to recoupa modicum of past respect and power. Better late than completely sorry.

For those interested in further readings of the Clean Break Plan check out google.

[cryingeagle]

There are other things that America could become besides SUPREME such as: resourceful, insightful, knowing, perceptive, wise, knowledgeable, learned, literate, scholarly, well-read; educated, informed, schooled, skilled, trained; creative, inventive, judicious, sensible, sound, wise, logical, rational, reasonable.

[Furby]

You might have to retool your educational system first, but yes, that's definitely a great vision of your future.

[JoeBlough]

The Southern States would not allow enlightenment. It's not Christian.

[republifornian]

lol liberals are like the cheese eating surrender monkeys in france, its plain to see you have no pride in my country, that is nothing new to many who have watched and listened tto your constant whining. you have no pride and you think 1 president will change the world and place all your trust in him and al gore shows just how short sighted you are.

[Trucker777]

Obama is not yet our President and already the Neocons are lining up behind Rush Limbaugh to blame Obama for all the problems dumped on this country by Bush, Cheney and the right wing.

[Furby]

Cheese eating surrender monkeys in France? Another plausible explanation for why the US must fight to regain the world's respect is the inability of some of its citizens to keep their mouths in check.

[JessWonderin]

wow . . . every Rush cliché except "Clinton did it" . . . never ceases to amaze me the power of right wing media over the informationally challenged in our society . . guess it underscore Goebbels desire to control MEDIA FIRST . . .

[Krackonis]

Leave your country, come back, cry.

That is what you should do.

[bboyy]

One president did change the world. And not for the better- BUSH

[SteveS]

It seems that most commenters are just reading the headline and not the report. The American way of life as you know it is going to drastically change in the next two decades.

With the rise of other nations like China, a unified Korea and India able to better compete for diminishing resources, the cost of resources in America will rise. The tensions and the disparity between the haves and the have-nots in this country will increase. Millions of Americans will lose the ability to afford things like cars or internet access as other countries become better able to compete equally.

The middle class dissipates which is precisely why the big companies have been pilfering for decades. They will be the ones in America to compete with world markets for diminishing resources such as fresh water.

While the concept of all nations being equal is a great idea, if you look around the world you can see it doesn't work that way. All nations compete. Throw a diminished America into the mix, and the American way of life as you know it is over. Rather than other nations coming up to live to our standard, we will have to adjust down to live to their standard. A necessity perhaps, but not one that Americans realize is coming.

Also, consider global warming, which the report talks about. Up to 200 million people will be relocating from the soon to be uninhabitable equator, FURTHER competing for diminishing resources.

[Trucker777]

Someone wrote that this is the Bush and Cheney legacy.

How will I explain to my grandchildren that we ALLOWED the neocons to do this to the United States?

We once fought a civil war over the right to succeed from the union. Will that be the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren? In order to form a more perfect union, will they once again have to fight for it?

[Krackonis]

I alreayd blamed my parents, right to their face. I told them their chickenshit attitudes and fear is allowing our country to get stolen from us.

They didn't take it well. But their generation got scared of boogie men, forgetting what a REAL WAR was like. Forgetting that a real war is a fight with all your worth. This is not, this is a firing range with Iraqi people in it.

If this was a real war we would be all fighting all of us seeing clearly the threat coming at us. Such as an invasion from Germany, or Japan... Invasion from Iraqi? From Afghanistan? What are they going to take here? a RAFT?

[omahkohkiaayo]

It is really simple: no person or nation can demand for itself, protections from the very same laws and principles it systematically denies others no matter what the banner of purported legitimacy--Exclusivism, Triumphalism, Manifest Destiny, Lebensraum, Chosen People, Biblical Prophecy etc. History is littered with fallen empires once composed of citizens and governments that thought they had a mandate from the Gods or some contrived "Doctrine" to rule the earth and others--and where are they now?

Just as the rich ultimately find that their high security fences and private guards cannot protect them in times of chaos, so it is with whole nations on a global scale. Even as a matter of pure surivival, other nations, even allies, cannot and will not continue to tolerate or even facilitate, American hubris, imperial power projections, contempt for the very same laws asserted by the U.S. against others, grotesque squandering of global resources and disproportionate environmental damages by a smug and self-obsessed minority of the world's population.

Those who take the meat from the table,
teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined,
demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry,
of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss,
call ruling too difficult,
for ordinary folk.

(Bertolt Brecht)

[GerryS]

It looks like the government has cut off access to this unclassified report-

[omahkohkiaayo]

Patriotism is simply one form of expression of narcissism. It is the notion of "love" of a nation simply because one personally was born there and/or somehow wound up there. Like this notion of "proud to be an American" really comes down to 'pride" in something one had nothing to do with: in which nation one's parents failed to practice birth control.

Should the German's say "thank you for your service" on Veteran's Day to those who "served" Naziism because the veterans perhaps "thought" (or rationalized to themselves) they were doing the right thing and "serving their country"? Same thing on the issue of the Iraq War founded on lies, cherrypicked intelligence, phony pretexts and blatant contempt for international law? Do we say "thank you for your service" in a War that has brought carnage globally and made the U.S. and other nations and peoples less not more secure?

Without a draft, and even with one, we are all responsible for objectively, not just subjectively, what causes, forces, ideas and in whose name we choose to "serve" or lend our support even under the banner of "patriotism". Where I was born, an accident, does not predetermine my conscience or my positions on various issues in some kind of blind and deterministic ways.

[Deesel]

You're confusing patriotism with nationalism.

[omahkohkiaayo]

Actually each construct and belief is expressed under the banner of the other and thus are interchangeable in common usage. No one uses the term "patriot" in reference to a group of which one is a member except in reference to a national group or nation.

There is a concept of [generic] nationalism under international law (which most Americans know or care nothing about except when asserted in reference to supposed U.S. national interests against other nations) which is simply the belief that all nations, if established as such by facts on the ground and international law (nations exist independent of recognition or non-recognition of nationhood by anyone) have certain universal, inalienable and equal rights (not to be exterminated or forcibly assimilated, self-determination, independence, sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs etc). But this is a case of a Doctrine seldom expressed independent of some supposed accompanying and supporting "patriotism" (love of one's country because one was born and raised there and/or immigrated and raised there).

But the point remains the same. Why is anyone "proud" of what is no real accomplishment and what one had nothing to do with?

[jarotra]

So, Bush finally has a legacy, something historians can point to - that point in time when the American Dream went sour.

Few men make such an indelible mark.

[Republicrats]

its been a fantasy all along!
American Foreign Policy:
Kenya has two apples
America wants two apples
America has two apples

thats our worldview in a nutshell!

[marymarcus]

See? One person CAN make a difference.

[Kristen777]

I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't have this need for world dominance in the first place. Why can't we see ourselves as partners in a world community? What's so wrong with that?

[k6007]

P u s s y !

[leftcoastindy]

LOL

[ExpatinEurope2009]

You do dominate the world in having the highest amount of imbeciles per square mile of any country on earth.

[Intelligentia]

You must agree that we are making progress. Proof? Look at who we elected to replace President Bush.

[Intelligentia]

I totally agree with you. Obama's Presidency might well usher in the reality you espouse-"partners in a world community". We really do not have any choice than to be partners.The days of intimidating or bullying everyone with military hardwares are over. Almost all the big players can inflict the same amount of harm that we can inflict upon them. It's time to face reality and understand that the world community expects peace and harmonious relationships, not war and bullying.

[Citizen-Jane]

Skeptical but I believe that Barrack knows what he is doing. Hillary and Barack got along well before the election and voted pretty much the same way in congress. After the primary he went out of his way to meet with her. He did whatever it took to talk to her. And actually their foreign policy is not that much different from one another.

The sitting down with out preconditions was a wedge issue which the Clintons used effectively during the primaries. But as a citizen of the world I say leaders do what ever it takes to save lives. I fully support Barack with that. Get all of the middle men out of the way.
Barack knows what he wants and what he is doing and I am sure that he thought about this appointment long before two weeks ago.

I'm going to trust Obama on this one.

[TrnsNtnl]

Global warming is a weak excuse for why America is and no longer will be the worlds super power. Come on! How conceded does our nationalism need o remain!? We haven't been on top for a while, we have just been bullies militarily while other nations have flourished through education, technology development and environmental preservation. Bush failed us, maybe Obama will do something but this report seams a little late... superpower my ass..

[Hare]

It has been obvious for the last five years and the only relevance to the study is giving a voice to a fact denied for so long.

[teembee]

This is a good thing. Who said America was supposed to be #1? What makes us any better than anyone else? America has destroyed the world economically, socially, and ecologically. We have enslaved people. We cause war everywhere. We steal land. We are the only country to ever use a nuke.
I think it will be a just end to an evil empire.

[Ramirez]

"... a just end to an evil empire"


Can we question your patriotism now?

[ExpatinEurope2009]

Patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

You know NOTHING about what America is about.

Forever, an i d i o t.......thats Ramirez.

[biskitdaddy]

I don't question your patriotism one bit. The rest of the world is getting sick and tired of the U.S. We dispense our war machine all over the world in an attempt to ram "freedom" and "democracy" down people's throats and end up killing tens of thousands of their civilian population in the process. We ask the rest of the world to impose economic sanctions against countries we don't like and don't agree with us in an attempt to isolate them; trust me, we are the ones heading towards isolationism.

[cavegal]

Agreed and when a country "democratically" elects a leader that we do not like or our oil companies do not like (Mossedegh in Iran) we get rid of them. Our financial aid is tied to projects that are completed by American companies. The countries receiving the aid never actually receive a dime, the money is passed to the company receiving the contract.

[POTUS2008]

declining to a "first among equals" sounds fine to me. or even equal among equals. who cares as long as we have a decent life quality and can take care of all our people and have a nice society.

[Republicrats]

me too, lets let someone else pay for our security like we have done for Europe for the past 50 years.

[Ramirez]

We should withdraw our forces from Europe. Let the Europeans protect themselves.