Stratfor's 11 predictions for what the world will look like in 10 years

[Strychnine]

https://www.stratfor.com/forecast/decade-forecast-2015-2025

Stratfor has 11 chilling predictions for what the world will look like a decade from now

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 euroscepticism.

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."

[Strychnine]

pt2

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.

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.

"The United States will continue to be the major economic, political, and military power in the world but will be less engaged than in the past," the forecast says. "It will be a disorderly world, with a changing of the guard in many regions. The one constant will be the continued and maturing power of the United States — a power that will be much less visible and that will be utilized far less in the next decade."

[mstng86]

US power will decline.

Quote:
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.

"The United States will continue to be the major economic, political, and military power in the world but will be less engaged than in the past," the forecast says. "It will be a disorderly world, with a changing of the guard in many regions. The one constant will be the continued and maturing power of the United States — a power that will be much less visible and that will be utilized far less in the next decade."

GOOD
I am tired of seeing us be there for everything.

[Mongoose]

So the US is going to send troops into the Russia to secure weaponry and strategic areas for the second time in the last 100 years because that sh*thole imploded again?

Yet the U.S. also going to decline?

Then for a twist.... The U.S. is going to go back into isolationism - Yet remain the world`s most powerful nation while telling everyone else to take care of their own problems?

Sounds more like double speak to me.

I also disagree with their predictions on China. The older generations are dying off. The younger generations though while very patriotic and see China as a rising country that should take its place on the world stage also care very little about the old ways and the revolution. There will be an urban/rural split, which will set the country back a decade or two, but China isnt going to break apart like the USSR. I`m also willing to bet that at some point Beijing will make a gentleman`s agreement with Washington concerning North Korea & Taiwan where in exchange for the US to withdraw a significant portion of combat forces away from the area that the Chinese initiate some sort of coup in North Korea and allow the two Korea`s to unify under a democratic government. I`ll wager that Taiwan will rejoin mainland China once all the "revolutionaries" on both sides die off.

[YALE]

Time to start the Vault-Tec corporation.

[IHaveAMustang]

GOOD
I am tired of seeing us be there for everything.

Right?

Close the door with a sign on it that says "You're on your own."

[Ruffdaddy]

So this is like some sort of horoscope for the world? Say enough vague and obvious shit so youre at least right on a few things?

[Broncojohnny]

So let's see their predictions from ten years ago...

[big_tiger]

I think someone did post something similar, on dfws.

[Strychnine]

So let's see their predictions from ten years ago...

Here's their 2005 to 2015 predictions published on Feb 7, 2005: https://www.stratfor.com/forecast/de...cast-2005-2015


It's long as hell. Here are some high points I see, both correct and incorrect.


Fail

expecting the U.S.-jihadist war to continue to dominate the world in 2015 — 14 years after the war started — is fairly unrealistic. If the Islamic world remains the focus of the international system, it will be on very different terms than today. In fact, it is our view that the jihadist issue will not go away, but will subside over the next decade

Perhaps our most dramatic forecast is that China will suffer a meltdown like Japan and East and Southeast Asia before it. The staggering proportion of bad debt, enormous even in relation to official dollar reserves, represents a defining crisis for China. China will not disappear by any means, any more than Japan or South Korea has. However, extrapolating from the last 30 years is unreasonable. We also expect there to be significant political consequences. At the moment, there appears to be a buying frenzy in China, similar to the dot.com meltdown. Irrational exuberance rules the day.

Pretty good

Russia is in the process of transforming itself once again. After 20 years of following the Gorbachev-Yeltsin-Putin line, which sacrificed geopolitical interests in return for strong economic relations with the West, the pendulum is swinging sharply away from that. The Russians no longer see the West as the economic solution, but as a deepening geopolitical threat. It is not clear whether it will be Putin or his successor who changes Russia's course definitively, but we expect a dramatic change to come during this decade — a more authoritarian, state-dominated economy, coupled with intense efforts to recover its sphere of influence

Semi-true, but they missed the mark on that whole "middle east going away" part

the United States will continue its domination — and the world will increasingly resist that domination. Our core forecast is that the United States will remain an overwhelming but not omnipotent force in the world, and that there will be coalitions forming and reforming, looking for a means to control the United States.

We expect the main focus of the international system to gradually move away from the region between the Levant and the Hindu Kush, south to the Arabian Peninsula, farther north and east. The Eurasian heartland and the Western Pacific are both more likely to dominate world attention in a decade than the Middle East. In particular, the economic weakening of China and insecurity in the region is likely to create a focus for instability later in the decade.

Some of these could go either way as this year plays out and we see how Obama deals with ISIS

We expect the United States to disengage from Iraq — and also from the rest of the Islamic world — during the first half of the decade this forecast covers. This does not mean that a force may not be left in any or all of these countries. However, inasmuch as we forecast a general decline of jihadist capabilities and the emergence of an internal containment system in the Islamic world, we would expect that the level of effort in the region will decline

we expect that by the end of this decade, U.S. focus on the Islamic world, while far from disappearing, will become less significant than U.S. interest in the Pacific Basin. U.S. alliance structures currently driven by the U.S.-jihadist war will shift once again, to reflect increased tensions in the Western Pacific.

Close here. 2008 sucked.

We do not expect a return to growth rates seen in the 1990s, except sporadically. We would expect to see another recession during the first half of the decade, as we return to a more traditionally spaced expansion. However, we do not expect to see a major, long-term economic contraction or period of stagnation. We do not anticipate a return to the 1970s and certainly not to the 1930s.

What do we think will bring about Russia's reversal in the coming decade? Geopolitically speaking, with Russia's brother state Ukraine — vital to Russia's survival — joining the West as a geopolitical junior ally in 2005, Russia is running out of room to hide from a coming conflict with the West. Moscow and central Russia will become indefensible if there is a war between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia. The prospect of a pro-U.S. "revolution" — the likes of which already have changed regimes in several former Soviet republics — adds urgency, too. Central Asia, the Caucasus, Moldova, Belarus and virtually all of the former Soviet Union (FSU) will see attempts — with varying degrees of success — to replace even moderate pro-Western regimes with openly pro-Western governments.

Furthermore, on its current course, Russia has been collapsing slowly but surely — and there is no reason to believe this decline will stop without a change in strategic course. As an independent geopolitical power and perhaps even as a sovereign united state, Russia must either strike back at foreign interlopers soon or die.

However, we think Russia will preserve — or restore — its territorial integrity and sovereignty and again become a major international player with a traditional anti-Western geopolitical course. The main geopolitical threat to Russia this coming decade comes from the U.S.-led West, which threatens Russia more than all other players combined, so it will be against the West that Russia responds

Not so much here:

The next step in revolutionary warfare likely to become operational by 2015 is hypersonic scramjet technology.

then i got bored.

[slow99]

People have been losing their ass on the "short China due to debt" trade for years. The amount and pace of debt growth is absolutely unreal; it's staggering. It'll blow one day. I actually dug down the other night to see exactly what my exposure to China was. I was comforted to know it was less than 5% of my total allocation.