Not surprisingly, the White House ordered the US intelligence community to make an attempt to foresee the changing trends. Therefore, the public body of the CIA – the National Intelligence Council (NIC) is now accountable for publishing special reports on the future trends on a regular basis. To prepare those, the US intelligence community is carrying out analytically studies of the situation in the world and its possible development along with the steps the leading international players and the USA may take.
According to the NIC estimates, the United States influence in the world will decrease by 2030, along with the number of its military options. In these circumstances there will be only two superpowers: the United States and China, and perhaps there’ll be a sole one– China. At the same time Europe due to the recent crisis it has been facing is not perceived as an “influential power” in the future, which sounds truly painful to Europeans.
CIA analysts believe that there can only be three development paradigms: the “reverse”, “synthesis” or “disintegration”.
The first one — the “reverse” scenario states that by 2030 the world will return to the unstable times of the beginning of 20th, a century that was yet to witness the establishment of the US primacy on the planet. According to this forecast, the US will not be able to get out of economic difficulties and gradually lose its dominant position in the international arena. These events, according to the CIA, will be followed by numerous geopolitical crises in Asia and the Middle East, with the increasing probability of inter-state conflicts. Therefore, Washington will be trying to use these developments in its own interests, instead of allowing the natural order of events take its course. Due to these estimates, we are witnessing an increasing Washington‘s pressure behind the mounting tension in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, where the White House expects to receive certain benefits from its global hegemony.
The second scenario, and the only optimistic one, depicts the happy future dominated by China and the United States, where the cooperation between the two giants would determine the new “golden age of international relations”. But this scenario, the US analysts say, seems to be a highly unlikely one, despite the recent White House attempts to flirt with Beijing.
The third “disintegration” scenario is regarded as the most likely course of events. This forecast depicts the world where the influence and role of the West sees a sharp decline as opposed to the rise of Asia. These times will be marked by high risks of inter-state conflicts, which, according to CIA analysts, can put the population of the planet on the brink of extermination. In order to prevent this scenario from developing, the US intelligence community is making considerable efforts to divert the world’s attention to the implementation of various US global programs, in particular:
– Counter-terrorism efforts, aimed at fighting specific extremist and terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, ISIL etc. Although their creation and development was strongly influenced by Washington)
– Dealing with the spread of epidemics in the world (“bird flu”or Ebola)
To facilitate Washington’s steps in this direction, the US intelligence agencies are forced to create an artificial media hype over the above mentioned efforts, along with enhancing the destabilisation trends around the globe. In particular, by providing financial and military support to ISIL, “moderate opposition” in Syria along with a number of other extremist groups. As for the spread of Ebola, and the uncovered participation of the Pentagon in the development of an “effective” vaccine in secret laboratories, it’s clear that this trend was affected by the involvement of US intelligence as well.
Given the role of the CIA analysts diverted to China in the future world, a significant number of forecasts are focused on the internal development of this state, along China-US relations and its relations with the countries of Asia and Europe.
CIA experts are not paying much attention to Russia in their studies. In particular, the analysis on the prospects of Russia’s future security system notes that in the conditions created by the Pentagon‘s latest military initiatives, including the one labeled Prompt Global Strike (PGS), cyber weapons, the development of IT in the army, etc, in 2030 Russia must be prepared to face not the US and NATO agression alone, but also a certain number of states on its borders, which can be armed with nuclear weapons by this time along with a number of other cutting-edge military equipments.
According to analysts in Washington, the latest development of America’s fourth generation nuclear weapons that produce a minimum level of radioactive contamination, on top of all they are not violating the existing general agreements on banning of nuclear weapons tests, hence they may transform the face of the future nuclear warfare. These tecnologies are not simply able to make such weapons acceptable for usage, but can also launch a new era of arms race. In particular, China and Pakistan, along with a number of countries in East Asia and the Middle East have shown interest in FGNW technologies.
Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
