Global Trends 2025: state capitalism on the rise November 21, 2008

image by axinia

Today’s newspapers all over the world seem to be much impressed by the latest NIC report Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World  where National Intelligence Council, a body of analysts from across the US intelligence community, gives a new perspective on how major global trends may develop in the next 15 years to influence world events.

You can read the whole report here, and some things I found the most interesting and insightful below:

• “No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term,” the report warns.
• “Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is concentrating more under state control,” giving the examples of China and Russia. “In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state’s role in the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world.”
• At the same time, the US will become “less dominant” in the world – no longer the unrivalled superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War, but a “first among equals” in a more fluid and evenly balanced world, making the unilateralism of the Bush era no longer tenable.
• The impact of climate change will be uneven, with some North economies, including Russia and Canada benefit from longer growing seasons and improved access to resources reserves.
• While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are likely to grow in influence at America’s expense, the same cannot be said of the European Union. The NIC appears relatively certain the EU will be “losing clout” by 2025. Internal bickering and a “democracy gap” separating Brussels from European voters will leave the EU “a hobbled giant”, unable to translate its economic clout into global influence.