Decade Forecast: 2010-2020

This forecast can therefore only be understood in terms of prior forecasts and their standing today. Without benchmarking, the current forecast lacks context and therefore depth. Thus, this forecast begins with extensive excerpts from previous forecasts. The structure might be odd, but it is essential.

In the Decade Forecast issued in 2000, we wrote:

As the year 2000 approaches, two overwhelming forces are shaping the international system. The first is the process of coalition building in which weaker powers seek to gain leverage against the overwhelming power of the United States by joining together in loose coalitions with complex motives. The second process, economic de-synchronization, erodes the power authority of the international organizations used by the United States and its coalition during the Cold War and the interregnum. More importantly, de-synchronization creates a generalized friction throughout the world, as the economic interests of regions and nations diverge.

The search for geopolitical equilibrium and global de-synchronization combine to create an international system that is both increasingly restless and resistant to the United States. Indeed, de-synchronization decreases the power of the United States substantially.

A decade forecast is intended to capture the basic dynamics, not necessarily specific events. We certainly did not forecast the U.S.-jihadist war, for example. But we did forecast adequately the general principle. We forecast two general processes: first, that international tension would increase and focus on the United States, limiting its power; and second, that the global economy, rather than integrating, would confront significant problems that would de-synchronize it. Different nations and regions would confront these problems in divergent ways that conflicted with each other, and international systems for managing the economy would fail to function. Both of these were radical forecasts in 2000. Looking back on the decade from the standpoint of 2010, we are satisfied that our forecast was faithful to the fundamental trend of the decade.

In 2005, we forecast that over the next 10 years:

… the jihadist issue will not go away but will subside over the next decade. Other — currently barely visible — issues are likely to dominate the international scene.

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. …

At the same time that we see China shifting into a dramatically different mode, 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. …

There is one curve that will not reverse itself. The long wave that has lifted the United States since 1880, perpetually increasing its economic, military and political power in the world remains intact. … The coming demographic crisis that will hit the rest of the world will not hit the United States nearly as hard. … As a result, 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 re-forming, looking for the means of controlling the United States.

We continue to maintain the essential forecasts made in 2005. The U.S.-jihadist war is in the process of winding down. It will not go away, but where in 2005 it defined the dynamic of the global system, it is no longer doing so. China has not yet faced its Japan-style crisis but we continue to forecast that it will — and before 2015. Russia has already shifted its policy from economic accommodation with the West to geopolitical confrontation. And the United States, buffeted on all sides by coalitions forming around political and economic issues, remains the dominant power in the international system.

There were many things we failed to anticipate in our forecasts, but we remain comfortable that we captured the essentials. Our 2000 forecast’s core dynamic has come to pass and continues to drive the global system, a system very different from the one in place in 2000. Our 2005 forecast derived from the dynamic we laid out in 2000. Of the specifics there, our Russian and American forecasts have taken place, our forecast on the U.S.-jihadist war is in the process of being fulfilled, and we stand behind our China forecast with five years to run.