CIA - American Dominance Could End in 15 Years

Regular Newshog commenter Kirkrrt sent me this link to Fred Kaplan's report "2020 Vision", which fits pretty well with a constant thread in my posts.

Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it? This prognosis of decline comes not (or not only) from leftist scribes rooting for imperialism's downfall, but from the National Intelligence Council—the "center of strategic thinking" inside the U.S. intelligence community.

The NIC's conclusions are starkly presented in a new 119-page document, "Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project." It is unclassified and available on the CIA's Web site. The report has received modest press attention the past couple weeks, mainly for its prediction that, in the year 2020, "political Islam" will still be "a potent force." Only a few stories or columns have taken note of its central conclusion:

The likely emergence of China and India ... as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.

In this new world, a mere 15 years away, the United States will remain "an important shaper of the international order"—probably the single most powerful country—but its "relative power position" will have "eroded." The new "arriviste powers"—not only China and India, but also Brazil, Indonesia, and perhaps others—will accelerate this erosion by pursuing "strategies designed to exclude or isolate the United States" in order to "force or cajole" us into playing by their rules.

Well, what exactly did US policy makers expect? There is an organisation called the Project for the New American Century which for years now has promulgated the doctrine of the US as a new empire. Many of it's charter members are senior in the current administration. That sends a message that the current administration thinks pretty much as PNAC does. Did they really expect the rest of the world to sit idly by and not try to level the playing field?

Furthermore, the report says,

To the extent that these new powers seek others to emulate, they may look to the European Union, not the United States, as "a model of global and regional governance."

Personally, I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing.