| | |  Editorials | Issues | September 2008 
Report: US Status in World Will Keep Falling
 Washington Post
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An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future international risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming years, as the world is reshaped by globalization and climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.
The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority - military power - will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."
Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partly completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in 2009.
"The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished," Fingar said, according to a transcript of the speech given Thursday. He said he sees U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas."
The 2025 report will lay out what Fingar called the "dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers" that will shape the world for the next administration and beyond. In advance of its completion, intelligence officials have begun briefing the major presidential candidates on the security threats that they would probably face in office. Sen. Barack Obama received an initial briefing on Sept. 2; Sen. John McCain is expected to be briefed in the coming days, intelligence officials said.
As described by Fingar, the intelligence community's long-term outlook has darkened since the last report in 2004, which also focused on the effect of globalization but was more upbeat about its consequences for the United States. The new view is in line with that of prominent economists and other international thinkers who have said that America's influence is shrinking as economic powerhouses such as China assert themselves in world affairs.
It is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts declining influence for the United Nations, the World Bank and many other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability since World War II.
In the years ahead, the U.S. will no longer be in a position to dictate what new international structures will look like. Nor will any other single country, Fingar said.
The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the world is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe.
Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world. But among industrialized states, declining birthrates will create new economic stresses as populations become grayer. In China, Japan and Europe, the ratio of working adults to seniors "begins to approach 1-to-3," he said.
The United States will fare better than many other industrial powers, in part because it is relatively more open to immigration. Newcomers will inject into the U.S. economy a vitality that will be absent in much of Europe and Japan," he said. |
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