Report Sees Nuclear Arms, Scarce Resources as Seeds of Global Instability(excerpted)
The drive for dwindling resources, including energy and water, combined with the spread of nuclear weapons technology could make large swaths of the globe ripe for regional conflicts, some of them potentially devastating, according to a report released by the National Intelligence Council yesterday.
The report, Global Trends 2025, covers a range of strategic issues, including great-power rivalry, demographics, climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, energy and natural resources. It makes for sometimes grim reading in imagining a world of weak states bristling with weapons of mass destruction and unable to cope with burgeoning populations without adequate water and food.
"Those states most susceptible to conflict are in a great arc of instability stretching from Sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa, into the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and South and Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia," the quadrennial report says.
At the heart of its deepest pessimism is the Middle East, which it suggests could tip into a nuclear arms race if Iran goes ahead with such weapons.
The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran spawning a nuclear arms race in the greater Middle East will bring new security challenges to an already conflict-prone region, particularly in conjunction with the proliferation of long-range missile systems," the report says.
". . . If nuclear weapons are used destructively in the next 15-20 years, the international system will be shocked as it experiences immediate humanitarian, economic, and political-military repercussions."
The United States "will have less power in a multipolar world than it has enjoyed for many decades," according to the report's authors, who consulted policy- and opinion-makers in America and abroad over the past 12 months.
". . . We believe that U.S. interest and willingness to play a leadership role also may be more constrained as the economic, military, and opportunity costs of being the world's leader are reassessed by American voters."
China is said to be "poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country." The study projects that by 2025, China will have the world's second-largest economy, behind the United States', and it "will be a leading military power."
Among the other major powers, Russia has the potential to be richer and more powerful, but only if it expands and diversifies its resources-driven economy. And the authors think that countries such as Indonesia, Turkey and a possible post-clerical Iran could play dynamic roles in their neighborhoods.
Looking into the distance at countries that are of major interest today, the study projected that Afghanistan will remain an essentially tribally centered nation facing continual conflict.
The future of Iraq does not look much better. The study sees internal ethnic, sectarian and tribal rivalries continuing, so that by 2025, "the government in Baghdad could still be an object of competition among the various factions seeking foreign aid and pride of place, rather than a self-standing agent of political authority, legitimacy, and economic policy."
Pakistan is described as a "wildcard," with its northwestern territories remaining "poorly governed" and cross-border activities continuing to cause instability in nearby areas of Afghanistan.
