Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis

摘要

Every four years, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) publishesrnan unclassified report projecting global trends over the next fifteen years.rnThe intent is to help incoming decisionmakers lift their sights above thernhere-and-now, focusing on longer-term trends likely to shape the strategic futurernof the United States. Inevitably, the NIC’s estimations find a far wider audience.rnThe most recent edition, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (hereinafterrnthe report), was published last November, and already has received substantialrnmedia attention both within the United States and overseas.1 Completing thernreport in the midst of the financial crisis required the NIC to make riskyrnpredictions on the world’s most volatile issues, from youth bulges and climaternchange to odds on a nuclear Iran, from whether the International MonetaryrnFund (IMF) might soon be spelled SWF for sovereign wealth funds in therndeveloping world, to a Russia (and a Gazprom) rising, even as the ground wasrnshifting day to day beneath its feet.