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It seems to me that the last 2 years have seen a critical change in global power shifts.
The West is in economic decline. It is pretty much owned by Arabs and the Chinese with massive debt levels, high unemployment rates and economic sluggishness. In many ways the West has been in economic decline since the 1970's but it seems to have been accelerated in the last decade (moronic property boom aside).
It's still pushing it's military power but this is a bit of a last hurrah. The West lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and most Western militaries will be paired to the bone in the next 10 years. Libya was a sideshow that focused on the lowest tree of the branch and is turning out to have just launched another country towards failed state syndrome.
The EU seems to be heading towards failure due to multispeed economies, inability to agree on future progress (e.g. EU Constitution), immigration issues and greater demands for sovereignty from member states.
NATO operations in Libya also showed a lot of division between the European partners and also the complete reliance on the US for power projection (e.g. air refuelling aircraft, intelligence gathering, Electronic Warfare, close air support etc).
The up and coming states are also rathe quiet internationally. China is focused on development and money. It's very much a soft power player and prefers to work behind the scenes. This is actually a common approach throughout Asia.
India and Brazil are both focused inwards in terms of modernising their economies and closer regions.
The real bizarre twist is the resurgence of the Middle East as the centre of the world:
1. Turkey has turned it's face away from Europe and is starting to look towards the East. It's economy is now the 18th largest on the planet.
And it's flaunting it's muscles in the Mediterranean.
2. United Arab Emirates and Qatar are expanding their political and military might by utilising their massed wealth. Saudi Arabia and Iran are still major powers.
3. The US and UK seem to have been replaced in the region by a variety of powers.
The Westerners seem to be caught with their pants down in terms of the Arab spring, resurgent Turkey and crumbling regional support for Israel (now even the Egyptians are turning back on Israel).
Furthermore international organisations such as the UN, World Bank, WTO and IMF are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The WTO has not had any major successes in a long time and many countries are now pursuing bilateral trade agreements instead of multilateral ones.
The UN has always been irrelevant but it seems to have had its irrelevance reemphasised by Western unilateral action (e.g. Kosovo, Iraq) or perverting UN resolutions to meet Western objectives (e.g. Libya).
The new powers don't care much for using the UN to condone such activity and prefer to shut it down where possible.
Dead1's predictions:
Greater regionalisation
We've got a whole swag of up and coming regional powers from Brazil to India to Russia to Turkey to UAE etc.
Unlike the superpowers they don't have global reach. But with declining Western influence, they are being more active in their own neighbourhoods.
This may cause more global friction (always the case when you have multiple competitors.
China - the quiet superpower
China will probably become a super power. But I suspect it will be a quiet one (unlike the violence prone USA, British Empire and USSR - last Chinese war was in 1979 against Vietnam). Chinese prefer diplomacy and utilising financial incentives to gain power.
They refuse to get involved in humanitarian conflicts (e.g. Kosovo, Somalia) or ideological conflicts (e.g. War on Terror) due to the fact that this sort of conflict delegitimises the Communist Party's own power.
Decline of international agencies
Given the above and the decline of the West I suspect the international agencies will continue to decline in power and influence. They will linger as toothless tigers.
The UN will act as a brake on legitimate warfare (i.e. UN sanctioned conflict). With so many players, it will be difficult to get any consensus.
Decline of NATO and EU
This has started to happen as discussed above. I think these two organisations will decline in power and influence.
Already there have been splits between the major NATO members on what NATO should do.
And some NATO powers have been pursuing unilateral/bilateral expansion of roles - e.g. strengthening of Franco-British military ties and unilateral Turkish actions planned in the Mediterranean.
With the gutting of Western military power (has already started and will continue to 2020s according to current plans), NATO will be more of a toothless tiger.
The EU will continue to decline as European economies decline and as resistance to increased power in Brussels continues. I think they expanded the EU too quickly both in terms of members and mandate.
The United States
I suspect the US will continue to decline.
In some ways I expect the US to take a more isolationist approach as time progresses.
Reasons for this are:
1. Decreased US economic power - inability to fund massive military. Already there is talk of dismantling large chunks of the US military and there's even hints that the main power projection tools, the aircraft carriers, will start to be reduced in number.
2. US reliance on Chinese/Arab debt - this will give greater political power to these countries. As such the US will be less likely to act against the interests of these countries.
As Hilary Clinton told Australian idiot foreign minister, Kevin Rudd in reference to China: "What do you say to your banker?" (He moronically stated that you go to war with them).
Thoughts guys?
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