Future Superpowers?

[Don Corleone]

I think China's going to face some more political upheaval in the years to come. I don't think it will be a revolution or anything so dramatic as that, but I can't imagine the current system will last significantly longer. The Chinese people know the party screwed up with SARS & a few other things. A few more of those, and they're going to start weighing their options. Watch Hong Kong/ Guangzhou area. That's generally where 'new tides of change' start.

All that being said, the Chinese are incredibly industrious, and fairly adaptive. They will probably grow the most in terms of relative economic position in the years to come.

Again, I stress, I don't want to make any predictions, I'm just saying that I see flys in the ointment of any scenario you predict. Who knows, maybe in 50 years, we'll be to a 1 world government finally?

[Kagemusha]

Well sayd Don Corleone.The future is not yet ours to see

[doc_bean]

The US will most likely remain number 1, 10 years isn't that long, and I don't see anything that can really pull it down.

China is an interesting case, they have lots of highly educated workers, but they are trapped in traditional systems. A chinese girl told me that your education doesn't determine your wage in China, it's the family you're born into, but getting a good education, especially abroad, does help. The Chinese seem to be willing to invest a lot in their education, even when they are older. If they can break with tradition and get some decent government, they definitely have the potential to become an economic superpower.


When it comes to the EU, I have to agree with Don Corleone as long as we're not willing to work harder, and as long as the governments support this lifestyle (different rant, maybe another time) we won't be able to keep up. The Union also seems unable to deliver where it really matters, on economical issues like the EU patent.

I suspect the new countries will have the biggest potential, and we'll see the biggest growth there. I also think Britain will benefit, they don't have so many deadlock social systems, they can have a flexible economy thanks to the pound and they aren't focused on agriculture as much. France will suffer the most, Spain stands to face some problems since they too are so dependant on agriculture. Italy and Greece have always had problems, and we've thrown a lot of money towards them, it won't et better when we stop. Belgium has a lot of issues of its own, besides economical problems which i won't go into, there is a large separatist feeling building up in Flanders, I have no idea to what this might lead, although I wouldn't predict the end of Belgium just yet.


India should not be underestimate, we are already outsourcing a lot of work their, not just manufacturing either.

Japan will probably reinstate its army at some point in the future, but their economy is still suffering, hard to tell what will happen.

[ah_dut]

I don't hear Brazil being mentioned enough imho...maybe not as a superpower as such but most certainantly an economic powerhouse that may well rival old europe in the future if not beat it. It has a massive amount of resources and so does Russia, in a world so dependant on many of these resources, they may well become very powerful.

I feel that China will become very powerful but imo never world no.1. The economy is not built in such a way in my opinion. The reason is a lot of China's money is based on export and at that, low value added exports. China's big neopotism problem has been touched on briefly here but it is damn true. Most of my friends who are in their 20s got their jobs in Honk Kong at family buisnesses because they couldn't get a job elsewhere...

[Al Khalifah]

The Papacy.

Through careful use of excommunications and crusades.

[mercian billman]

I don't hear Brazil being mentioned enough imho...maybe not as a superpower as such but most certainantly an economic powerhouse that may well rival old europe in the future if not beat it. It has a massive amount of resources and so does Russia, in a world so dependant on many of these resources, they may well become very powerful.

I think Brazil has more upside than Russia. I don't think Brazil will become a super power, but I think they will become the major regional power of South America. Militarily Brazil is modernizing and increasing the size of their Air Force and Navy and if they purchase and Aircraft Carrier they will be able to project power anywhere in Latin America and the Carribean.

I don't see Brazil and the US opposing each other though, it's likely that both countries will maintain a good relationship into the future.

At the very least Brazil has a lot of hot supermodels like Allesandra Ambrosia and probably the best MMA fighters in the world.

[bmolsson]

The middle african empire will rule the world in the far future.

[Watchman]

You know, it's a bit of a question mark if being a "superpower" (by the standards of the time; remembers, Sweden was an European superpower at one time...) is actually worth it. It gets damnably expensive to maintain right quick and nobody likes you except for opportunistic reasons, there's no shortage of ambitious wonks wanting to get in your shoes, and most of all - it never lasts forever and the fall can be quite bitter.

Assorted European countries were essentially the world superpowers from about the 18th century onwards. They expended unbelievable amounts of lives and money to become and remain so, and on the side screwed about everyone else.

Then they threw it away in two bouts of subcontinental fratricide whose record number of dead AFAIK still stands. The convuslive attempts to hold onto rebellious colonies and the remnants of rapidly disintegrating empires - Indochina and Algeria as the two most notorious examples - only resulted in more corpses, more expenses and serious embarassements.

Sweden fought itself into a regional superpower status in the mid-1600s in the Thirty Years' War and then spent the rest of the century in incessant wars to enlarge or simply hold its gains. By the second decade of the next century it had exhaousted its economy and population and its empire was a wreck that assorted competitors would slowly gobble up withing the next hundred years. They've actually done a lot better since they made something of a national consensus decision to stay the heck away from any wars that don't directly invade their homeland and concentrate on getting ahead and build a working society instead.

The Ottoman Empire made itself the master of Middle East and made a spirited, if probably futile from the start, attempt at kicking in the door of Christian Europe. Then it rotted from the inside, held together for centuries largely by adminstrational inertia, and eventually collapsed and lost all but its core areas in Asia Minor.

China, the regional superpower of Far East for some two millenia, spent much of its history in an odd cycle of new start, rapid growth, developement and expansion, mounting internal problems and collapse (usually accompanied by opportunistic foreign invasions that might or might not form the nucleus of the next cycle - the last dynasty was of Manchu origin...) - rinse and repeat again.

The Mongol Empire held together about two generations from Genghis' death; then it fractured into bickering successor states that were either eventually either overthrown by their subjects (like the Yuan in China) or absorbed by the expanding Imperial Russia.

Russia itself is something of a joke; even when the realm was going strong, the common people still suffered terribly...

The Spanish demolished entire emipres and shipped home gold and silver bullion beyond the dreams of avarice; within about two hundred years they were in serious decline, the kingdom's finances were shot, the Dutch fought them to a standstill, the English and French stole their gold, and eventually the whole Iberian peninsula would become almost a byword for backwardness, feebleness and stagnation.

The point ? Sic transit gloria mundi. Being at the top tends to be a crappy job and leaves a nasty aftertaste.

Now, as for the future.

The EU may try to become a superpower, although given fairly recent experiences individual member-states have of that gig will probably settle for being just a major player; at least I'd like to think we knew better than to repeat all the past stupidities and instead settled to trying to hold onto our current level of affluence. 'Course, you never know. The EU isn't good at being predictable; heck, it's built out of some five decades of piecemal and case-by-case improvisation and problem-solving, and has something of a tradition of not going quite the way its builders would perhaps have hoped (witness the current issues with the constitution for one example).

Unless something quite dramatic happens, Russia is Right Out. They've thus far shown no sings of shedding the longstanding tradition of crappy adminstration and generally inept management that has plagued the poor country for centuries, and at the rate it's going the national economy won't be measurably improving anytime soon. And frankly, it's a little difficult for a beggar to be a major player.

China is many folks' bet for the next "big one". It has the ambition, the demographics, the resources and the ambition to make a shot at it, and for all its problems it at the very least has a *tradition* of semi-decent adminstration. That's an important asset, and certainly the Party bigwigs have long since shown themselves reasonably adaptable - they started taking major "creative liberties" with their brand of Communism decades ago. Although autocracy and market economy aren't incompatible (just ask a whole bunch of right-winger dictators in the Third World; most were quite willing to let capital make profit as long as they got a cut...), it's a whole another thing if the increasingly prosperous, educated and informed Chinese population is willing to forever put up with the lack of political freedom - and if the friction between the rulers and the ruled reaches critical point, it could go either way.
But if they can work things out, well, China has about 20% of the world population inside its borders and Japan and EU - both major economic players - seem willing to deal with it partly just for the market opportunities; the country has the potential to become a major actor indeed.
'Course, they might also end up going Russia, collapse into civil strife or do something dreadfully stupid involving Taiwan (which is nigh certain to get them into a war with the US - a war that neither can really win but that's going to hurt the Chinese a lot worse)...

India is somewhat similar. While it has less regime-related issues it has a whole lot of social and religious ones, plus a borderline out-of-control population growth which is not a good thing. But if it can work out the more acute of its internal issues - the still-present caste problematique, the poverty and the Hindu-Muslim friction - and keep its economy standing (plus avoids doing something dreadfully stupid involving nukes, Pakistan and/or China) it ought to be able to get at least into the "major" status.

The USA is a bit of a question mark. On one hand it's the undisputed world superpower at the moment and certainly has the most military muscle around combined with no small amounts of ambition and willingness to throw its weight around for its own benefit. It is also the current "capital hub" of the world. On the other, it just might be showing symptoms of a superpower-in-decline - rising national debt, growing social problems and internal fragmentation, spiraling military expenditure (quite possibly beyond what it can afford) partly in incessant wars at least partly meant to maintain its status, partly owing to a massively bloated military-industrial complex, unreliable, possibly incompetent and possibly corrupt political leadership ("Bush" and "oil money" ought to ring a bell, and I'm sure there's more than enough relevant dirt on Clinton too...) prone to relying on populism for legitimacy, growing image and prestige problems in the eyes of other actors at least partially stemming from overly heavy-handed problem-solving and too blatant opportunism...
There's more than enough signs familiar from the decaying phase of previous empires and superpowers there, that's for sure. The US is functionally immune to foreign invasions, owing to a large part to having the world's biggest moat in the form of two oceans, so if it crumbles that will come from the inside - but then, that's what happened to pretty much every other superpower too...
Well, that's still a big if. And even if the US collapses I'm not going to even try guessing when it's going to happen - after all, AFAIK nobody in 1988 knew the USSR and the Cold War would be goners inside five years and twenty years earlier people tended to assume both would be around essentially forever...

[ShadesPanther]

India should not be underestimate, we are already outsourcing a lot of work their, not just manufacturing either.

Yes call centres. I get about 5 calls a day from them trying to sell me crap.

[kiwitt]

This is all crystal ball stuff, but I will give it a go.

In 10 Years: USA, China
In 20 Years: USA, China, EU (including Russia)
In 50 Years: USA, China, EU, India,
In 100+ Years: None, The concept of Nation-States is gone.

The next solution will be a similar to the US style of Federalism, with a government responsible for Planet based issues, Human Rights, environment, "rogue" states and Military forces. States will remain reponsible for their own Health, Education, Welfare, implementation of "Human Rights" laws, and collection of taxes for Local, State and Federal Goverments

[Samurai Waki]

lol.

I don't know, probably no superpowers in 25+ years... I think a lot of it will be a part of the current generations of people ahead, there will be a supposedly massive die-off of people within the next 30 years (with India as the largest exception). But countries like Japan... USA, European Countries, China (with it's exceedingly large male population) are just not producing people hardly... can't say this is a bad thing, but the ramifications of it will definantly affect world politics. In about 10 or so years the babyboomers will all have been retired or died, this makes up the largest percentage of citizens around the world, the economic impact of it will crash headfirst into my generation and we'll be about as poor as the people living in the generation previous to the babyboomers... if something is not changed in our government, Taxes will shoot through the roof because we'll have to pay for all of their social security... I see a general decline of economies throughout most of the 1st and 2nd World Countries, probably another great depression, and most 1st and 2nd World Economies will be about on par with each other.