Whither the Future?

We've just been through a total of 4 elections this year, and much of the space in this blog has been devoted to commentary and observations of the various players on the political scenes in both Canada and the United States.

Now that we are past that rather intense cycle of short term speculation and commentary, it's time to turn back towards the future and start asking what's next for the world. Many things have changed, and yet many aspects of our world have changed only negligibly. How the 'chess board' of world affairs is likely to play out now is probably more important than ever before. What follows is highly speculative, and is an interpretation of the world stage as this writer sees it.

Changes:

1. George W. Bush has been elected to a second term as President. Since he has no mandate to worry about being re-elected, this frees him considerably from whatever constraints he may have felt before.
2. Condoleezza Rice has been named to succeed Colin Powell as Secretary of State in the US. This will considerably alter the diplomatic face the United States presents on the world stage.
3. Yasser Arafat has died. If nothing else, this will change the world's perception of the situation in Israel/Palestine.
4. China is emerging as a major growth hotspot in the world economy, and it is also beginning to flex its muscles as a political power on the world stage.
5. Saudi Arabia's King remains on the scene, but that doesn't mean that Saudi Arabia is that stable.

Here's my current scenario for what I expect to see unfold over the next few years:

1. Iraq will remain unstable, likely on the verge of civil war for the forseeable future. Recent American/Iraqi military actions in Fallujah have likely moved the resistance elsewhere in the country.

There are many implications to this, but the most important to note is the fact it will keep US military resources tied up in the region for a long time - far longer than I think that GWB and Co. have any concept of.

2. In spite of recent agreements to "cease" aspects of the Nuclear Programs, Iran will continue to develop its nuclear capabilities. It would be naive in the extreme to believe that Iran doesn't already have the basic capability to build and deliver a nuclear warhead or two. Unlike the situation in Iraq after the 1990/91 Gulf War, Iran has been more or less unfettered for the past 10 years, and has been quite active. They are also a significant economic and political force in the Middle East - not a country to be trifled with by any means.

3. Regardless of who is elected to replace Yasser Arafat, the Israeli/Palestinian problem will continue to be a major sore spot. I expect that after the Palestinian elections in January, 2005 there will be a brief honeymoon period where some efforts at peace are made. These will fail for some reason or another after 12-18 months. After that, you can expect to see the Israelis return to their brutal methods of occupation/suppression, and the Palestinians to return to suicide bombings, rocket attacks and whatever else they can think up to make Israel's life difficult.

4. Although the China/Taiwan situation continues to evolve, the fact that China needs access to western technologies to develop means that China will be relatively unwilling to engage in outright military action. China will, however, be quite willing to engage in economic and diplomatic persuasion. (China apparently holds an awful lot of US Treasury bill debt - in fact the number is rumored to surprisingly close to the size of this year's US deficit...)

Now that I've laid out some broad aspects of the global picture, especially where the Middle East and China are concerned, consider the following:

i) With Colin Powell out of the Secretary of State role, there is nobody in GWB's cabinet with any real-world experience in the lines of combat and military operations. Further, Powell has acted as a moderating influence both within the Bush cabinet, but also on the world stage - often soothing fears/discomfort of many world leaders. Neither Bush, nor Rice have ever shown so much as an ounce of sense when it comes to pushing their hard-line agenda forward. I expect tact to be about the last thing emerging from the White House.

ii) With Bush unfettered by worries about being re-elected, I expect he will become much more aggressive, buoyed by his apparent success playing "cowboy justice" on the world stage. Rice will not be an effective moderating influence in this regard. This likely means that US efforts to control Iraq will become more militaristic, and ultimately totalitarian - making any form of election in that country a sham at best, and a pretext for open civil war at worst.

iii) These two factors make it quite likely that Iraq will teeter on, or descend into civil war over the next few years. American and British forces will be pulled into the fray whether they like it or not.

iv) China and Iran are making significant economic deals, which will ultimately make China a player in the Middle East mix as well. Given that the Chinese economy is on the rise, and the US economy is in the doldrums, that positions China to emerge as something of a power broker in the region.

v) While Iran may be actively funding some of the Iraqi resistance (I can neither prove nor disprove this assertion, but it seems quite reasonable that some of the resistance is being backed tacitly from Tehran), it may find that it is in Tehran's interests to destabilize Saudi Arabia further. This may be accomplished by simply waiting for the current King to die of old age, and then encouraging the factional lines to become more polarized in the aftermath of his death. Regardless, I fully expect the veneer of stability in Saudi Arabia to crumble fairly soon. If the resulting government in Saudi Arabia winds up being more sympathetic to Iran than to the US, overt moves may be made against an "occupied" Iraq to push the US out of the region.

vi) What of China? you may ask. My guess is that when Iran starts to flex its local muscles, the US will start harassing the Iranian LNG shipments to China, on the pretext of some kind of economic sanctions. (Nuclear threat will be the most probable allegation)

These Chinese will respond to this by calling in the monies loaned to the US in the form of Treasury bills. In doing so, China will put the US in the position of "pay up or your credit rating goes to hell).

vii) The factions in the US administration that happen to believe in an apocalypse prefaced by war in Israel will continue to pursue policies that are quite aggressive in the region simply because they believe it will fulfil some prophecy or another.

On the whole, I expect the next four years to be extremely messy on the world stage. A Bush unfettered by worries about re-election will be quite willing to engage in a very hard-line policy on the world stage. This will alienate a lot of nations, and will leave the Middle East a region further bound by tribalism, civil wars and foreign occupation. China will emerge (possibly with Russia?) as an economic power with the clout to keep the US from spreading its aggression elsewhere in the world, but because of Chinese reliance on access to US technology, their ability to act as a moderating influence on the US will be limited. I fully expect the Iraq situation to continue to fester for the forseeable future, and if the US is foolish enough to open a conflict on a second major front (e.g. Iran), we will see the American military machine in serious trouble - to a degree that will likely make Vietnam look like a walk in the park.

More optimistically, Ms. Rice could surprise me and turn out to be a moderating influence on Bush and the other bellicose brutes that surround him. (But I personally give that a very small chance of being the case - slightly better than my odds of winning Lotto 6/49)