Great Satan's Contested Primacy

Hyper Puissance!

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments  unleashes a sweet killer reportage about blindly accepting Fall and Decline defeatism - mainly because any end to Great Satan's primacy is far from certain. (pdf)

"Ideas about American decline can cut two ways. They can predispose policymakers to pursue
policies that actually accelerate decline or they can spark leaders to pursue courses of action that renew American economic vitality in order to reverse decline."

Tripping through the BRIC list (Brazil, Russia, India and China) via the Global Trends 2025 piece, Great Satan is actually a constant fixture in any future world plots and plans - totally unchangeable 


The Cliffnotes devastate declinists


1. Great Satan is the only advanced country in the world with viable demographics. By 2030, all our major rivals, save India, will be declining, with ever-larger numbers of retirees and a shrinking labor force. By 2050 Germany, Japan and South Korea could approach having twice as many people over 65 per capita as the U.S. By then, the U.S. will have 400 million people, which may be more than the entire EU and three times the population of our former archrival Russia.

2. In terms of energy resources, the U.S., combined with Canada, is the second richest region in the world after the Middle East. The country possesses vast resources of natural gas, about 90 years' worth. Given America's past profligacy, the country could derive considerable savings with even modest conservation efforts.

3. America remains the world's agricultural superpower, with the most arable land on the planet. With another 3 billion people expected on the planet by 2050, the U.S. should enjoy a continuing boom in food exports.

4. Military power matters now and in the future. We are not living in a Star Trek future of earthly harmony. The U.S. leads in military technology and, yes, our martial spirit remains a positive factor. 

For all missteps, America's military has achieved her strictly war-fighting missions--in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a host of smaller conflicts--over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, Europe and Japan have taken themselves out of the military game, and it will be decades before China will be ready for a head-to-head challenge and even with a dozen Georgias under her belt, Russia is still scarlet lettered by her Grozny battles.

Concluding

"...It seems likely that US predominance could continue in a unipolar system, albeit one where US hegemony is less clear than it was in the 1990s. In this iteration, however, American primacy will be more constrained by US domestic and international economic limitations and more contested by
regional powers. 

"...China will pose the biggest challenge in Asia, but potential new nuclear powers like Iran and North Korea will also create difficult questions about US extended deterrence in Northeast Asia and Southwest Asia. Other troublesome challengers may arise, including Venezuela in the Western Hemisphere (particularly if it aligns with a nuclear-armed Iran).

Pic - "Revolutionary Hyper Puissance" (pdf)