In the Year Twenty Twenty-five

One of the charges of the National Intelligence Council is to make predictions about the shape of things to come. Yesterday, they stopped peering into the crystal ball long enough to give us their appraisal of the world of 2025.

U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected on Thursday. ...

The U.S. dollar's role as the world's major currency would weaken to become a "first among equals," the report said. ...

A world with multiple power centers has been less stable than one with a single or two rival superpowers, and there was a growing potential for conflict, the report said.

Global warming will be felt, and water, food and energy constraints may fuel conflict over resources.

The predictions aren't all bad. On the energy track, the NIC feels that we'll be well on the way to implementing clean, non-fossil fuel based energy for both electricity and transportation -- though not so far along the path that we avoid conflicts over remaining energy resources. They also see a declining roll for organizations like al-Qaeda, though overall terrorism will still be a factor.

But the central points of the NIC assessment are that 2025 will see a world where the US has declining influence, where free market economies are losing out to state-controlled capitalism, where democracy is imperiled, and an unstable set of political rivals skirmish over dwindling resources. If you're planning on adding Mad Max shoulder pads to your ensemble, it's hard to blame you.

But the oddest thing about the NIC's 2025 assessment? Just four years ago, they did another one in which they determined that: America would continue to be dominant both economically and militarily, democracy was on the march, and we were heading toward a rosy future. So what happened?

Well, you've heard of the butterfly effect, right? That's the bit where small effects now can have large effects in  distance time or place. Just think of this as the Republican Buzzard Effect, wherein large scale incompetence and massive bad decisions now turn into even more massive catastrophic screw ups for the future.