There's been a fair amount of
attention paid to a
report published by the National Intelligence Center (as Dana Priest describes, "the CIA director's think tank"). The excitement surrounding the report comes from the following passage, which admits something we have been saying for a while--Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the new breeding ground for terror:
The al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq. We expect that by 2020 al-Qa'ida will have been superceded by similarly inspired but more diffuse Islamic extremist groups, all of which will oppose the spread of many aspects of globalization into traditional Islamic societies.
Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are "professionalized" and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself.
But I decided to read the report (which is not classified) for a different reason. I thought it'd provide a good sense of how well the CIA is really assessing our role in the world. I'm not entirely sure its blind spots aren't the result of disinformation rather than true blind spots. But at the very least, the report presents an interesting picture of what the CIA says it knows.
The report, "Mapping the Global Future" tries to anticipate what the state of the world will be in 2020. It was actually put together with the help of a lot of NGOs and academics, which I hoped might mitigate some of the CIA's blind spots. But I thought there were still some pretty important ones.
The report basically says China and India will become important global players (and possibly Brazil and Indonesia). Globalization will still be an important force--but as India's and China's economies grow, it will be decreasingly "American" in flavor. There will be new challenges to governance, mostly identity-based movements that span nation-states. And things will continue to be insecure, both in economic and strategic terms. But through it all, the US will still exert a dominant influence: "The role of the United States will be an important variable in how the world is shaped, influencing the path that states and nonstate actors choose to follow."
It was in this last question--the role of the US--that I found the greatest shortcomings of the report. (This may be because of the CIA's role as an international intelligence agency, but geez--don't these guys read the papers?) It is all premised on the notion that the US would remain the most powerful country in terms of military, economic, and technological power. In general, I agree with that claim (although I'm less sure the US will remain technologically superior, as I'll get to). But it extrapolates from there to suggest that the US will remain the guarantor of financial and political security--that it will remain a sole superpower. I'm less sure of that.
For starters, the report never even considers how the US is going to pay to remain the sole superpower. It never mentions the US' consumer and government debt crises. It doesn't mention the US' balance (or lack thereof) of trade. If you can't explain that, I don't know how you can assume the US will remain the sole superpower--because you've not provided for the necessary preconditions. I can't even imagine how you can argue that the global economy will grow by 80% unless you can explain how we will transition from US consumers serving as the engine of the world economy to Asian consumers serving as that engine. Or explain to me who is going to pay the American consumer's bills--because they're surely not paying for it.
The report hints at certain problems with the Asian consumer model. It admits, for example, that the middle class won't constitute the same percentage of the Chinese and Indian economy as they make up in the developed nations. Since there are so many of them, the report suggests, there will still be enough of them to fuel global growth. Perhaps--although this in and of itself introduces huge questions about the long-term stability of globalization that the report doesn't answer (when your middle class is only 40% of your population, how sustainable is a consumer society?). Also, these new members of the Chinese and Indian middle class won't reach the income levels of developed nations until 2050. That's okay, the report says, because once a person has $3000, he can buy a car. Sure--lots of people in India and China who make $3000 a year are buying cars right now. But the second the central government of China wants to slow growth, it cuts back credit, and all those car sales disappear, especially in the lower parts of the market (cars in China aren't really cheaper then they are here--think about that on $3000 a year). The Chinese and Indian middle class can less afford a lot of the purchases they make than Americans can--and the Americans have run up record debt. Somehow, we have to get from where we are now--where Wal-Mart's sales are falling unless it discounts heavily--to where a bunch of Chinese and Indian managers are buying those Wal-Mart goods instead of American workers.
The other major question about America's superpower role the report doesn't answer is how its going to power its continued growth (or for that matter, how India and China are going to power their own growth). Yes, the report addresses energy, repeatedly. But it basically says there's enough out there, even assuming petroleum becomes more important in our consumption. All concerns about Peak Oil aside, I'm sure there is enough oil under the earth's crust to keep us going for another 16 years. But it's going to get ugly, quickly. And all of the assumptions--about increasing globalization, the rise of China and India, the continuing importance of the US--all of that depends on ready access to oil. We're already at war in Iraq. Does the CIA not think this is going to get worse? Does the CIA not think that all the players courting Iran (everyone but us, basically) are just wooing an unlimited supply of oil? Has the CIA missed China's attempts to woo energy suppliers around the globe? At some point, China is going to ask someone to dance that we believe we're already dancing with--and things will get ugly.
Which brings me to the issue of climate change--or environmental issues more generally. Again, the report treats climate change. But never is it seriously considered a threat to global stability (even though DOD has determined that global warming may contribute to instability in this world). Moreover, the report depicts the US--for at least 4 of those 16 years under the guidance of Mr. Clean the Skies and Leave no Tree Behind Bush--as the probable leader in environmental issues. "Among other reasons for optimism, participants noted that the world is ready and eager for US leadership and that new multilateral institutions are not needed to address this issue." Sure, a lot of people would love if the US would start participating in Kyoto and other global environmental initiatives. But if they're holding their breath, they're more likely to avoid ingesting mercury emissions then they are to get the leadership they desire. I can't believe the CIA expects this country to take leadership on climate change issues.
One thing that utterly fascinated--and scared--me is that the report doesn't even consider the role of religious fundamentalism in the US. Doesn't even consider it. The report repeatedly considers Islamic fundamentalism. But when it makes brief mention of evangelical Christian "activists," it only imagines them in Latin America.
Many religious adherents--whether Hindu nationalists, Christian evangelicals in Latin America, Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, or Muslim radicals--are becoming "activists " They have a worldview that advocates change of society, a tendency toward making sharp Manichaean distinctions between good and evil, and a religious belief system that connects local conflicts to a larger struggle.
Perhaps the CIA expects the GOP to experience grand reversals at the polls--but last I check, we had evangelical activists running the house and threatening our separation of powers.
Perhaps because the report ignores the role of increasing Christian activism, it dismisses the possibility that the US will lose its technological edge. The report traces a lot of the new directions in technological research. Things like biotech, which our opposition to stem cell research has put us at a distinct disadvantage on. Nanotechnology, computers. In an America of increasing xenophobia and religious fundamentalism, in a country where we can't conduct scientific debates without some Christian talkshow host accusing us of liberal bias, where we can't even teach evolution in our schools, how are we going to retain our technological advantage? The report just dismisses such concerns:
While these signs are ominous, the integrating character of globalization and the inherent strengths of the US economic system preclude a quick judgment of an impending US technological demise. By recent assessments, the United States is still the most competitive society in the world among major economies. In a globalized world where information is rapidly shared--including cross-border sharing done internally by multinational corporations--the creator of new science or technology may not necessarily be the beneficiary in the marketplace.
We'll just steal the technology, I guess. Global flows of information and whatnot.
But that's how this report goes, a seeming limitless faith that the US will retain its leadership position, contrary to all likelihood. In one scenario (unfortunately called the Pax Americana), the US becomes the leader on environmental issues because, well, Europe just comes around:
For a while Europeans looked like they were trying to isolate the US and insist on Washington playing by US rules. But that was never really going to happen and European leaders did not factor in their own publics' increasing resentment of China's and other developing countries' flaunting of environmental standards. Kyoto was suddenly out and a new framework had to be thought up with the Americans inside.
I mean, sure, the US may never negotiate on Kyoto--but suggesting the Europeans will come to the table out of resentment over developing countries?
Or in the same scenario, the US gains power because it acts as a stabilizing influence in the Middle East.
Worries about energy supplies have also redounded in America's favor. A stable Middle East is a must for China on energy grounds just as it is for Europe. The US is increasingly a balancer between the Shia and the Sunnis.
Last I checked, China was negotiating for itself quite well in the Middle East, probably because it wasn't dropping bombs on civilians. I don't understand how the US is going to resolve problems with its bombs when there are other powers willing to negotiate in good faith.
These just aren't rational scenarios. In scenario after scenario, when America begins to lose power it just magically regains it.
Now, I don't know if the NIC means this seriously--or if it just wants to project an image of strength. Or perhaps this is just the shape of the new intelligence under Porter Goss. But it concerns me mightily that when trying to anticipate the possibilities of the next twenty years, the NIC doesn't even question its basic assumptions of the role of the US in the world.
Cross posted at BOPnews.com.