[sutekidane]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

Well your "prediction" is one possible outcome of many. I don't think you can really predict with any confidence that this is what will happen.
I mean there are so many things to consider...
How will a growing middle class and an increasingly marginalized working class react in the face of authoritarian rule?
How will the dwindling of fossil fuels effect that willingness of governments to maintain energy guzzling military machines required to project their influence globally in the next hundred or so years?
How will the "middle powers" react to Chinese and American competition for strategic influence? And what will the effect be? (I mean it's not going to be like the cold war where middle powers will align themselves with one or the other... Middle powers in the current International political climate are actually in a position to play the USA and China off against each other for their OWN political gain which is what is happening already in South East Asia).
Bottom line is that I think you're getting way ahead of yourself...

"One possible outcome" is a correct way to put it, admittedly it is one of the worst possible scenario. But when contingency planning is done, it is usually done so that it can address the worst possible scenario. Future is uncertain, no one can predict what will happen, but that does not mean that we should not make contingency plans for the possible scenario.

Now let's address the points you have raised:

- democratization of China is a much debated subject, the RAND paper from 1998 goes into it in much detail. My personal view is that Chinese civil society and netizens are quite united in their consensus, that as long as the Communist Party keep producing results, they will not rock the boat, considering the collective self-interest of the Chinese nation, but the moment they start failing and stop producing the stellar growth rates of 9-11%, the communist party will be in trouble and there will be a period of instability during which either the party structure will become truly democratic instead of its current nepotism based system or there will be the ushering in of a multi-party democratic era for China. Since India already has a more "democratic" structure in name and function, this may give India the opportunity to catch up with China a little. But for China it will be just another phase in the evolution of their nation, after the fall of the Manchu Qing dynasty and the rise of Han Chinese self rule and it will not affect the eventual geopolitical outcomes with regards to China's prospect as the preeminent global power

- about Fossil fuels, China is in a good position, because of the rift caused by GWOT between Muslim world and the US, so now many Muslim nations are hedging their bets with China. Pakistan's nuke development had Chinese help as well as Saudi funding, some say that Saudi's have some secret pacts with Pakistan about the usage of nukes, or at least having a nuke umbrella in a regional threat perspective. So the GWOT has been a disaster for the US on many respects, this loss of Muslim confidence and trust being just one of the more vital ones, who are now hoping for a new rising China that can provide some balance. With Central Asian Caspian gas and oil within the reach of its pipe lines, Russian far east within easy reach, Pakistan and Saudi's getting ever closer and isolated and pariah Iran which is already pretty close - Chinese are quite well positioned I should say. If Obama keeps on with his GWOT carry over crusade from Bush, then it will continue to make Chinese position better every passing day

- middle powers like Japan, Russia, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia etc. are 1/5 to 1/10 the size of China or India, so they are no match, playing off can work for a few years, but soon they will be totally over powered as the rate of rise is much faster for these two largest nations. To counter this situation, I have proposed in this thread that US should lead some further integration of nation states in the style of EU, such as:

- US, EU, Russian speaking countries, ANZ
- African Union
- Latin American Union including Mexico
- Turkic Union with Turkey + Central Asian 5 stans + possibly South Asian 2 stans + Mongolia
- expanded GCC to cover all Arab nations in Asian continent except Iraq
- Iraq+Iran in a shia group
- a new greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere that will cover all nations South and East of China and India

So when these nations are united into bigger units and can co-operate under US leadership, they will be able to withstand the divide and rule machinations and resource exploitation by ever more powerful two largest nations. In a more united and developed Latin America and Africa with local creation of jobs, this will also work to stem migrations from these places to US and EU respectively.

Tea Party groups are misguided and are being used by the corporations. Southern Democrats moving over to the Republican party (Lincoln's party of abolition), during Johnson's civil rights era, that started with Goldwater and finished with Reagan's election was a great loss for the Democratic Party. American Corporations used religious revivalism of the Evangelical movement to create a voting base for the Republican Party to compensated for their loss after the new deal and glass steagal act and indocrinated the religious right with Ayn Rand's (a died in the wool atheist) small govt. and anti-tax liberterianism, which is a contradiction of the highest order if you think about "what would Jesus do" who fought all his life to serve the poor, the sick and the downtrodden.

In my personal opinion, as long as Democratic party continue to be enslaved by the ultra liberal causes such as same sex marriage and abortion rights, then it will not be able to bring a good portion of the more sensible religious people back in their camp.

The problem of religiosity is not just a problem in the US, it is a global or a human problem. Along with the importance of size of nations, this is another of my theories/hypothesis, I call it Historical Continuity, that nations or societies cannot be forced to accept what they are not ready for, it takes time and evolution with slow and voluntary changes, whether it is racial integration or more liberal ideas.

So in my proposed roadmap, the US can have a New American Century, if it can take up the following projects:

- start a Democratic version of the neo-con so it is possible to bring back as many of the religious independents and conservatives to their side, by dumping the liberal causes for the time being and make them states rights issues, to be decided by individual states
- then use the main ethnic sections of the US population to organize the global population, the Euro-Americans to be integrated with other European populations as described above, while the Hispanic-Americans would lead the effort to create the Latin American Union, African Americans would lead the effort to create a stronger unified African Union (a dream of Malcolm X), Arabs and Asians also playing their respective part in their corner of the world
- the only people that would be left alone would be Chinese and Indian Americans who has to be won over to the US side, as their fate and future is now more tied with USA and its future

Now, this is what I would call "getting way ahead of" myself, if I may use these words. So rather than thinking in terms of WTO or NAFTA, which never considered planetary management when they were designed, in my opinion, we should start looking at things from a new planetary perspective, to ensure a smooth planetary geopolitical evolution, without any threat from upstarts like China or India, who are not ready for global leadership, in my personal opinion. In this new paradigm, trade has to be the primary strategic weapon to achieve desired results. So corporations and their profit motive should not decide what a trade regime should be, but it should be the working people and their true representative who will decide what trade should take place to protect the interest of each individual nation state or group of nation states, as well as to protect global stability, ensure a smooth evolutionary transition into the future and thus avoid another World War which will be catastrophic for humanity.