EXCLUSIVE: Intel panel foresees lesser U.S. role

There is a clear inflection point in this article that impacts both the “influences” and the timing that the author’s talk about. That inflection point is centered around the transition to alternative sources of energy. It is assuming that the technology will be there by 2025. This is an aggressive assumption and contentious based on their original premise that the world will be multipolar and Barack Obama and the U.S. will be able to have a significant influence on it, especially after assuming our so-called decreased economic and military influence. Their assumption is aggressive because the technology may be in place by 2025, but the infrastructure, support and maintenance will not be mature enough to move from carbon based energy. It took over 100 years for the world to mature the economic, cultural, political and military processes we use today based on carbon energy. To blindly assume that one U.S. presidential administration with a maximum of eight years in office is going to reduce that time by 75% in the transition to alternative sources that have not been created yet is high risk and aggressive, not stimulative. Based on the current economic, military and political “multipolar” environment around the world, it is also a linear thinking. Just as they could not predict the impact of linear long term thinking with regard to poor risk management on the current economic brown out, these projections could also create a false sense of security. With the complexity associated with this prediction, and it is a prediction, the foresight horizon for the assumptions should not go out past the limit of the key derivative, President Obama’s first term with significantly deteriorating values from there out. It is contentious because at the beginning, Russia is the only energy independent economic power. Economies are controlled by energy. A country cannot produce wealth without it. Since Russia is energy independent, it will work to slow the transition to alternative sources economically, politically, culturally and militarily. It has already used energy intimidation as an economic weapon in Europe with its natural gas monopoly. It is also placing its military at what could be called energy choke points in Georgia and Venezuela. Russia will not lose its economic advantage. The area unlimited global events that could occur and act as exponential multipliers on economies to enhance Russia’s energy intimidation influence and drag down the energy transition process (threatening the Straits of Hormuz, using influence to defer carbon energy away from U.S. during the transition...). There seems to be more cap and trade influence here than national security. The NIC should also provide a validation statement about their previous assumptions in order to put a boundary around their credibility or quit making social engineering predictions.

And, Thomas puts the best face on it all to make it palatable for us ordinaries. More harshly, America is bound for third world status. How would we live as a third world country? At the very minium, countries throughout the world would love us and ridicule us behind our backs as oppossed to, as they say "hate us" now and admire us behind our backs. Obama and the left got it alll wrong, but they are driving the train.

This forecast is a "best case" scenario if the U.S. controls its budget deficit. Otherwise, our economic capability by then will be crippled by an exploding debt, the servicing of which will be a huge drain on the nation's resources. Without economic power, military superiority can't last much longer beyond that. A crippling of economic power then limiting U.S. military capabilities could make America even less of a player in world affairs than this report predicts. Hopefully, this next president will select staff members who have a big picture outlook and who would consider what effects their domestic, military, budgetary, and economic policy decisions will have on the America of 2020 or 2025.