Earth Equity News

'The Rise of Everyone Else'. By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, WashPost, September 10, 2008. "An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy. The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will 'be the least significant' asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because 'nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force.' Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed 'Global Trends 2025' [PDF, 7 pp] report that assesses how international events could affect the U.S. in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next [U.S. president] early in the new year... The trend is described in the new book 'The Post-American World' [W.W. Norton, 2008, 288 pp, $25.95], in which author Fareed Zakaria writes that the shift is not about the 'decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.'"