Since this is a site that concerns itself with historical trends, I feel somewhat obligated to make a set of predictions for the coming year. Below I will list five relatively specific predictions for 2010. Next year, we will return to analyze how accurate (or inaccurate) they were. Without further ado, here are the predictions:
1. Space Exploration
NASA will complete its remaining shuttle missions successfully, without accident, though with the possibility of one or two being postponed to 2011. Though it may receive a small increase, NASA will continue to suffer from budget problems, and plans to return to the moon will continue to be delayed. The prospects for the future of space exploration will not improve.
2. Afghanistan
Despite the recent increased troop deployment by the US, the War in Afghanistan is still essentially winding down towards its end. As predicted, with the new troops, the US also began discussing an exit strategy with specific dates. They have proposed that troops will begin withdrawal as soon as mid-2011. Of course, this date is likely to change, but we are now talking in terms of real dates.
I predict that during 2010 the majority of allies will maintain their existing troop deadlines, and others will begin to set specific dates for their disengagement. There will likely be no significant change in the strategic situation on the ground, though insurgents may be forced to move around to a larger degree during the US escalation. The Karzai government will continue to have large problems with corruption and its legitimacy will decline further.
3. Pakistan
The extreme unpopularity of the Zardari administration, combined with the recent repeal of the amnesty law that protected Zardari from corruption charges, will put increasing pressure on him to resign in 2010. I predict that during 2010 he will likely be eventually forced to resign, leading to an election, or he will accede to a new election himself. Nawaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) will almost certainly win any election as he is by far the most popular leader according to recent polls. I predict also that there will not be a return to military rule, as both Zardari and Sharif are opposed to this, and Sharif would not want to jeopardize his almost certain victory in the next election.
4. Israel
Several trends relating to Israel will continue in 2010. The global movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) will likely continue to grow and expand, become more mainstream, and will achieve more victories. It will also become much more clear that the two-state solution is dead, and there will be growing recognition and support for the idea of a binational (or one-state) solution.
5. Climate Change
New data will continue to show that climate change is accelerating faster than predicted a few years ago, and climate models will improve, providing a better (and bleaker) picture of our future. Despite this, there will be little progress in international UN-mediated talks following the failure in Copenhagen, and carbon emissions will continue to grow. These trends will combine in 2010, leading to a shift in strategy by third world nations and many Western environmental activists. Third world nations, especially in Africa, will begin to align themselves more closely to each other and begin to develop policies to put pressure on Western countries to reduce carbon emissions.
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3 comments:
Climate change has replaced Global Thermonuclear War as the chosen vehicle for a MAD (mutually assured destruction) existence. Capitalism IS economic warfare, by its very nature, so cooperation on anything is a moot point if there's no profit to be made by suicidal Corporations that'll continue to erode the very governmental institutions at whose troughs they fatten themselves.
The shockingly thorough job that the Miltonian madness has done in discrediting anything but the profit motif in any endeavor undertaken by anyone on the entire globe, has left a world bereft of anything but unapologetic, all-consuming greed to drive it. If that means the only place to drive it is over a cliff, which the Markets already proved in 2008, then that is in fact where they will take us.
Only now, as the governments' actions to date have shown, it's the confiscated taxes of the citizenry's that they will use as fuel for the continuation of Thelma and Louise economics. This time there'll be no Central Bank backstop, as it's already been deployed, only instead of to change things, to rev them back up to an even more cataclysmic, suicidal pact that we've all bought into. Copenhagen? ... nothing more than a cynical Smirk du Soleil.
Reasonable and most likely quite accurate predictions.
May I enhance "5. Climate Change" a bit with this article which is written in a similar vein.
to first anonymous above who said "History shows what got us out of the great depression was World War 2", your point is not quite clear enough: what got the US out of depression was the rebuilding of Europe after WW2...NOT the war itself. The US also spent greatly on the Vietnam War, but that only got the country a huge deficit, inflation and eventually off the gold standard. The US is already spending billions of dollars on the "war against terror", and in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan; none of this spending will get the US out of the economic depression it is currently in.
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