In 2015,private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, published its Decade Forecast, in which it projects the next 10 years of global political and economic developments.While international analysts often try their hand at predicting the major events of the coming year, Stratfor believes that it's identified the major trends of the next 10.In many ways, Stratfor thinks the world a decade from now will be more dangerous place, with US power waning and other prominent countries experiencing a period of chaos and decline.SEE ALSO:Here's what we think is going to happen in 2016Russia will collapse ..."There will not be an uprising against Moscow, but Moscow's withering ability to support and control the Russian Federation will leave a vacuum," Stratfor warns. "What will exist in this vacuum will be the individual fragments of the Russian Federation."Sanctions, declining oil prices, a plunging ruble, rising military expenses, and increasing internal discord will weaken the hold of Russia's central government over the world's largest country. Russia will not officially split into multiple countries, but Moscow's power may loosen to the point that Russia will effectively become a string of semiautonomous regions that might not even get along with one another."We expect Moscow's authority to weaken substantially, leading to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia" the report states, adding, "It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form."... and the US will have to use its military to secure the country's nukes.Russia's nuclear-weapons infrastructure is spread across a vast geographic area. If the political disintegration Stratfor predicts ever happens, it means that weapons, fissile materials, and delivery systems could end up exposed in what will suddenly become the world's most dangerous power vacuum.The breakout of Russia's nuclear-weapons stockpile will be "the greatest crisis of the next decade," according to Stratfor.And the US will have to figure out what to do about it, even if it means dispatching ground troops to secure loose weapons, materials, and missiles."Washington is the only power able to address the issue, but it will not be able to seize control of the vast numbers of sites militarily and guarantee that no missile is fired in the process," the Decade Forecast states. "The United States will either have to invent a military solution that is difficult to conceive of now, accept the threat of rogue launches, or try to create a stable and economically viable government in the regions involved to neutralize the missiles over time."Germany is going to have problems ...Germany has an export-dependent economy that has richly benefited from the continent-wide trade liberalization enabled through theEU and the euro, but that just means the country has the most to lose from a worsening euro crisis and a resulting wave of euroscepticism.The country's domestic consumption can't make up for this dip in Germany's export economy or for a projected decline in population. The result is Japan-style stagnation. "We expect Germany to suffer severe economic reversals in the next decade," the Decade Forecast says.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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