Future is nuclear war and famine - US intelligenceBy Jim Mannion in Washington | November 21, 2008
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE use of nuclear weapons will grow increasingly likely by 2025, US intelligence warned in a report on global trends that forecasts a tense, unstable world shadowed by war.
"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report.
"Widening gaps in birth rates and wealth-to-poverty ratios, and the uneven impact of climate change, could further exacerbate tensions."
Called Global Trends 2025 - a Transformed World, the 121-page report was produced by the National Intelligence Council, a body of analysts from across the US intelligence community.
Officials said it was being briefed to the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama. A year in the making, the report does not take into account the recent global financial crisis.
"In one sense, a bad sense, the pace of change that we are looking at in 2025 occurred more rapidly than we had anticipated," said Thomas Fingar, deputy director of National Intelligence.
One overarching conclusion of the report is that "the unipolar world is over, (or) certainly will be by 2025," Mr Fingar said.
But with the "rise of the rest," managing crises and avoiding conflicts will be more difficult, particularly with an antiquated post-World War II international system.
"The potential for conflict will be different then and in some ways greater than it has been for a very long time," Mr Fingar said.
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