According to the annual report of the US National Intelligence Council called Drawing the Map of the Future, the US will remain the key player in the world arena by 2020. At the same time the 21-st century will be an age of Asia, which will become the center of the world economic development. China and India will speak out just like it was done by Germany in the 19-th and the US in the 20-th centuries, the report authors promise.
The authors of the report see the Russian potential mainly in oil and gas resources. The rest of the factors play against Russia: demographic crisis, instability on the southern borders, which will keep penetrating into Russia in the form of terrorism, demonstrations of Islamic extremism and endemic conflicts. Those countries, which gain access to high technologies (nano-, bio- and information), will reap the fruits of globalization. The rest will become more and more detached, if they do not create conditions for introducing such technologies: convey to rational state administration and provide for universal contemporary education.