Canada’s Global Choices

In a far-reaching report on global trends up to 2025 prepared for U.S. president Barack Obama, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warns that the United States’ days as the global hyperpower are quickly coming to an end. “The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025,” the report says, declaring that “the transformation is being fuelled by a globalizing economy, marked by an historic shift of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and by the increasing weight of new players—especially China and India.”

What the NIC, a think tank for the U.S. intelligence community, is describing is a world in which the U.S. relative power would decline, making it “a first among equals” rather than a unilateralist power. As it argues, “China is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country.” The sheer size of the Chinese economy, its emergence as a major...