Predictions For The Next Decade?

So what do you think will happen in the decade ahead? Make your predictions here. As an example, here is what Anne Applebaum is predicting:

If I had to read the tea leaves and make a grand prediction, I would say that in the closing days of the 2000s, the future does not look good for authoritarian regimes in general. The signs, however, are very positive for one in particular: China. The signs also lead me to wonder whether competition between China and the United States — for resources, influence — will not be the dominant political story of the next decade. We are already heading that way: The Copenhagen climate summit failed, after all, because the United States and China could not agree on a matter that affected their prospects for growth. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, the focus of U.S. foreign policy for the past decade, looks more and more like a major nuisance — albeit one that keeps coming at us in different forms from different countries — rather than a coherent threat.

I think she is being extremely naive. What she says about the Underwear Bomber in the rest of her column concentrates on the fact that the attack was botched, rather than the more important fact that shows that all of our security measures are apparently ineffective when it comes to preventing a terrorist attack like this. She is remarkably sanguine about China, despite the fact that the growth of that country into a superpower would mean the rise of a new and successful form of Communism. She thinks that authoritarian governments are on the way out, looking at protests in Iran. I am more worried that we will have one ourselves.

Surely you can do better than this in your own prognostications. What do you think the next ten years holds? (We will suspend the Levitical penalty of stoning for inaccurate prophets.)

If this blog and I are still around in 2020–predict the likelihood of that!–we’ll check your performance!