The world in 2050: watch the Chinese, Muslims, and Russians

Well before 9/11, the Hon. Frank Shakespeare, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, gave an address in Washington, DC, in 1996, predicting the prominent role Islam would play in the world in the future. Addressing the question what the world would be like in 2050, he gave a fascinating and incisive analysis of recent history, observing the prescient role of the papacy in recent world history, and speculating that the key to the future of world history in the next half-century would lie in three wildcards: China, Islam, and Russia.

Just eight years after the ambassador's speech, we can already see some unfolding evends likely to confirm his predictions:

(1) The Chinese, who constitude nearly a quarter of the global population and are animated by an agressive work ethic, are taking over the world economically. Markets are flooded with Chinese products. Everything from watches to clothes to leather jackets to furniture and televisions are now being manufactured in China. I understand that a Chinese automobile is being prepared for export to the United States in the near future, which will surely undersell most other manufacturers. The whole scene reminds me of what occurred in Japan in the decades following the Second World War; only it's happening in half the time.

(2) Islam. All you need to do is study a map to see what is happening. As the former ambassador wrotes:

If you draw a line beginning at the westernmost point of China in the middle of Asia and you draw that line just north of the "Stan" countries, which were the republics in the belly of the [former] Soviet Union (Tazikhastan, Khazaktan, and such things, all of those countries are Muslim), and right on the border of the Russian nation and then you come down and go through the Black Sea north of Turkey and north of Iran, and then you swoop down and go north of the Mideast, of Iraq and of Syria, and then you go down the Mediterranean and you pass on one side Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and you come to the Atlantic, you have drawn a line all the way from China to the Atlantic Ocean. Everything south of that line is Islam. Every thing north of that line is Christendom.

And he didn't even mention the countries to the East: Malaysia, major parts of the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago, which juts far out into the Pacific in the East like a scimitar.

(3) Then there's Russia, which, although it appears now to be in the economic doldrums, still possesses the nuclear weapons that made it a military world power and enough natural resources in Siberia to provide an almost endless supply of power and wealth to Russia. Furthermore, despite it's years of Marxist repression of religion, Russia has a long and deep history of Orthodox Christianity. Who's to say what the future holds? It's a wildcard to be reackoned with.

The Hon. Frank Shakespeare's speech was published in Catholic Dossier (November-December, 1998).