BIG PICTURE OF THE NEAR FUTURE:  The Pentagon’s Newest Map, by David Archibald.

Food is at the lowest price in human history, energy is now also cheap, poverty around the world is at the lowest level ever, and technological and medical advances continue apace. Those things are well and good but two wars are going to crash the civilizational party. The first is the war of Islam on the rest of the planet.

The role of political correctness in this:

The West is aware that there is a problem but has refused to face up to the fact it is engaged in an existential clash of civilisations. To do so would require an adjustment of its belief system – that all cultures are equally good and that there is nothing inherently wrong with any group of people or culture. Right at the moment the pain of the permanent state of emergency in France, for example, is preferable to the effort involved in seeing the world as it really is.

More:

China needs a short war. The longer it goes on, the more likely they will lose. … Russia hasn’t been mentioned yet because Russia really doesn’t matter. …

The countries of the OECD are the United States’ only natural friends and allies. Every other country is resentful and jealous, or too lethargic to be resentful and jealous.

Blunt realism make for some interesting speculations; read it all.