A recent report from the United States intelligence concluded that the U.S. dominance in the fields of economy, military and politics will most likely decline in the upcoming two decades. The new emerging powers of the world will be China, India and Russia, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) concluded in its report.

The conflicts all around the world will be sparked by water and food shortages, the NIC wrote in the report entitled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World." The report was drafted in order to better inform the U.S. policy makers including the nation’s 44th President, Barack Obama.

"Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States' relative strength - even in the military realm - will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained," says the NIC report.

However, the report isn’t a future reader. It anticipates the most probable future, but it all depends on the actions of the world leaders. The U.S. will still benefit from its military advance, but the scientific and technological advances will make it more difficult for Washington to act as it did in the past couple of decades.  

"The US will remain the single most important actor but will be less dominant," said the report, which was quire different from the 2004 report which had a much more positive outlook.

The report doesn’t see the European Union turning into a dominant player. The EU will become a "hobbled giant" that will have great difficulty to turn its economic power into diplomatic or military might.

A world with more than one or two super powers means a world with a higher risk of conflicts. The global warming process and the economic growth will put pressure on the world’s natural resources and this situation will fuel conflicts.

"Types of conflict we have not seen for a while - such as over resources - could re-emerge."

The world will witness an unprecedented "transfer of global wealth and power" from West to East, the report concludes. The transition will be fueled by "increases in oil and commodity prices."

As expected, the United States’ main rival by 2025 will be China, which will have the world’s second-largest economy.

“China is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country," the report notes.