Washington, Nov 19: India will have a greater international role around 2025 when the world is predicted to be multipolar with America's economic and military dominance fading.

India's population will also overtake that of China around the same time, a draft copy of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) report "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World", published by The Washington Times said today.

The report says India, China and Russia alongwith Indonesia, Turkey and a post-clerically-run Iran, which are predominantly Islamic but which fall outside the Arab core, appear well-suited for growing international roles.

On the demographic front, the report, according to the paper, cites recent projections that the world's population will grow by about 1.2 billion between 2009 and 2025 -- from 6.8 billion to about 8 billion people. It says that India's population will "overtake China's around 2025."

"The United States will remain the single most powerful country, although less dominant. Shrinking economic and military capabilities may force the US into a difficult set of tradeoffs between domestic and foreign-policy priorities," the report will be saying.

"The next 20 years of transition toward a new international system are fraught with risks, such as a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and possible interstate conflicts over resources," the NIC report says.

Terrorism, however, is "unlikely to disappear by 2025", according to the NIC report.

The draft copy also predicts a unified Korea by 2025 and China as the second largest economy and a major military power.

"We see a unified Korea as likely by 2025 and assess the peninsula will probably be denuclearized, either via ongoing diplomacy or as a necessary condition for international acceptance of and cooperation with a needy new Korea," it said.

"It's a stimulative document.. its release meant to coincide with the transition to the administration of President-elect [Barack Obama], before policymakers get consumed by events," Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the NIC said at an event yesterday even as he declined to discuss the report.

The Report is also seeing the world in the midst of a transition to cleaner fuels and makes the point that an energy transition from fossil fuels to alternative sources is inevitable, and "the only questions are when and how abruptly or smoothly such a transition occurs."

"We believe the most likely occurrence by 2025 is a technological breakthrough that will provide an alternative to oil and natural gas, but with implementation lagging because of the necessary infrastructure costs and need for longer replacement time," the draft says.

The text also says that conflicts over resources could re-emerge, because "perceptions of energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies."

"In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and survival of their regimes," it says.

The last time the NIC issued such a report was four years ago when it discussed the state of the world in 2020. The fourth of its kind since 1997, the report is meant to help the US think strategically and long-term about potential future trends and how they should be dealt with.

Bureau Report