Not only is Pakistan too unstable to be a good candidate for superpower status, its too poor. It's government revenue is somewhere around what the US pays in farm price supports. Its gross production by Purchasing Power Parity measurements is less than Pennsylvania's, and by exchange rates (which of course can vary a lot) its less then Oklahoma's (using 2004 or 2005 data), and also less than the UAE or Singapore, and since its GDP per capita is low, a larger portion of that GDP is needed just to feed and otherwise maintain its population.
In its favor (for considerations of is it, or will it become a superpower), it has nukes, a large population, and its economy is growing at a good clip (if not as fast as China) but its much smaller than China or India, and I wouldn't qualify either of them as a superpower, at least not yet (but they are better candidates to become one than Pakistan).
If it wasn't for India, Pakistan would be a dominant regional power, but India's bigger, richer, and stronger.
Over a long period of time, all sorts of things can change, but if your just talking about 10 years, Pakistan (and even India and China) are too far away to achieve real super power status.
As for the other predictions.
I agree Iran will get nukes. May or may not happen in 10 years, but unless the regime changes, it will happen, and I'm not talking about multiple generations in the future.
"4. China and India both going down. Thats a stretch, no?"
They wont go down economically. They will continue in economic development but after a short period of seeming to be a threat to world power they will become too embroiled in their domestic problems to be a contender for world domination. They will likely align themselves with Russia economically. Russian military alliances will be welcomed of course.
Russia is a much better candidate for "going down" than China or India. They are growing. Russia is totally dependent on selling oil and gas, and its population is shrinking. Its military isn't in good shape right now. OTOH its military still is big, and it has a lot of nukes and militarily useful technology. If China and India really did have some sort of alliance with Russia, it would have a lot of potential. (Russia's legacy military strength, and advanced state in some areas of military technology, along with its raw materials, China and India's population, and growing industrial base, and increasing level of civilian and dual use tech.
OTOH China and India and Russia have different interests, and no great historical links. They would only form an alliance against some other strong power, and the only power that's strong enough to possibly be a threat to them is the US. But I don't see the US being such a threat to those countries interests that they would feel compelled to unite against it.
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Some data sources
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org |
