The European Union and the West as we know it could fall apart within the next few decades, according to an internal projection by the German military.
The “Strategic Perspective 2040” outlines six possible scenarios for how social and political trends could unfold over the next 23 years. The report was created in February but was kept secret until German magazine Der Spiegel published segments from it Saturday.
The worst-case scenario projects that that the international order falls apart after decades of instability and a halt to globalization. Germany would find itself in “reactive mode” with “multiple confrontations” after the EU evaporates, according to this scenario.
“EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, other states have left the community, Europe has lost its global competitiveness,” an excerpt from the report reads, according to Der Spiegel. “The increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone world has dramatically changed the security environment of Germany and Europe.”
Other probabilities project that EU countries move closer to the “eastern bloc,” while one scenario warns of a rise in extremism and countries adopting the Russian political model.
The report does not single out one outcome as more likely than another. All six scenarios are “plausible by 2040,” according to the researchers.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker published a white paper for Europe’s future in March with five outcomes leading up to 2025. Juncker outlines one scenario in which the EU gives upon the vision to form a political union.
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