Timeline(Course of the Future)

== Present-2030 ==
The current cold war style conflict between the United States and Russia will peak sometime around 2016 or 2017. As Russia becomes more isolated and start's to feel the effects of the recession that it is already facing public support will begin to shift to normalizing the country rather than the current aggressive policy of aggression to Russia's neighbors and the west. By the 2020 Russian presidential elections public support in Russia for an end to the mini cold war will be strong enough to oust Putin from office thus placing in a more western-friendly government. This will most likely be followed by a cut in military spending and a radical shift in foreign policy as a whole. During the 2020s Russia will be largely silent from the global stage as such public opinion will persist.
By the end of 2016 ISIS will be crumbling. With many of the oil refineries that sustain it being destroyed by coalition forces and greater efforts by nation states to curb the numbers of foreigners who come to join ISIS the terrorist group will be put into decline. This will actually increase the number of Paris style attacks, with the most likely targets being Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. By at latest 2018 ISIS will completely collapse and will be reduced to smaller weaker factions mainly operating in Syria.
China will begin to shift towards engaging in a cold war style regional conflict for influence over East Asia with the United States as it begins to wield it's immense economic power. Though at the same time China will endure further economic woes as it struggles with lowering growth rates. Lower growth will primarily be caused by a move by big companies to sub-saharan Africa and India as rising wages make China less attractive(India has already overtaken China in GDP growth rates as of 2016). The conflict will, unlike the conflict with Russia will include an element of economics with each country trying to surpass the other in economic influence the conflict will peak sometime around 2022 or 2023 and will die down as the Chinese economy begins to strain under it's aging population.
Eventually an aging population practicly all of the world's major economies including that of the two biggest, the United States and China will lead to a complete economic collapse by sometime around 2026. At worse this could result in the first depression in nearly a century, at best it could be a severe economic recession on the scale of the one seen in 2008. In the United States this assures that anyone elected in the 2024 presidential elections will lose re-election and in China this means that there will be pressure by the working and middle class for political liberalization. The solution for these countries would be to open their borders to immingrants, for the United States this should be easy as the United States already has a large source of immingrants in Latin America, Europe also would be attractive to Middle Easterners and Northern Africans. China, however with it's lack of liberal democracy and frequent opression of minorities will find it difficult to attract immingrants and will most likely take longer to re-emerge from the crisis.
Most likely starting in the early 2020s smartphones, will be pahsed out by wearable technology that with innovative products such as the microsoft hololens will begin to look more and more attractive. 
Music will most likely transition sometime around the early 2020s from it's current form to a genre remminiscent of classic and alternative rock due to political and economic events during that decade.
Category:Course of the Future