China is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country if current trends persist by 2025 china will have the worlds second largest economy and will be a leading military power it also could be the largest importer of natural resources and the biggest polluter. Global trends 2025 is the fourth installment in the national intelligence council led effort to identify key drivers and developments likely to shape world events a decade or more in the future both the product and the process used to produce it benefited from lessons learned in previous iterations. By 2025 the international system will be a global multi polar one with gaps in national power continuing to narrow between developed and developing countries although the united states is likely to remain the single most powerful actor its relative strength even in the military realm will decline and us leverage will become more constrained. The national intelligence councils 2008 report global trends 2025 a transformed world attempts to provide policymakers with a summary of the probable possible and plausible changes most likely to affect global governance and stability over the course of the next decade and a half