Canada is a trading nation and a collapse of the global trading systems and a prolonged US recession /depression scenario would be bad news for all Canadians. According to President elect Obama, the US is headed for more economic trouble, in the short term. Canada should not abandon US trade relations, but diversify its focus to other regions of the world. So in the long term, who should Canada increase friendly relations with from a security / diversification perspective?
The acronym BRIC ( Brazil, Russia India China) has received a good deal of media attention and Canada has the multicultural ties to develop links with all four regions / countries.
Brazilian and Canadian trade can be easily expanded because of the direct North South (sea or land) geographic link and so far, no geopolitical chockpoints. (think Somali pirates) see Latin America 2020 Discussing Long Term Scenarios and Canada and Brazil Sign Agreement on Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation
The US National Intellignce Counel (NIC) offers a sobering series of scenario outlooks for Russia in 2020. Even under the best case, becuase of demographic and political conflicts, it doesn't look good.
India and China has potential but it will be far from risk free. A system dynamics scenario exercise explores how China and India could develop over the next 100 years. (see Aromar Revi: Future Histories of India and China in the 21st Century ) It should be required reading for anyone doing business in the East. It's based on the University of Denver's International Futures (IFs) database --which is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system.
Walter Derzko
Comments