Zenpundit - thanks for the link to the NIC 2020 piece. I'm still going through it, and it is intriguing. Of the scenarios featured in the piece, I think that today, two years after the production of the document, the Pax Americana scenario seems less plausible even though it attractively suggests some degree of stability that the others lack in varying degrees.

The chart of Relative Certainties and Key Uncertainties on page 8 is provocative alone. There are some underlying assumptions not specifically broken out in the chart that seem to suggest oversimplification. An example is the last Relative Certainty listed: "US will remain single most powerful actor economically, technologically, militarily." I think that once a region is selected as a vehicle to examine the ideas put forth, this becomes ambiguous. The context of the document when I read it today is different from the time of publication, and that may account for much of the complexity I see confronting some of these points.

Again, thanks for the input. Still reading...