Provenance
This standalone page was migrated from the February 2026 compendium corpus.
What is predicted: Europe, Russia, and China will undergo a long-horizon (15-25 year) reconfiguration of territorial, economic, and resource relationships. The channel suggests Europe-Russia economic recombination logic, Chinese pressure toward Eastern Russian resources, and an eventual restructuring of European institutions (possibly toward a “United States of Europe” model) driven by defense, energy, and demographic imperatives.
Evidence supporting: The EU is pursuing common defense capabilities, with discussions of a 100,000-troop European rapid reaction force [UNVERIFIED] — various EU defense proposals exist but the specific figure and operational status have not been independently confirmed in this compendium. Poland’s 4.8% GDP defense spending exceeds the US rate and signals a new European security architecture independent of US guarantees. Germany’s 100 billion euro Sondervermogen for defense restructuring is a generation-defining shift. Chinese interest in Eastern Siberian resources (timber, hydrocarbons, minerals) is documented, and the asymmetric demographic trends (Russian Far East depopulation vs. Chinese northeastern population) create long-term pressure. European energy dependence on Russia was violently restructured in 2022, but the economic complementarity (Russian resources, European capital and technology) has not disappeared — it has been suppressed by geopolitics. The EU Capital Markets Union effort and discussions of common European defense bonds suggest institutional deepening.
Evidence against: This prediction requires the most speculative causal chains in the framework. Europe-Russia economic recombination requires either a resolution to the Ukraine conflict or Russian regime change — neither of which the framework models. Chinese expansion into Eastern Russia would represent a fundamental break in the China-Russia partnership, which is currently deepening rather than fraying. European institutional reform (fiscal union, defense union) has been discussed for decades with minimal progress; the EU’s decision-making architecture (unanimity requirements, national sovereignty protections) makes rapid restructuring extremely unlikely. The prediction lacks specific mechanisms: through what political, military, or economic pathway does “reconfiguration” occur? This is where the framework is weakest — it leaps from constraint identification to outcome assertion without modeling the intervening steps.
Falsification criteria: (1) EU defense integration stalls below a unified command structure by 2032. (2) Russia-China economic partnership deepens without visible territorial or resource friction through 2030. (3) European institutional reform remains incremental (no new treaty, no common bonds) through the end of the decade. (4) Russia-Europe economic ties remain severed or minimal for 10+ years, contradicting the “recombination” thesis.
Timeline and testability: This is the longest-horizon prediction (15-25 years) and the least testable in the near term. Early indicators are limited to European defense spending trajectories and institutional reform proposals.
Current assessment: Too early to assess. The institutional and geopolitical preconditions for this prediction have not materialized. The direction is plausible but the causal pathway is underspecified.