Bands of armed thugs roam across stateless territories in endless battles over scarce resources. Refugees pour into cities from the barren countryside. Epidemics are rife. Crime and warfare become indistinguishable, and the law belongs to those with the most firepower.
Sounds like the plot of the next Road Warrior movie. In fact, it's writer Robert Kaplan's vision of the world only a decade or so hence. A respected journalist who reports on international issues, Kaplan believes that our system of nation-states, particularly in the developing world, will soon break-up as disease, environmental crises, and tribalism force millions into lives of poverty, migration, and criminality. He lays out his apocalypse-almost-now scenario in a recent cover story in the Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Coming Anarchy." The article has many high-powered brows perspiring because it baldly states that the world is falling apart, not moving together toward capitalism and democracy as some of them have argued.
It would be easy to dismiss Kaplan as a modern-day Nostradamus, except that his predictions have come true before. In the 1980s he warned that Saddam Hussein would become a serious menace in the Gulf region. In late 1989, while the world was celebrating the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Kaplan wrote that an equally important story was brewing in the Balkans, where timeless hatreds would again erupt into conflict. His Balkan Ghosts was named one of last year's best books by the New York Times Book Review.

"He predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666, the rise and fall of Hitler and predicts the greatest horror to fall some 40 years after the 'second cataclysm', which was the Second World War."
Like Dr. Leonard, the Russians are taking an unusual interest. "Nostradamus' prediction for them, around this time, is that Russia will have 'three old and sick Czars'," he said, followed by their last Czar, Michael the Marked, who will wage a terrible war. Michael Gorbachov has of course a large birthmark on his forehead.
Nostradamus' prediction of the "greatest horror", when war, disease and famine will fall from the skies, is heralded by a great comet. Halleys comet arrives later this year (written 1985). "And," says Dr. Leonard: "In the near future we have one of the most dramatic planetary alignments of all. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth and the Moon, all in line.

Vatican concern at "dark clouds" looming over the continent as the millennium approaches has prompted the Pope to call a gathering of European bishops in Rome next year. European bishops last held a synod in 1991 and another gathering in under a decade would be unprecedented--indicating the extent of papal concern.
A Vatican document speaks of the need for Europe to rediscover its Christian roots and refers to the possible salvation of the continent through the Second Coming.
The document notes that the collapse of communism has restored individual freedoms but with it has come progress "oftentimes devoid of spiritual values".
The author, Cardinal Jan Schotte, criticizes "outdated institutions" of democracy in Europe, which are displaying a "certain lack of tolerance". He accuses Europeans of attempting to "eliminate" reference to the Christian faith in promoting the right to freedom of choice.