Nearly half of leading foreign policy experts believe Russia will become a failed state or disintegrate by 2033, while large majorities expect China to try to take Taiwan by force, according to a new survey by the Atlantic Council that points to a decade of global globalization. Coming troubles.

Forty-six percent of the 167 experts who responded to the think tank said Russia’s failure or disintegration could happen in the next 10 years. In a separate question, 40 percent indicated Russia as a country they expect to disintegrate due to reasons including “revolution, civil war, or political disintegration” during that time.

said Peter Engelke, deputy director for forecasting at the Atlantic Council, who helped design and interpret the survey.

Western officials say Russia has been greatly weakened by its action Ukraine invasion 11 months ago, including via sanctions and export controls. Economists believe that Russia’s productive capacity is steadily deteriorating as a result of punitive measures, setting the country back by decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun publicly acknowledging that Moscow faces setbacks in Ukraine and that the conflict will take a long time. The United States and its Western allies have pledged to support Ukraine for as long as they can, with all sides making plans to drag the war on for years.

Even as Europe is experiencing its biggest territorial conflict since World War II, the majority of experts surveyed said they did not think Russia and NATO would directly engage in military conflict in the next decade.

However, 70 percent of respondents predicted that Beijing would do so in the next ten years, backing up increasingly dire warnings by US officials that China would launch a military offensive to retake Taiwan.

US military leaders have pointed to 2027, the centenary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, as a possible invasion date. However, some officials have stepped up their warnings about Beijing’s intentions over the past year, and have said an invasion was possible before 2024.

US President Joe Biden has said repeatedly that Washington will defend Taiwan from Chinese attack, even as the US has historically tried to avoid articulating what it will do to deter both sides from acting.

Other findings add to the picture of global chaos. Nearly 90 percent of respondents believe that at least one additional country will have nuclear weapons by 2033. Sixty-eight percent of them said Iran would be most likely to obtain a nuclear weapon, coming as possibilities for reviving a nuclear deal between the six world powers and becoming Iran is increasingly bleak. Echoing some optimism, 58 percent of experts said they believed nuclear weapons would remain unused over the next 10 years.

Foreign policy experts also predicted a certain degree of American backtracking. While 71 percent of those surveyed expect the United States to continue to be the world’s dominant military power by 2033, only 31 percent believe the United States will be the number one diplomatic power and 33 percent the preeminent economic power.