The search by the world's elites for accurate projections of the future grows ever more intense as their stake in the global economy deepens. Fueling their unease is the sense that an American-led global order based on control over world oil may be waning. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is author, most recently, of "American Soul" (Mercury House, 1995).

As the year 2000 comes closer, the world's elites are searching frantically for big-picture projections about the future. The dizzying upward spiral of the global economy has only increased their stakes -- and risks -- in the future.

The biggest questions revolve around three things: wealth, energy and conflicts. The elites want to know who will come out on top in a global ranking by wealth, where the major energy sources will be to fuel consumer-driven economic systems, and where the most dangerous flashpoints -- even globally fatal flashpoints -- are likely to surface. The answers they're getting may only deepen their unease, suggesting that that a key guarantor for global peace and prosperity -- U.S. control over world oil -- may be waning.

Hardly had it began last week when the Davos World Economic Forum in Geneva offered a fateful projection on wealth ranking. The Forum polled some 1,000 world leaders and CEOs electronically on which country would lead the world in economic growth over the next five years and which would offer the best investment opportunities. The response on the first question was almost unanimous: China. On the second question, the response by a wide margin was also China.

The other countries mentioned were all in Asia. The head of the German central bank predicted that the countries with the biggest populations -- namely, China and India -- would also be the fastest growing.

The point is not so much that China ranks on or close to the top with other countries following, but rather that a vast region stretching from Northeast Asia through Southeast Asia and including India will, not far into the next century, dwarf the rest of the world in growth and wealth. That region will contain over half the world's population.

Since ancient times wealth and power have gone together. And in the modern world power means technological and military strength. If America and Japan now lead the world in technological innovation, China and India will be catching up fast by the turn of the century. Yet there is also no part of the world where the arms race is more intense than in this region. And the prime purpose of this race is not -- for the present anyway -- to attack or deter neighbors but to build strong states.

Despite dire evironmentalist predictions, huge consumer populations are rising up in this vast Indo-Asian region. They are going to require huge amounts of energy. And their increasingly strong states, buttressed by high-tech militaries, are going to want to control access to that energy.

In the 19th century coal powered the new machinery coming out of the industrial revolution. In the 20th century the chief source of energy was oil. But as Japan's Asahi newspaper recently noted, "The 21st century will be an era of competition for energy." To avoid falling into a new energy dependence -- as now on Anglo-American oil -- the Japanese know they have to carry out an energy revolution to develop multiple sources of energy.

One energy area they have been pushing hard is nuclear power. The Russians also see the virtues of nuclear power. Russia's minister of atomic energy recently observed that "There is no future for Russia without nuclear energy."

The Japanese are making an even bigger push in natural gas taken from the Western Pacific tectonic belt. Russia, too, has big gas reserves. In fact, world gas reserves greatly exceed those of oil. Gas which is non-polluting could become as important a source of energy as oil and coal.

For decades, most Western political thinkers have believed that a benign American-led global order based on control over world oil offered the best chance for world peace and prosperity. But that control is waning. And as the world becomes multipolar, there is widespread fear that sooner or later big power collisions could arise again, possibly leading to World War III.

The Chinese think not. In a new year's survey of the world, the first thing their analysts stressed was the enormous increase in constructive international contacts. Similar analysts said similar things prior to both world wars.

Yet since the world's elites believe wealth, energy and wars are linked, it may well be that the best long-term chances for reducing conflict lies in drastically reducing the world's soaring demand for non-renewable energy. Right now the only two energy sources that offer significant renewable alternatives are solar and nuclear.

Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from future projections is the need for radically open thinking about what it will take to create a new and more cooperative world order.