Washington ? The world of 2020 is likely to be one in which Asia is the main engine of the global economy, India and China are major powers and al-Qaida-inspired Islamist movements have spread to Muslim communities outside the Middle East, a new U.S. intelligence report said Thursday.

The United States will remain “the single most important country across all dimensions of power,” but wield less authority than it does now because of the greater influence of India, China and possibly other nations such as Brazil and Indonesia.

“Although the challenges ahead will be daunting, the United States will retain enormous advantages, playing a pivotal role across the broad range of issues — economic, technological, political and military — that no other state will match by 2020,” said the report, “Mapping the Global Future.”

It was the third in a series of unclassified forecasts of global trends published by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence analysts who report to CIA Director Porter Goss but aren’t technically part of the spy agency. The earlier reports were for 2010 and 2015.

Their forecasts for 2020 were based on consultations with more than 1,000 nongovernment experts.

Barring catastrophic war or a worldwide depression, the world economy is expected to be about 80 percent larger in 2020 than it was in 2000, with average per-capita income roughly 50 percent higher.