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What U.S. Intelligence predicted the world would look like in 20

What U.S. Intelligence predicted the world would look like in 20

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by: ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   Jan 5, '15 11:13pm  
What U.S. Intelligence predicted the world would look like in 2015
 



 
 


© Jalal Al-Mamo/Reuters
A Free Syrian Army fighter sprays graffiti on a wall prior to the new year in Aleppo, December 31, 2014.


Nine months before the September 11 attacks—and just days after
the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount, handing the presidency to
George W. Bush—U.S. intelligence officials published an 85-page prediction
for what the world would look like in 2015. It's a world that seems
familiar in some ways, and utterly foreign in others. And it's a world
in which power is diffusing and decaying—reflecting one of the most
significant trends of 2014 and perhaps the coming year as well.The future depicted in the National Intelligence Council's "Global Trends 2015" report, published in December 2000, contains numerous contemporary echoes, as my colleagues at Defense One have pointed out.
There's financial volatility; anonymous cyberattacks; widening economic
divisions; an increasingly assertive China; a WMD-wielding North Korea;
growing illegal migration to the U.S. from Central America; a
mercurial, authoritarian Russia that "remains internally weak and
institutionally linked to the international system primarily through its
permanent seat on the UN Security Council"; a Middle East tormented by
"demographic pressures, social unrest, religious and ideological
extremism, and terrorism," and shaped by the destabilizing impact of new
technology and the allure of political Islam.But there are also
developments that are difficult to imagine in 2015: a new state of
Palestine; Iraq acquiring nuclear weapons; Japan losing its position as
the world's third-largest economy. Instead of a country reeling from 13
years of war, the study envisioned an "internationally isolated"
Afghanistan offering "a haven for Islamic radicals and terrorist groups"
(Osama bin Laden was holed up there at the time). Instead of
forecasting grinding conflict between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces
in Ukraine, U.S. officials wrote that "Ukrainians of all political
stripes [are] likely to opt for independence rather than reintegration
into Russia’s sphere of influence." They prophesied that "most
technological advances in the next 15 years ... will not have
substantial positive impact on the African economies," missing the role
that, say, cell phones
have played in stoking economic dynamism in sub-Saharan Africa. In
2015, they noted, "Europe's agenda will be to put in place the final
components of EU integration"—integration that is now threatened
by the region's ongoing economic crisis. The report also posited
bolder, alternative scenarios that it admitted were unlikely: Korean
unification; the emergence of an "international terrorist coalition with
diverse anti-Western objectives and access to WMD;" China demanding
that Japan dismantle its nuclear program, prompting the U.S. to come to
Tokyo's aid as the world powers hurtle toward "a major war."The study's overarching theme was "globalization," that contentious catchphrase
of the late 1990s. The globalized economy would, on balance, make the
world a more politically stable place in 2015, according to the report,
which relied on the intelligence community's consultations with outside
experts. But globalization, and attendant technological advances, would
also shatter the very nature of power."States will continue to be
the dominant players on the world stage, but governments will have less
and less control over flows of information, technology, diseases,
migrants, arms, and financial transactions, whether licit or illicit,
across their borders," U.S. officials predicted. So-called "non-state
actors"—ranging from companies to nonprofits to narcotraffickers to
"free-wheeling, transnational" terrorist networks—would "play
increasingly larger roles in both national and international affairs."
The "quality of governance, both nationally and internationally, will
substantially determine how well states and societies cope with these
global forces," they added.This vision of the fragmented future
of power was still blurry; the report, for example, did not mention
al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. But media coverage of the study at the time
nevertheless picked up on the insight. "The world is on the brink of a
new era that may resemble the script of a James Bond film in which
international affairs are increasingly determined by large and powerful
organisations rather than governments," The Telegraph observed.Tony Karon elaborated on the report's findings for Time:[T]he
problem of managing global affairs is made much more difficult by the
diminishing power of the state. The Cold War, artificially, managed to
organize almost every regional conflict in the world into a global
system of conflict, which was managed at the top by two states that had
an overarching interest in avoiding instability that could drag them
into a very dangerous confrontation. After it ended, many of the states
of the old Soviet empire began to collapse, accelerating crime,
lawlessness, tribal violence and terrorism. And the problem acknowledged
in "Global Trends 2015" is that governments don't have very
sophisticated mechanisms for dealing with "non-state actors.""Global Trends 2015" did not predict many of the international storylines that will likely spill over into the new year: the rise of the Islamic State, the faceoff between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed militias; the cyberattack of possibly North Korean origin
against Sony. But it did predict the volatile dynamic between weak and
powerful states on the one hand, and non- and semi-state actors on the
other, that all these developments have in common. As Moisés Naím wrote in The Atlantic this
summer, "disguising soldiers as civilians and recruiting civilian
insurgents are old practices. But in the twenty-first century, they've
acquired unprecedented potential as tools of war." Back in 2000, U.S.
intelligence officials glimpsed this phenomenon. Heading into 2015, it's
right before our eyes.This article was originally published at www.theatlantic.com/ international/archiv e/2014/12/what-us-in telligence-pred



4951
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Retired_Engineer Active Indicator LED Icon 13
~ 9 years ago   Jan 5, '15 11:31pm  
My eyes are tired.... I'll have to read that tomorrow! 4951
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ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   Jan 5, '15 11:34pm  
My eyes are tired.... I'll have to read that tomorrow!
 
@Retired_Engineer: that's from watching out for chihuahuas....
4951
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