Some people are taken aback but the analysis of trends that arrive at potential Global scenarios for 2030. Some of the headlines over the last day or so have been relatively sensational and of course there are those who scoff at China becoming the world's largest economy. I think we should keep in mind that Global Trends 2030 is not a prediction (though from some of the headlines and articles there are those that think it is). It is merely an analysis of the trends forecasted into the future to provide a look at potential scenarios. There are a lot of things (as the report notes) that could alter these trends. For some perhaps the report should be a wakeup call. The timing of the report right before the holidays might be instructive, perhaps we need to have a talk with Scrooge and assessment Christmas Past, Present, and Future and figure out what we need to do in the present to have a better outcome in the future. We should not get all worked up about the report because if does not "predict" what might make us feel good and instead use the report as one tool to assist in strategic planning (as I think it is intended to be). I think Dan Twining lays out some interesting pathways for Asia below.
V/R
Dave
Posted By Dan Twining Monday, December 10, 2012 - 4:37 PM Share
Today the U.S. National Intelligence Council releases its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worldsreport, authored by the NIC's resident thought leader and global futurist par excellence, Mat Burrows. Several of us in the Shadow Government stable contributed to the report in various ways over the past few years of its development .
Because Asia is the cockpit for so many macro drivers of the international system over the coming decades, it's worth considering the outsized role Asia's evolution will play in shaping the future world described in GT2030 -- and how that evolution in turn will impact key variables like the resilience of American power and the future of democracy.
At the macro level, four broad pathways for Asian order are possible through 2030. Which order prevails will have determinative effects on the kind of international system our children inherit.
A Lockean order
In the first scenario, continued American maritime preeminence and the U.S. alliance system sustain a security order in which China's "Prussianization," North Korea's nuclear mischief, and other potential security dilemmas in Asia are mitigated by the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States and its allies, thereby deterring aggressive revisionism on the part of Beijing or Pyongyang and continuing to supply the public goods that underlie wider Asian prosperity. In such an order, Asian institutions could continue to sink roots, but on the basis of a trans-regional outlook in which the United States remains what then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates called a "resident power," with economic integration oriented around a Pacific rather than an exclusively Asian axis.
Great powers like Japan and India, secondary powers like South Korea and Australia, and the states of Southeast Asia could continue to engage economically and diplomatically with China, confident that their security ties with the United States constituted a hedge against falling under Beijing's sway. In turn, China's development would be shaped by the combination of engagement with the United States and its friends in Asia and Europe, and by the deterrent effect of America's forward military presence and alliance commitments. These raise the costs of Chinese adventurism, allowing Beijing to focus its resources on internal development and peaceful external engagement -- rather than on wielding its growing power to revise Asia's order through coercion.
(Continued at the link below)
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