Changing International Structures – A ‘Yes – No’ Debate?
14 Nov 2011
We at the ISN believe that the international system remains subject to unprecedented structural change. Increasing global interconnectivity on the social, technological, economic and political level has resulted in the growing if uneven empowerment of new state and sub-state actors, the transformation of what constitutes power itself, the growing and integrated use of “soft” power, and so much more. As these changes remain a ‘work in progress’, they represent a virtual petri dish of possible futures. Some forecasters confidently claim that the forces and processes that buffet us today represent a historically unique and irreversible period of change. Others question this assumption. They argue that the international system remains fundamentally the same and that the very real changes we see are more marginal than fundamental. They also question the utility of future forecasting in mapping out the contours of change. To give both sides a fair hearing, we decided to inaugurate our discussion of future forecasting and its utility by featuring the following pro-con debate.
Arguments that support future forecasting can be separated into two distinct categories. First, such forecasting can represent a sincere attempt to anticipate conditions or events, and thereby not be caught “flat-footed” when they appear. Forecasting, in other words, attempts to think the unthinkable, prepare for the inevitable and control the controllable. Its utility is that it helps you rationalize and shape political strategies, as well as articulate and integrate these strategies into effective policies. Second, future forecasting can also serve educational, polemical, propagandistic or ideological ends. Now, instrumentalizing forecasting in this way can obviously have positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, forecasters can use their prognostications to publicize what they think are underappreciated dangers or potential threats. They can, in short, use their forecasts to educate others and better shape their expectations of future developments. On the more dubious side, those who practice future forecasting can tailor their predictions to ‘label’ threats and risks, for example, to promote more private interests and agendas.
The two PRO articles we’ve selected for this discussion illustrate this dual-use view of future forecasting rather well. Paul Starobin’s ‘five roads’ view of the future and STRATFOR’s identification of the 16 developments that will shape this decade (2010-2020) offer two valuable visions of the future, yet both are united in making predictions that reflect and promote the world views of their respective authors. Underpinning Starobin’s possible futures is the conviction that the United States is a declining power that will be unable to prevent the international system from returning to a 19th century-style balance of power world. STRATFOR, in contrast, touts the continued relevance of broader geopolitics. Its analysts predict a decade in which major international actors will seek to rationalize their power projection capabilities. To compensate for their efforts, the likes of the United States and Europe will seemingly play the same geopolitical games they have played in the past, but with very different resource allocations.
Now, in the case of our preferred CON article, we have the example of Joe Keohane. He and his fellow handwringers worry about the inflexible assumptions that exist behind ‘futurology’. In attempting to distinguish the ‘wood for the trees’, for example, forecasters can be too capricious in the trends they identify and glom on to. They may also over-rely on information close at hand, some of which may ignore the myriad false assumptions buried under the “facts”. Because of these types of problems, Keohane concludes, future forecasting may be no more accurate, and therefore authoritative, than the unfolding of chance. That it could then function as no more than a bully pulpit goes without saying.
This, then, in broad outline is what the PRO-CON argument is all about. With the above parameters now in place, let’s begin the debate.
Advocates of future forecasting will make the case that they are merely replicating a basic human activity. For hundreds of years individuals and organizations have sought to make sense of their environs, anticipate problems and develop effective responses. Yet, from an entirely geopolitical perspective, future forecasting became an essential part of the machinery of government in the 19th century. Napoleonic France and then a consolidated Germany utilized forecasting methods to maximize their resources in support of ambitious foreign policy objectives. The seeds they planted, of course, came into full bloom in World War II – a global war where planners adopted “scientific” methods to direct their downstream efforts as rationally as possible. Subsequent to the war, formalized forecasting finally migrated into a new corporate world of business and assorted government bureaucracies.
So, as early as the 19th century we saw political actors begin to forecast the future to serve geopolitical ends, to include preparing for inevitable changes and to help instill a degree of continuity during and after periods of instability. Paul Starobin’s ‘ external page Five Roads to the Future: Power in the Next Global Age’ illustrates this particular application of future forecasting rather nicely. Its basic assumption is crystal clear – ‘The American Century’ is coming to an end and new global powers are coming to the fore. As a result, and as the article’s title suggests, Starobin claims there are five possible ‘roads’ the future international system may take, and therefore five possible areas where power will ultimately rest. The first ‘road’ predicts what is already occurring – a world where information technology continues to excite a growing belief in global cosmopolitanism at the expense of the State. As a result of this trend, or so Starobin argues, the United States will be the last definitive global power based on the Westphalian system.
Starobin’s multipolar ‘road’, in contrast, sees muscular and updated 21st century versions of nationalism challenging the West’s geopolitical dominance, particularly when wielded by increasingly confident emerging states. The result will be a multipolar world rather than a hegemonic one, and out of this multipolarity will reappear a preoccupation with regionally-based balance of power alliances. Ah, “but wait”, Starobin cautions. Just as forecasting helps you preempt the undesirable, it also enables you to try and protect long-term investments and commitments to the international system. Starobin’s third ‘road’, which points to a ‘Chinese century’, illustrates this use of prognostication. As the United States’ relative economic power declines, Beijing will increasingly dominate global business and currency flows. However, Starobin predicts that China’s overarching objective of personal enrichment will allow the like-minded United States to remain a significant actor in the global trading system.
The journey along Starobin’s fourth ‘road’ then leads to the rising dominance of global city-states. Established cosmopolitan centers like New York and London will be joined by ‘emerging’ mega-cities stretching from Sao Paolo to Hong Kong. Not only will they shape the world’s economies and culture, they may also pursue their own foreign policies and raise their own militias. Finally, Starobin touts the possible long and complicated ‘road’ towards global governance. The danger here, of course, is the continued growth of self-interested cosmopolitan elites who confuse their interests with the greater good, and therefore impose the preferred policies of a particular class upon the entire planet.
Unlike Starobin’s forecasts, STRATFOR’s near- to mid-term 'Top Predictions for the Next Decade' seeks to identify basic dynamics rather than specific events to explain the future international system. In doing so, STRATFOR’s 16 sober and measured predictions amply demonstrate that future forecasting enables actors to evaluate their resources systematically and then make informed decisions, often in coordination with others. The 2010-2020 decade, for example, will see a reversal of the centuries-old trend of population growth driving economic relations. An ageing global population will strain, if not outright challenge, the economic structures and financial arrangements that have historically assumed that people would have shorter “non-productive” lives. The social and financial costs of this imbalance will have the most profound impact on the developed world as well as emerging countries like China and India. As a result, states will have to rely upon immigration from a new tranche of developing countries to compensate for irregularities and shortages in their labor markets.
Because demography can be history, STRATFOR underpins their regional predictions for the next decade on this issue. Europe, for example, is expected to experience growing tensions between political elites and their populations over the value of mass immigration. In fact, these divisions will transcend domestic debates and stoke disputes between the economic powerhouses of Western Europe and those states on the periphery. The results may be economic dislocation and a further intensification of the demagogic nativism we already see today. The United States, in contrast, is in better shape to accommodate immigrants than Europe. (A more fluid sense of national identity and a less regulated labor market are two possible contributory reasons why.) Yet, in the end, all developed countries face the same problem of financially accommodating an ageing population.
STRATFOR’s predictions also demonstrate that forecasting can assist the protection of long-term interests through the rationalizing and integrating of policy and strategic objectives. For example, in terms of America’s hegemonic role in “guaranteeing” the existing international system, the next decade will see its calculated withdrawal from major overseas military operations and a reshaping of its force posture. Washington’s greatest concern will be the unwanted flows of people and narcotics from Mexico rather than the challenge posed by Islamic terrorism. This foreign policy reorientation, as STRATFOR agrees with Starobin, will prompt a return to regional balances of power. In the case of the Middle East, for example, STRATFOR anticipates Turkey’s continued rise as a regional power, which will probably result in the decline of Islamic extremism and the containing of Iran. An Egyptian-Israeli-Turkish balance of power, in turn, will allow the United States to withdraw from the Middle East and use economic incentives to maintain its influence.
In terms of other areas of interest, STRATFOR predicts that demography will shape the behaviors of other key countries. Russia is likely to use this decade to secure its international standing before its population declines in the 2020s. Yes, the continued shift toward commodity production is expected to reduce the need for a younger workforce, but Moscow may seek to protect itself from further demographic decline by trying to reabsorb former Soviet states. STRATFOR also sees China’s economic model as inherently unstable. As Western demand for Chinese goods falls in line with a declining population, analysts anticipate that Beijing will be unable to cope with the internal unrest alluded to below.
Now, it is rather obvious that the pragmatic, trends-based near- to mid-term predictions made by STRATFOR and Paul Starobin are neither unrealistic nor improbable. Yet there are those, as noted before, who have no stomach for this type of activity. Doesn’t it overstress rationality over chance, they argue. Isn’t the process of forecasting an ‘intellectual straitjacket’ that introduces rigidity to strategic thinking and in turn hampers creativity? Consider China, for example. Is Starobin right to assume that the economic vitality of the ‘Chinese road’ will not wane, or at least remain high enough to avoid social instability? Will an annual growth rate of 9 percent, which more than a few analysts argue is the minimum rate needed to avoid social turmoil, actually be possible? Well, the Conference Board has just published its Global Economic Outlook 2012 report and it projects a 6.6 percent growth rate for China from 2013-2016 and then an average of 3.5 percent per year between 2017 and 2025. Aren’t these numbers, which are shared by others, a harbinger of a bumpy ‘road’ ahead if nothing else?
Short-term forecasts predicting China’s economic growth raise other important questions vis-à-vis the international system. Media outlets are awash with warnings about China’s emergence as a bona fide military power with genuine ‘blue water’ naval capabilities. Indeed, earlier this year the People’s Liberation Army said that Chinese military spending would increase by 12.7 percent throughout 2011. But is a return to double-digit defense expenditure sustainable if China’s growth rate is expected to decline over the next fourteen years? China has, with much fanfare, recently undertaken sea trials with its first aircraft carrier. Reports suggest that China is currently constructing two more carriers. It is sensible to make predictions about how China’s increasing naval power may alter the dynamics of the Asia Pacific region, and the Indian Ocean in particular, if we see a bumpy rather than smooth ‘road’ for it on the horizon? Might not declining economic growth limit China’s territorial aspirations concerning Taiwan and the South China Sea, and therefore put into question its mid- to long-term political geopolitical weight?
All these questions about China’s economic health inexorably lead us back to Joe Keohane’s ‘ external page Inside the Paradox of Forecasting’. He certainly adds grist to the mill when it comes to the anti-forecasting camp. Keohane begins with the story of Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who correctly predicted the last global recession. After initially being dismissed as a crank, Roubini’s stature skyrocketed within a year. But was this reversal of academic fortune deserved? Well, as Keohane points out, Roubini has gotten his fair share of economic forecasts wrong. Indeed, Roubini is by no means alone in sharing this occupational hazard. Recent academic research suggests that economists with a proven track record in predicting ‘extreme’ events like recessions actually have the worst overall forecasting reputation. But this problem is not unique to economists, of course. For example, Philip Tetlock, in his ‘Expert Political Judgment’, analyzed more than 80,000 political predictions made over two decades. As in the case of the economists, expert political opinion fared no better than chance did. That’s right, chance.
This naturally enough leads Keohane to meditate on the questionable value of ‘expert’ forecasting. After all, don’t we tend to privilege the insights of those who were lucky enough to predict a past event, and isn’t this tendency a dangerous example of what Keohane describes as ‘base rate neglect’? (We overlook, in other words, the lessons we can draw from outright and more common failure.) And what about the problem highlighted earlier – e.g., don’t forecasters over-rely on information close at hand rather than focusing upon the ‘bigger picture’? And doesn’t this over-reliance result in oversimplified forecasting? These are all pesky questions, but there’s more. Predicting the future can often be infected by what economists call ‘noisy signals’. It’s this distorting background noise, along with the other problems just cited, that make forecasting chancy, speculative and a gamble. As a result, it may appear historically inevitable that China will emerge as an economic and military power, yet there is complicating evidence to suggest that its economic model is not sustainable enough to make its rise to global power status a cast iron certainty. Instead, Keohane would likely attribute the overlooking of this prediction to our inherent desire to anticipate the future, even though that future is inherently unpredictable. That is why there is an avid market for forecasts made by the likes of Starobin and STRATFOR. Society wants and needs to understand and anticipate change that disrupts our ways life and fundamentally alters our established conceptions of power.
This paper’s use of two articles to support arguments for future forecasting against one exercising caution against it demonstrates that the case for ‘futurology’ remains a contentious one. Despite forecasting’s dangers, however, the fact is that we now operate in a world defined by five domains (air, land, sea, space and cyberspace) and within a context defined by universal and instantaneous time. We therefore need all the “tilts” in the right directions we can get. We need to avoid being caught flat-footed. In other words, we need help not to react to events, but to anticipate and perhaps even shape them. International relations have always been complicated because of this desired shaping function. Well, that problem has only gotten worse over the last 20 years. Let the prognostication begin, dangers and all – our social, economic and political ways of life inescapably depend upon well-conceived tilts in the right direction.
Recommended Reading
J Scott Armstrong ‘Strategic Planning and Forecasting Fundamentals’ From Kenneth Albert (ed.), The Strategic Management Handbook New York: McGraw Hill, 1983
Jack A. Goldstone et al ‘A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability.’ American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 2010
Jonathan Peck ‘Some Theories of Social Change for Futures Practitioners’ Journal of Futures Studies, November 2009, 14(2)
Paul Starobin Five Roads to the Future: Power in the Next Global Age. Penguin, 2010
Philip E. Tetlock Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Princeton University Press, 2006
Additional readings from the ISN Digital Library
This report summarizes the proceedings of a December 2007 workshop on the field of futures studies and its potential utility. The panelists concluded that futures studies should adopt a multidisciplinary approach in order to thrive.
[Image:89050]This paper analyzes the rationality of professional macroeconomic forecasts. The authors provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for all G7-counties and four different macroeconomic variables. They conclude that large differences in the performance of forecasters exist and that economic forecasts should be used with caution.
[Image:134059]STRATFOR produces a rolling decade forecast every five years. The purpose of these forecasts is to identify the major trends we expect to see during the next 10 years.