Long-term Trend Projections and Alternative Scenarios, Part One
23 Nov 2011
Over the past week-and-a-half we have attempted to provide an overview of the practice of future forecasting. We have also attempted to outline how forecasting contributes to our understanding of the structural changes occurring in the international system. As we have discussed, practical futurology does represent an ‘honest broker’ attempt to anticipate future trends and events as well as their impacts. On the other hand, it can be value-laden and reflect the personal biases and preferences of individual practitioners who are either trying to meet the expectations of particular audiences or actually ‘tilt’ them in desired ways. Given this dual nature of forecasting, it can be used, in all sincerity, to shape and control an individual’s – and indeed society’s – expectations regarding the future contours of the international system.
The practice of long-term forecasting obviously shares the same objectives as its near and medium-term cousins. Long-term forecasting, depending on who’s doing it, looks at least ten to fifteen years into the future when making predictions about the trajectory of the international system. And as to be expected, long-term predictions have a more imaginative and speculative focus than their shorter-term brethren. They are not necessarily ensnared by near-term trend analyses and they can be fanciful enough to approximate, at least in the view of some head-shaking critics, acts of entrails-reading divination. Indeed, because long-range forecasting permits futurologists to explore the possibility of Black Swan or low probability, high impact events, they do provide us with an uncommonly wide mix of scenarios to ponder when thinking about more distant futures. Feeding into this wider mix is a wider range of disciplines and resources which are used to inform the predictions. Science fiction writers, for example, who have repeatedly proven to be some of the best practitioners of the trade, consider a slew of scientific developments, macro-level environmental and demographic trends, civilizational-level trends, etc., to shape their understanding of the long-term future.
The opportunity to call upon a more extensive and sophisticated array of resources truly makes long-term forecasting a fascinating discipline. It is not necessarily the home of the inherently predictable, the entirely realistic, or the actually practical. To demonstrate this positive point, we invite you to consider the Project on National Security Reform’s (PNSR) Alternative National Security Futures (2008-2060) as an especially inventive example of long-term futurology. In our opinion, it really does ‘break free from the herd’.
Underpinning the PNSR’s report is the warning that many futurologists share – e.g., that the rate of change occurring throughout the international system will be faster than in previous decades. To illustrate this perceived truth, Alternative National Security Futures outlines nine long-term scenarios that may eventually impact the very structure of the international system. The scenarios are clustered around twenty-year intervals and bear little resemblance to the shortand medium-term forecasts that the ISN considered at the beginning of this week.
In particular, the disparate scenarios deal with a country struggling to recover from a major biological attack, strategic attack scenarios employing conventional and asymmetric tactics, and the development of future grand strategies. Alternative National Security Futures also predicts how technology may simultaneously impact both the battlefield and a state’s foreign policy objectives, to include a natural resources land grab on the Moon. Scientific and technological innovations also come under consideration, such as the use of medicine and neuroscience to control pathological behaviors in a world riddled with weapons of mass destruction. Alternative National Security Futures also outlines scenarios that include the systemic-level disruption of global infrastructures and governance due to environmental degradation.
As interesting as the above Alternative National Security Futures are, they do come with a caveat. The PNSR authors remind us that their scenarios are not so much predictions of a probable future as they are of plausible (and often bleak) alternative futures. Their intent is obviously designed to provoke wider conversations and debate. It also provides discussants the chance to consider the subsequent changes in values, meanings and terms of interaction societies may have to confront as they adapt to new geopolitical realities.
Ultimately, what makes the PNSR scenarios so vital is that where others make forecasts that seemingly frame the international system as it is today, but extrapolated into the future, the former envisages novel threats and risks, and a world where human beings will be confronted by some very different values and interests shaping the international system. That we will need different tools to address these challenges is one of the closing admonitions of this eye-opening exercise in long-term futurology.
To read the PNSR’s long-term scenarios, simply click the tab at the top of the page.
Recommended reading
external pageHow Is America Going To End?
external pageHow “Wild Cards” May Reshape Our Future
external pageThe Disappearance of Food: The Next Global Wild Card?
external pageA Wild Card Sampler
external pageGlobal Governance 2025: at a Critical Juncture NIC 2010-08 September 2010
external pageGlobal Trends 2025: A Transformed World November 2008 NIC 2008-003
external pageAmerica 2021: The Military and the World
George Friedman The next 100 years. Anchor, 2010
In case you have missed any of our previous content on Forecasting in the Real World, you can catch up here on: external pageThe Short-Term and the Mid-Term Outlook