Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

There is no end of history. Francis Fukuyama’s famous claim has turned into quite the opposite. Today, liberal democracies and the Western concept of international order are being permanently challenged by an increase in political and economic crises, global and local dissent with established mechanisms of international affairs, and other political ideologies. These challenges increase the leverage of newly emerging actors such as China to push forward alternative ideas of international order.

Among all the different Chinese foreign policy initiatives announced by President Xi Jinping, China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative clearly stands out. It is by far the most comprehensive and visible Chinese initiative of the last three years. China’s OBOR initiative is regarded as a vision for building up a comprehensive cultural, economic, and political network that promotes connectivity and cooperation between countries, regions, and cities along the Silk Road. Furthermore, the OBOR initiative is flexible, inclusive, and open. OBOR has the potential to grow into an alternative idea showing how the common space of international politics could be organized in the future. Consequently, OBOR challenges the still dominating Western vision of the international system and could effectively transform the existing structure of the current international order.

For this reason, this study aims to conceptualize China’s OBOR initiative in a broader context. Instead of only focusing on specific mechanisms linked to OBOR, such as, for example, the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, it develops an analytical approach that also highlights the various dimensions of China’s OBOR initiative.

SWP understands “foresight” as a scientifically based analysis of conceivable future situations and developments of international foreign and security policy. These are not forecasts, as we cannot of course predict what will occur. But we can draw attention to conceivable scenarios that – were they to come about – would be of great political relevance to Germany and the European Union.
Correspondingly, our Foresight contributions consider possible future events that we believe deserve greater political attention today. The start-ing point is that the described situations take political decision-makers by surprise. As such they present foreign policy and security challenges, regardless of the balance of crisis and opportunity they represent. Some involve putative developments in the near future for which the decisive political actors are presently inadequately prepared. Other contributions concern events much further in the future and discuss developments that would come as a great surprise seen from today’s political perspective.

The purpose of – and the motivation be-hind – this study is to move the debate on autonomy in weapons systems ahead by introducing some more conceptual clarity and definitional rigor. To that end, we offer a new instrument for conducting a multidimensional autonomy risk assessment (MARA) in weapons systems. By quantifying and computing key descriptive characteristics (“vectors”) of systems to gauge their autonomous and military capabilities, the instrument can be used to generate a comprehensive overview over weapons systems deployed currently and in the near future. This way, it can assist policy-makers in coming to an informed decision on the possible establishment of a politically defined maximum of autonomy in weapons systems.

In September 2015, the heads of state and government of the United Nations Member States are scheduled to decide on the Post-2015 agenda. This is to include not only a list of universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also a mechanism for monitoring and review. The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was launched in July 2013 to provide political leadership and guidance, and to work towards a global transformation to sustainable development. An important element of its work will be the review mechanism envisioned under the HLPF mandate, which is set to replace the Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) starting in 2016. What would the review mechanism have to look like to contribute to the implementation of sustainable development at all levels?

A review process builds on and goes beyond monitoring and data collection. In this framework, the governments are asked critical, analytical questions to determine the reasons for their successes and failures, and to recommend measures needed to further improve goal attainment in the future. The present study examines the debate taking place over the review process, highlights the positions of selected key actors, discusses criteria for designing a review, and applies these to analyze and assess existing review systems. Finally, it develops specific proposals for a universal, state-led, participatory, multi-level "Commit and Review" process that could serve as a central component of the follow-up process for the Post-2015 agenda and goals.

The individual elements that come together to create the crises and problems politicians and policy-makers find themselves dealing with are generally already well-known. It is their interaction that is unpredictable, and therefore not plannable. Unplanned situations are increasingly becoming the norm, especially in the international context, as globalisation accelerates the speed of events and the number of actors exerting direct or indirect influence grows apace. Of course we cannot predict the exact situations in the foreign policy and security environment that German politicians will have to respond and adapt to. This study outlines possible future scenarios that are deserving of special attention because the situations they could create would present great challenges to Germany and Europe.

Germany has never been as prosperous, secure, and free as it is today. But power and influence entail responsibility. This also means that it has to take on new responsibilities.