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Global Governance

What if... ? - 14 futures for 2024

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Friday, January 24, 2020
Abstract in English: 
According to a famous science fiction film, the future is what you make of it. This Chaillot Paper takes this quote from Back to the Future to heart, proposing 14 different portraits of the future for the year 2024.
These are not ‘Grey Swans’ we want to avoid – on the contrary, they are ‘White Reindeers’, positive developments we can make come true. The scenarios do not just depict a desirable future, but include pathways and concrete recommendations on how to get there. The scenarios outlined here therefore amount to more than strategic foresight since they are highly operational; in addition, they describe futures that are just beginning in 2024, but which will have wide-ranging positive repercussions in the decades beyond that date.
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93
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What if....? Scanning the horizon: 12 scenarios for 2021

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Friday, January 25, 2019
Abstract in English: 
Foresight is about choice, decision and action – and not, as is repeated time and again, predicting the future and getting it wrong.
This Chaillot Paper aims to alert decision-makers to potential developments with significant strategic impact while they can still prepare for, or even avoid them. This is done using two methods combined: horizon-scanning as well as single scenario-building. Taken together, they produce plausible events set in 2021 – with strategic ramifications well beyond that. All 12 scenarios in this Chaillot Paper reflect the expertise and imagination of the researchers who wrote them: some explore potential conflicts, while others look at disruptive political developments, or indeed at crises with significant ramifications.
That said, all are designed in the hope of drawing attention to foreign and security policy aspects which are potentially overlooked, and all are extrapolated from ongoing and recent developments.
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74
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Global Trends to 2030: Shaping the future in a fast-changing world

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Abstract in English: 
Global power shifts, pressure on liberal democracies, challenges to global governance, the transformation of economic models and of the very fabric of societies, new uses and misuses of technology, humanity’s growing ecological footprint: the world may be on the cusp of a new geopolitical, geo-economic and geotechnological order. Against this backdrop, how can the European Union ensure that it holds its destiny in its own hands? What must it do to better prepare and shape the future, tackling emerging challenges and seizing the opportunities that will arise?
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72
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Superpartner: A US Strategy for a Complex World

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Abstract in English: 
The Trump administration should not take up its work under the assumption that the United States, with only 5 percent of the world’s population and around a quarter of the world’s economy, can continue to be an indispensable presence on the world stage. America’s relative decline since 1945 seems to be a byproduct of the post-World War II system it created along with its allies and partners, in which the United States worked to bring millions out of poverty, give other nations incentives to strengthen their governance structures and institutions, and establish global norms of behavior. That effort sought to ensure no worldwide conflicts recurred. However, fostering an environment where states, groups, and individuals could be further empowered naturally eroded America’s once-monopolistic strength; the United States has brought humanity to a new era where many are powerful and many can potentially lead.
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9
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Global Order and the New Regionalism

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Abstract in English: 
Regional institutions and initiatives have proliferated in the twenty-first century. This latest wave of regional innovation raises, in new guise, a long-standing conundrum for global order and U.S. foreign policy: When is regional organization a useful, even essential, complement to the ends of global governance - financial stability, an open trading system, sustainable development, robust protection of human rights, or the end of civil wars - and when does it threaten or undermine the achievement of those goals? The new regionalism presents the prospect for new benefits for global order as well as new risks. How those challenges and risks are addressed, by the United States and by other member states, will determine whether a fragmented global order or more effective global and regional governance emerge over the next decade.

Five authors examine these dilemmas across five issue areas: finance, trade, development lending, human rights, and peace operations. In each issue area, regional actors and institutions have emerged that reopen and recast earlier debates about regionalism and its effects on global order. In four of the five issue areas, a single, established global institution contends with regional alternatives: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the United Nations. In the domain of human rights, the newly redesigned UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not enjoy a similar, central position; global human rights conventions set the normative frame for regional human rights commissions and courts. Each author suggests ways in which the new regionalism can be harnessed to serve global purposes and the contribution that U.S. policy can make to those ends.
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88
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European Union in the World 2025: Scenarios for EU relations with its neighbours and strategic partners

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Abstract in English: 
Who would have thought a decade ago that not only the European Union but also its neighbourhood both in the East and in the South would have been turned upside down due to a series of crises? Back in 2006 the EU had gone through a successful ‘big bang’ enlargement absorbing ten Central and Eastern European countries and was about to take two more states on board. The economy was doing well, ideas for establishing a ‘ring of friends’ in the immediate neighbourhood were flowering and Russia was seen as a close partner. Yet things have gone differently than might have expected. The financial crisis, the Arab Spring and its consequences, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, the development of ISIS, the war in Syria and the growing number of refugees and migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are challenges the European Union has been facing in recent years.

Although predictions of the end of the European project seem to be premature, it has become obvious that the EU is in a serious crisis, both as an idea and as an organisation and international actor. Therefore simply reacting to crises is no longer an option. The EU desperately needs to think and act strategically if it wants to survive and to have any influence on the global stage.

Above all, it needs to define its future-oriented interests and how these interests can be reconciled with values that the EU attempts to project and protect. Against this backdrop, the Dahrendorf Forum – Debating Europe initiated a foresight project which aimed to set out different scenarios for the future relationship between the European Union and the five countries/regions of the Dahrendorf Forum: Ukraine and Russia, Turkey, MENA, United States and China.

The alternative futures engage in defining the most likely trajectories, downside risks, new trends and ‘unknown unknowns’. By reflecting the forward-looking challenges, the Dahrendorf Foresight Project tries to assess the EU’s role in the world in 2025.
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64
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The Future of US Global Leadership Implications for Europe, Canada and Transatlantic Cooperation

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Abstract in English: 
Today’s global challenges are developing faster than ever as the world grows more interdependent. Advanced technologies are empowering individuals and organizations in new and unpredictable ways, creating new partnerships but also enabling the rise of new adversaries. A wide array of actors – from non-state groups to rogue states to revisionist powers – are testing these new tools. In parallel, the international system built in the second half of the 20th century is being challenged by emerging regional and global powers, while environmental and other transnational issues have become a determining factor in geopolitics. The resulting complexity and growing number of challenges have made the global security environment more difficult to navigate. It is in this context that the transatlantic relationship is evolving.
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20
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Global System on the Brink: Pathways toward a New Normal

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Abstract in English: 
“Global System on the Brink: Pathways toward a New Normal” is a joint study by the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative and the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). Work on this joint assessment of global trends began before the onset of the recent crisis in US-Russian relations, but is more relevant than ever today as we seek to avoid a greater conflict and achieve a new normal of cooperation between Russia and the West. In keeping with previous forecasting works published by the Atlantic Council and the IMEMO, the study examines current trends and potential scenarios for global developments over the next twenty years.

Despite the rapid globalization of the past few decades, which promised cooperation and integration, the potential for major state conflict is on the rise due to deep fragmentation within and between societies. The old confrontation between capitalism and communism has given way to conflicts of moral values with nationalist, religious, and historical-psychological overtones. The worst outcome would be the emergence of a new bipolarity, pitting a group of states centered around China and Russia against the United States and some European and Asian allies. However serious the current situation, the study emphasizes the opportunities for narrowing differences.
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22
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The Futures of Low-Carbon Society: Climate Change and Strategy for Economies in APEC Beyond 2050

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Monday, November 1, 2010
Abstract in English: 
Human societies have always been climate dependent, but we are only now coming to grips with the fact that our climate also depends on us. As the second decade of the 21st century gets underway, we now recognize that we are faced with two challenges created by our ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. First, the atmosphere is warming, setting the stage for a host of problems from droughts, extreme weather events, coastal erosion and inundation, to which we have to adapt. And second, we must begin implementing strategies to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the scale of these impacts while putting in place corresponding adaptation measures.

These challenges are particularly problematic for countries and economies in the Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the region is slated to face some of the greatest climate related impacts relative to other regions of the world. On the other, developing economies in the region will see substantial expansions of their middle classes and the greenhouse gas emissions their lifestyles generate.

The future scenario(s) aimed to illustrate how social, economical and political demand could be harnessed to move the Asia Pacific along a path toward putting far less carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. Science and technology development, including technology transfer, that respond to such demand was seen a key driver of this transition and thus was a major focus of the project. The future scenarios and policy recommendations developed from this project were meant to reflect the economic and social conditions among APEC economies and be consistent with their common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. While the project’s main focus was on longer-term perspectives, recommendations were to be developed for APEC and member economies that spell out short-term actions that could be taken to more quickly reduce the region’s carbon
footprint.
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40
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Expect the Unexpected: Ten Situations to Keep an Eye On

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Abstract in English: 
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.
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49
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