Crystal-gazing sees rise in global challenges

Vappala Balachandran

Former Special Secy, Cabinet Secretariat

Global Trends-2040, released by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on April 8, is the seventh in the series starting with the first report in 1997 which was a 15-year global strategic security projection till 2010.

In 1996, the US government asked its civilian intelligence and analysis body, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), to conduct periodical studies on the emerging global trends that might affect its strategic security. This was in the background of a smug feeling that had emerged even within its intelligence community that the role of the US as the supreme global leader was unchallenged after the end of the Cold War with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The NIC was created in 1979 to produce integrated intelligence assessments for the President. Till 2005, it was placed under the CIA Director, who wore two hats as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Chief of US national intelligence agencies. It is not a clandestine organisation like the CIA, although it produces the US President’s top-secret Daily Brief. In 2005, a separate post of the DNI was created to supervise all intelligence agencies, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

In 1996, the NIC held consultations with the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the US National Defence University to identify key global trends and their impact on major regions with special focus on America. Participants included academics, businessmen, media representatives and government officials. It was also decided to release a public version of their conclusions. The result was their first publication, Global Trends-2010, in 1997. Subsequent reports were produced after consultations with non-American experts too.

It would be interesting to assess how far they were correct in their strategic clairvoyance. In 1997, they had correctly assessed that a new world order was emerging, replacing the post-Second World War ‘Super Power’ politics consisting of stable states. This pattern was replaced by uncertain internal control in many states with new problems created by technology advancement resulting in globalisation, migration and elevated public expectations, combined with resource limitations.

The entry of multinationals, NGOs and criminal groups on a transnational pattern worsened this problem. National governments which were initially happy with the flow of technology, faster flow of goods and services suddenly found that internal control was slipping out of their hands which directly affected their security.

Interestingly, their prediction that China would continue to face difficulties in funding its development programmes even by 2010 was not borne out later. The report had said that China “has a long way to go to develop a modern economy on a nationwide basis”. Ironically, the US and Taiwan contributed to China’s development by transferring their productions lines. Also, in 1999, the NIC recommended that the “WTO membership for China is strongly in our interest”. As a result, China-US trade jumped from $5 billion in 1980 to $660 billion in 2018.

Strikingly, Global Trends-2030, released in December 2012, had predicted eight ‘Black Swans’, including a pandemic hitting the world by 2030. It had said that scientists were beginning to recognise worldwide ‘viral chatter’ on previously unknown pathogens in humans “that sporadically make the jump from animals to humans”.

These included “a prion disease in cattle that jumped in the 1980s to cause the variant Creutzeldt-Jacob disease in humans, a bat henipavirus that in 1999 became known as Nipah virus in humans, and a bat coronavirus that jumped to humans in 2002 to cause SARS”. The report feared that a “novel respiratory pathogen that kills or incapacitates more than 1 per cent of its victims” and its transmission could result “in millions of people suffering and dying in every corner of the world in less than six months”.

Global Trends-2040: A More Contested World begins with a preamble that 2.5 million had died in the Covid-19 pandemic by early 2021. The virus has also shown how interdependent the world had become and how in the “coming years and decades the world will face more intense and cascading global challenges ranging from disease to climate change to the disruptions from new technologies and financial crises.”

Faster technologies will appear which would disrupt jobs, industries, communities and the nature of power and “what it means to be human”. Global migration, estimated at 270 million in 2020, is exacerbating global and state-to-state tensions. “These challenges will intersect and cascade, including in ways that are difficult to anticipate.” It anticipates that national security would mean not only defending our borders “against armies and arsenals but also withstanding and adapting to these shared global challenges”.

Another important point mentioned is the explosion of Internet connections, 10 billion in 2018, to reach 64 billion by 2025 and “many trillions by 2040”. Along with “new efficiencies, conveniences and advances in living standards”, the danger would be to divide society over their assumed ‘core values’ and deepen the societal divide based on national, religious, cultural and political preferences. India has already seen the pernicious effect of this Internet explosion. As a result, the world is both “inextricably bound by connectivity” and “fragmenting in different directions”.

The estimate finds that by 2040 individual states would find mounting internal pressure to satisfy a more empowered population while internationally the world would be ‘adrift’ with no single state emerging to dominate across all regions. The US and China will dominate others to influence global dynamics, which would force other states to accept ‘starker choices’. The world would be fragmented into several economic and security blocs of varying sizes and strength, increasing state-to-state conflicts.

Lastly, by 2040, China would be the most significant rival to the US in space, competing in commercial, civil and military areas. China will continue to develop in these areas independent of the US and Europe and will choose its own set of foreign partners participating in Chinese-led space activities. “Chinese space services, such as the Beidou satellite navigation system, will be in use around the world as an alternative to Western options,” the report says.