The current geopolitical environment, with interlocking existential crises, has been described as a “polycrisis”. How do we understand the future in such a world?
Intelligence collectors and analysts focus first on the short and medium-term challenges that are of immediate concern to policy officials. However, military procurement, alliance building, and intelligence capacity development are all part of preparing for a future environment that may be two decades away.
There is always an explicit or implicit view of the future that is the focus for intelligence collection, analysis and policy. Effective planning requires a combination of processes to strengthen strategic anticipation.
Future scenarios are usually based on a limited number of drivers and trends. Complications and scenario variations multiply as the time horizon lengths. If potential drivers and significant trends are unavoidably numerous, the number of anticipated futures may expand to the point of uselessness.
The multiple existential threats of the polycrisis make it challenging to summarize future possibilities within a limited number of actionable scenarios. Too many scenarios make the future world less, not more, comprehensible.
There are multiple dimensions to the polycrisis: Russian and Chinese aggression, the US ambivalence towards alliances, climate change, potential financial crises, global immigration, potential pandemics, criminal networks, disinformation, and the rise of authoritarian populism. Critical longer-term questions arise from each of these crises.
Crises are interconnected. Bankrupt national treasuries, disease-stricken armies, and disastrous weather, have all influenced the course of armed conflicts. Systematic speculation on the course and consequences of these and other threats to global stability will help define the targets of intelligence collection and the subjects of analysis.
Formal futures exercises are useful, not because they focus on questions that no one is approaching through studies, conferences or internal debates, but because they can surface additional possibilities by using a different perspective, different questions, and different participants.
What are the alternative approaches to looking at future possibilities without generating an unwieldy number of complex narratives?
In place of using some of the standard scenario methodologies, two variations may be more promising. One alternative is to isolate a driver which historically influences events over a long timeframe. The second is to identify future states of particular interest and understand the pathways that would credibly lead to them—and the consequences that could follow.
Ideology in history is a driver that builds an impact over a long period. An interpretation of history may arise in the mind of an individual or small group, but over time dominate national and international events. What is the future of populist authoritarianism? Are there influential counter-narratives? Is there a potentially effective counter-ideology to the US MAGA movement? How do political ideologies integrate the dominance of technology?
Are there factors that can detect an incipient ideological trend and reflect usefully on the consequences for the future? Do these factors provide any focus for intelligence collection, and ultimately for policy decisions? Ideologies grow when there is an apparent system dysfunction, a theoretician, a popularizer, a target group to blame, an action plan, and a potentially large pool of supporters.
An analysis of these factors could detect in an almost invisible faction the potential for growth to a movement able to compete for national power. For already established parties, an analysis of current ideologies could be useful in understanding the potential for further popular appeal, and the implications.
The goal is to suggest how positive popular opinion trends could be encouraged and negative ones diminished. This might include a focus on security dimensions, but also domestic policy. Ideologies have impacts, and those impacts are diverted by counter-ideologies, and perceptions of potential outcomes.
A second approach to understanding future possibilities is to start with a description of a plausible and significant end-state. With specific possible futures of concern, and some agreement about the principal details, the possible pathways to that state can be elaborated, and the consequences and leverage points explored.
Building an imagined pathway between the present and the future is not easy with any method. Historical events seem to follow a predictable path when seen in retrospect. When we look to the future from our current reality, there are numerous consequential alternate futures.
There are already possible futures that are a preoccupation for engaged countries. Will the war in Ukraine end with a stalemate, partial Russian victory, or a restored Ukraine? What will the European strategic environment look like if the US retreats from its historic European commitments? A futures focus on end-states could add value to the analysis.
A series of exercises focused on either a single important driver, or on possible end states, sacrifices the variety of possibilities that flow from traditional scenario processes that incorporate multiple trends and drivers. In a highly complex world, this may be necessary to enable conversations that will generate directly useful conclusions.
Greg Fyffe
Executive Director (2000-2008)
Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, Privy Council Office
Canada
ggfyffe@icloud.com
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