By Mathew Burrows and Anca Agachi
Pandemics have often proven turning points in history. The Black Death in the 1300s helped undermine feudalism, while some believe the Spanish flu tipped the balance in favor of the Allied cause in the final days of the First World War. Yet the current one has been less a disruptor than an accelerator of trends that were already fraying the fabric of the post-Cold War international system long before the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.
Two grueling years into the pandemic, it feels like we’ve seen it all. But it may just be that we ain’t seen nothing yet. Many of COVID-19’s effects on twenty-first century human civilization, in fact, are not yet visible. Much of the non-Western world still awaits sufficient vaccines, and the fallout from pandemic-induced economic downturns will unfold over the course of years, just as the repercussions of the 2008 global financial crisis did. Meanwhile, Sino-US hostility exacerbated by the public-health crisis raises the specter of large-scale conflict after decades of relative peace among the world’s most powerful states. Also suffering serious and hugely consequential setbacks: the march of globalization and the multilateralist architecture designed after World War II to maintain peace.
So what lies ahead? Well into the 2020s, COVID-19 will cast a long shadow over communities, workplaces, markets, battlefields, and negotiating rooms. But even as the centrifugal forces driving the world away from multilateralism and toward multipolarity accelerate, the future is not fixed. We humans have agency in shaping it.
Here, building on our work on strategic foresight and global trend analysis inside the US intelligence community and outside government, we envision three alternative worlds in 2030. The intention is not to predict what’s coming next, but rather to highlight the factors that could lead the world in one direction or another—and thus provide insights that can spur strategists to prepare for possible challenges, plan for potential opportunities, and pursue a brighter future by making prudent decisions in the present. Instead of a crystal ball, what we offer are portals to different universes.
The scenarios in this ten-year forecast are informed by ten significant trends outlined below that are already transforming today’s world and likely to shape the world a decade from now as well.
Ten trends shaping the current and future world
1. The vaccine miracle—and cautionary message
2. Technology’s double-edged sword
3. Here comes deglobalization
4. The deepening of domestic disorders
5. Meet the New World Order 2.0
6. Climate change: Where some Sino-US competition might actually be good
7. A middle-power balancing act against a bipolar world
8. Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy
9. An emerging Asia-Pacific hedging strategy
10. The growing internationalization of conflict
Three alternative worlds in 2030
Mathew Burrows is the director of Foresight at the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative and the co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Welcome to 2030: Three visions of what the world could look like in ten years
Welcome to 2030: Three visions of what the world could look like in ten years
