Reading up on the future

Intelligence is all about deciphering what lies ahead -- analysis of what happened in the past and a capacity to determine what entails for the future in the goings-on of the present, certainly help but Einstein's famous dictum 'imagination is more important than knowledge' also speaks of the relevance of the versatility of the human mind that could see beyond what the 'facts' presented to the analyst meant and thus enrich the assessment. All of this seems to have guided the US National Intelligence Council's 20-year forecast of where the world would be, published recently.

It is a sobering thought that today strategic assessments have ceased to have a long life since the world could change faster than the calculated shifts and therefore the best that such an exercise could do is to project the trends and legitimately conclude where these, if unchecked, would end. Global readings are basically premised on the doings of human beings as a whole and the NIC has rightly identified five crucial areas in play where manmade changes would contribute to the shape of things to come -- international relations, global economy, technology, environment and domestic management of governance. Long range trends can be established and their cumulative effect read through a competent analysis in which legitimacy of 'imagination' as mentioned above would also play a part. But what about a crisis not directly created by man, like Covid? An infliction by nature that affected the entire humanity would set the clock back for the analysts in the sense that they would have to recalibrate their entire readings afresh.

'A more contested world' is the total summation that the NIC report makes and regardless of the details that might have gone into this assessment, there is no denying the fact that this is a brilliant prediction of the direction in which international relations are headed. In a very broad picturization it is prudent to consider the end of the Cold War as a reference point for examining what is shaping up the new global order ever since. Success of the anti-Soviet armed campaign in Afghanistan leading to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from there and a rapid dismemberment of the USSR, the mighty Communist superpower, that followed, brought down the curtains on the Cold War leaving the USA as the only superpower commanding all military and economic initiatives at the global level. The transformational event, however, was accompanied by three new developments that would further affect the world in the future. Still in play these, it is hoped, did get into NIC's calculus.

One is the impact that the Soviet collapse made on China, the second most powerful Communist power. President Deng Xiaoping did not fail to notice that the USSR had cracked under its own internal economic contradiction, had acquired military strength but not built its economy and had in fact moved towards an oligarchy. Deng was set on seeking the economic route to becoming a superpower, learning from the failed Soviet model and opening into the global economy in a controlled fashion. China has built a huge balance of trade in its favour, reached out to Western centres of knowledge through investments in the universities there and harnessed technology in all fields.

The second transformative change that coincided with the end of the Cold War was the success of the IT Revolution that shifted the world from the Industrial Age to the Age of Information. The new age brought in the Knowledge Economy, created borderless markets and set new benchmarks of competitiveness wherein a rival could appear from anywhere on the globe making better use of information that came into the public domain as soon as it was produced. There were no obscure corners in the world any more as a global outreach accessed them all. The end of the Cold War interestingly produced a large number of border conflicts, insurgencies and cross border offensives as many national identities that had been suppressed during the Cold War asserted themselves. This phenomenon is still at play in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and is a significant factor affecting international relations.

The third development -- and this posed a lasting threat to world security -- was the rise of the new global terror, a product of faith-based motivation from the same battleground in Afghanistan that had ousted the Soviet army from there. The anti- Soviet armed campaign was directed on the war cry of Jehad and led by the Pak-controlled Hizbul Mujahideen, the radical Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Toiba of Osama bin Laden with equal force. The success of the Afghan Jehad was followed by the installation of the Afghan Emirate at Kabul in 1996, on the initiative of Pakistan, that was headed by the Taliban's Mollah Omar working in close concert with Laden. That regime of Islamic radicals soon bared its fangs against the US-led West, the Shiites and the idol worshippers and compelled the US to oust it. This, in turn, laid the turf for the Al Qaeda's offensive of 9/11 and the subsequent launch of the 'war on terror' by the US-led World Coalition against Islamic radicals, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

With Islamic radicals enjoying considerable support within the Muslim world spread across Asia and Africa and in particular receiving shelter in Pakistan, the 'war on terror' leaves behind a lasting conflict between the West and radical Islam, rightly described by the likes of Samuel P. Huntington and his mentor Prof. Bernard Lewis as a 'clash of civilisations'. The rise of China, advent of the cyber world and revival of radical Islam are thus the three paradigms that are shaping the world and pushing it in the direction of a new bipolar order. Even factors like economy, environment, technology and internal governance are in some way adding to this new post-Cold War cleavage created by international relations.

The geopolitical contours of 'a more contested world' are getting crystallised, as viewed from India, along three courses. First is the significant development of the advent of Biden Presidency restoring the traditional US-NATO alliance which was weakened in the Trump regime. This is in line with the Biden administration looking at China and Russia as the antagonistic powers much like what the position was for the US in the Cold War. Biden apparently looks at Russia's Putin with great distrust -- Donald Trump gave the impression of being in a comfortable equation with the Russian President and perhaps regarded Russia as another white nation across Europe. The new level of energisation of QUAD achieved in Biden administration was basically directed against the aggressive designs of China in the Indo-Pacific but it has evoked a sharp reaction from Russia and created a sense of strategic unity between Russia and China. Japan is the anchor of QUAD in the region and this has evidently led to Putin cautioning India against becoming part of an 'Asian NATO', particularly after the appearance of France on the scene through its participation in the naval exercises with QUAD.