We humans are fond of organizing our lives around arbitrary constructs. Like calendars for example. Many businesses and government departments engage in strategic thinking only at the start of a new year, as if social and economic forces were governed by calendrical functions. And so we have the tradition of forecasts for the coming year. Experts try to predict what might go wrong in the next 12 months, and it is almost always what can go wrong. Rare is the national security maven who delights in providing advance notice of all the good outcomes that await us.
Veteran intelligence analysts like me demur at predicting the future. In fact, the phrase “future predictions” is PNG'ed from most intelligence work. You often hear phrases like:
The future is impossible to predict. Not true, by the way. Some forces, such as demographics, are boringly predictable and matter more than we like to admit, prone as we are to talking about human agency and the importance of leadership. You can also be lucky or acutely observant and be the first to notice the newly emergent. The halo effect from this felicitous moment can last a professional lifetime.
There is no single future; the future is plural. Sort of true, but not particularly useful. Each step taken by an individual, company, or nation not only opens up new paths but closes down others. Actions reveal not only intentions but abandoned options. Keeping track of these for harried decision makers can be just as useful as polishing your crystal ball.
The best way to anticipate the future then is to pay quite close attention to the present. And once you do, I think you'll notice that while the specifics of any given year defy predictability, its contours will remain recognizable. You may need a playbill to keep track of the actors, but you'll almost always recognize the plot. The same categories return year after year.
So I fearlessly predict in 2016 we will witness:
A previously stable region in the world slide into disarray, or worse. In recent years countries such as Thailand and Brazil have performed this role. The one country I worry about most in this regard is Jordan, which has remained preternaturally calm even as every other country around it has lost its head. I'm hopeful that luck and good governance will continue to prevail there, because civil unrest, terrorism and/or instability in Jordan will make an already impossible Middle East surreal.
Flareups of violence in any number of countries during good weather. Spring and summer are most conducive to military operations and insurgent troublemaking, which is why headlines during the summer highlight the escalating potential for conflict in “insert name of your favorite trouble spot.” Remember this when you read next spring that developments in Ukraine or Afghanistan are about to “enter an ominous new phase.”
Another crisis in Europe, perhaps even several. The European Union was supposed to usher in a new era of tranquility, but instead, the last few years have given us crises of every sort: economic, political, terrorism, military. I'm reminded of an elemental force on the planet: Irony. Years ago I heard an ice hockey sports reporter observe that “irony is the most powerful force in the universe.” What's true for ice hockey is doubly so for the planet. As soon as a government believes it has resolved an issue, you can count on it re-emerging again, perhaps in another form but with recognizable provenance.
ISIS will launch another attack against a poorly-defended target. The chances are high that such an attack will occur in Europe but in an area not previously identified as a likely target. If ISIS continues to suffer losses in Syria and Iraq, more of their foreign fighters will be forced to return home, and they will be angry and humiliated. Humiliation is a powerful creator of destructive human energy. I would be particularly worried about regions in Europe where Russians live or go on holiday.
But enough of the downside. Just as there are predictable difficulties ahead, there are just as many, if not more, looming opportunities. Some of the ones I look forward to next year include:
Progress in the fight against autism and Alzheimer's. We are on the cusp of advances in both diseases, thanks in part to the greater coordination of research across the world. It's fashionable to critique the Internet for injecting too much volatility into world affairs, but we should not discount the benefits of connectivity in areas such as scientific and medical research.
Expansion of Internet to more than half of world population. The UN just reported that almost 57 percent of the world's population still lacks Internet access. I'm betting that we'll cross the 50 percent threshold next year given the effort of companies such as Facebook and Alphabet, the company previously known as Google. Alphabet is betting that a network of stratospheric balloons can provide Internet access to hard-to-reach areas such as in Indonesia, where only 17 percent of the population can connect to the Internet.
Continued decline in world poverty. For the first time in the modern era, the UN anticipates that the number of people living in extreme poverty by the end of 2015 will be less than 1 billion, actually less than 900 million. This number has been cut by half since 1990, despite the fact that poor countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have seen significant population increases. By this time next year, I'm betting that only 10 percent of the world's population will live in extreme poverty—too high, of course, but a number that, with any luck and lots of human cooperation, will only continue to decline. Now that's a prediction worth making!
