Answer the following question with only the sources given APA style 350 words
All sources must be used and cited
How is the liberal international order expected to change (or changed) in the 21st century? Why maintaining the international liberal order can be considered a global issue? As you answer this question keep in mind Gordon Brown’s talk on the need for global good.
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Will the liberal order survive? The history of an idea
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Foreign Affairs. 96.1 (January-February 2017): p10+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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Full Text:
During the nineteenth century, the United States played a minor role in the global balance of
power. The country did not maintain a large standing army, and as late as the 1870s, the U.S.
Navy was smaller than the navy of Chile. Americans had no problems using force to acquire
land or resources (as Mexico and the Native American nations could attest), but for the most
part, both the U.S. government and the American public opposed significant involvement in
international affairs outside the Western Hemisphere.
A flirtation with imperialism at the end of the century drew U.S. attention outward, as did the
growing U.S. role in the world economy, paving the way for President Woodrow Wilson to take
the United States into World War I. But the costs of the war and the failure of Wilson’s ambitious
attempt to reform international politics afterward turned U.S. attention inward once again during
the 1920s and 1930s, leading to the strange situation of an increasingly great power holding
itself aloof from an increasingly turbulent world.
Like their counterparts elsewhere, U.S. policymakers sought to advance their country’s national
interests, usually in straightforward, narrowly defined ways. They saw international politics and
economics as an intense competition among states constantly jockeying for position and
advantage. When the Great Depression hit, therefore, U.S. officials, like others, raced to protect
their domestic economy as quickly and fully as possible, adopting beggar-thy-neighbor tariffs
and deepening the crisis in the process. And a few years later, when aggressive dictatorships
emerged and threatened peace, they and their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere did
something similar in the security sphere, trying to ignore the growing dangers, pass the buck, or
defer conflict through appeasement.
By this point, the United States had become the world’s strongest power, but it saw no value in
devoting resources or attention to providing global public goods such as an open economy or
international security. There was no U.S.-led liberal order in the 1930s, and the result was a “low
dishonest decade,” in the words of W. H. Auden, of depression, tyranny, war, and genocide.
With their countries drawn into the conflagration despite their efforts to avoid it, Western officials
spent the first half of the 1940s trying to defeat the Axis powers while working to construct a
different and better world for afterward. Rather than continue to see economic and security
issues as solely national concerns, they now sought to cooperate with one another, devising a
rules-based system that in theory would allow like-minded nations to enjoy peace and prosperity
in common.
The liberal international order that emerged after 1945 was a loose array of multilateral
institutions in which the United States provided global public goods such as freer trade and
freedom of the seas and weaker states were given institutional access to the exercise of U.S.
power. The Bretton Woods institutions were set up while the war was still in progress. When
other countries proved too poor or weak to fend for themselves afterward, the Truman
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administration decided to break with U.S. tradition and make open-ended alliances, provide
substantial aid to other countries, and deploy U.S. military forces abroad. Washington gave the
United Kingdom a major loan in 1946, took responsibility for supporting pro-Western
governments in Greece and Turkey in 1947, invested heavily in European recovery with the
Marshall Plan in 1948, created nato in 1949, led a military coalition to protect South Korea from
invasion in 1950, and signed a new security treaty with Japan in 1960.
These and other actions both bolstered the order and contained Soviet power. As the American
diplomat George Kennan and others noted, there were five crucial areas of industrial
productivity and strength in the postwar world: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United
Kingdom, continental Europe, and Northeast Asia. To protect itself and prevent a third world war,
Washington chose to isolate the Soviet Union and bind itself tightly to the other three, and U.S.
troops remain in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere to this day. And within this framework, global
economic, social, and ecological interdependence grew. By 1970, economic globalization had
recovered to the level it had reached before being disrupted by World War I in 1914.
The mythology that has grown up around the order can be exaggerated. Washington may have
displayed a general preference for democracy and openness, but it frequently supported
dictators or made cynical self-interested moves along the way. In its first decades, the postwar
system was largely limited to a group of like-minded states centered on the Atlantic littoral; it did
not include many large countries such as China, India, and the Soviet bloc states, and it did not
always have benign effects on nonmembers. In global military terms, the United States was not
hegemonic, because the Soviet Union balanced U.S. power. And even when its power was
greatest, Washington could not prevent the “loss” of China, the partition of Germany and Berlin,
a draw in Korea, Soviet suppression of insurrections within its own bloc, the creation and
survival of a communist regime in Cuba, and failure in Vietnam.
Americans have had bitter debates and partisan differences over military interventions and other
foreign policy issues over the years, and they have often grumbled about paying for the defense
of other rich countries. Still, the demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and
stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending,
deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S.
foreign policy.
Until now, that is–for recently, the desirability and sustainability of the order have been called
into question as never before. Some critics, such as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, have
argued that the costs of maintaining the order outweigh its benefits and that Washington would
be better off handling its interactions with other countries on a case-by-case transactional basis,
making sure it “wins” rather than “loses” on each deal or commitment. Others claim that the
foundations of the order are eroding because of a long-term global power transition involving the
dramatic rise of Asian economies such as China and India. And still others see it as threatened
by a broader diffusion of power from governments to nonstate actors thanks to ongoing changes
in politics, society, and technology. The order, in short, is facing its greatest challenges in
generations. Can it survive, and will it?
POWER CHALLENGED AND DIFFUSED
Public goods are benefits that apply to everyone and are denied to no one. At the national level,
governments provide many of these to their citizens: safety for people and property, economic
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infrastructure, a clean environment. In the absence of international government, global public
goods–a clean climate or financial stability or freedom of the seas–have sometimes been
provided by coalitions led by the largest power, which benefits the most from these goods and
can afford to pay for them. When the strongest powers fail to appreciate this dynamic, global
public goods are under-produced and everybody suffers.
Some observers see the main threat to the current liberal order coming from the rapid rise of a
China that does not always appear to appreciate that great power carries with it great
responsibilities. They worry that China is about to pass the United States in power and that
when it does, it will not uphold the current order because it views it as an external imposition
reflecting others’ interests more than its own. This concern is misguided, however, for two
reasons: because China is unlikely to surpass the United States in power anytime soon and
because it understands and appreciates the order more than is commonly realized.
Contrary to the current conventional wisdom, China is not about to replace the United States as
the world’s dominant country. Power involves the ability to get what you want from others, and it
can involve payment, coercion, or attraction. China’s economy has grown dramatically in recent
decades, but it is still only 61 percent of the size of the U.S. economy, and its rate of growth is
slowing. And even if China does surpass the United States in total economic size some decades
from now, economic might is just part of the geopolitical equation. According to the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, the United States spends four times as much on its military as
does China, and although Chinese capabilities have been increasing in recent years, serious
observers think that China will not be able to exclude the United States from the western Pacific,
much less exercise global military hegemony. And as for soft power, the ability to attract others,
a recent index published by Portland, a London consultancy, ranks the United States first and
China 28th. And as China tries to catch up, the United States will not be standing still. It has
favorable demographics, increasingly cheap energy, and the world’s leading universities and
technology companies.
Moreover, China benefits from and appreciates the existing international order more than it
sometimes acknowledges. It is one of only five countries with a veto in the UN Security Council
and has gained from liberal economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (where
it accepts dispute-settlement judgments that go against it) and the International Monetary Fund
(where its voting rights have increased and it fills an important deputy director position). China is
now the second-largest funder of UN peacekeeping forces and has participated in UN programs
related to Ebola and climate change. In 2015, Beijing joined with Washington in developing new
norms for dealing with climate change and conflicts in cyberspace. On balance, China has tried
not to overthrow the current order but rather to increase its influence within it.
The order will inevitably look somewhat different as the twenty-first century progresses. China,
India, and other economies will continue to grow, and the U.S. share of the world economy will
drop. But no other country, including China, is poised to displace the United States from its
dominant position. Even so, the order may still be threatened by a general diffusion of power
away from governments toward nonstate actors. The information revolution is putting a number
of transnational issues, such as financial stability, climate change, terrorism, pandemics, and
cybersecurity, on the global agenda at the same time as it is weakening the ability of all
governments to respond.
Complexity is growing, and world politics will soon not be the sole province of governments.
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Individuals and private organizations–from corporations and nongovernmental organizations to
terrorists and social movements–are being empowered, and informal networks will undercut the
monopoly on power of traditional bureaucracies. Governments will continue to possess power
and resources, but the stage on which they play will become ever more crowded, and they will
have less ability to direct the action.
Even if the United States remains the largest power, accordingly, it will not be able to achieve
many of its international goals acting alone. For example, international financial stability is vital
to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the cooperation of others to ensure
it. Global climate change and rising sea levels will affect the quality of life, but Americans cannot
manage these problems by themselves. And in a world where borders are becoming more
porous, letting in everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, nations must use soft
power to develop networks and build institutions to address shared threats and challenges.
Washington can provide some important global public goods largely by itself. The U.S. Navy is
crucial when it comes to policing the law of the seas and defending freedom of navigation, and
the U.S. Federal Reserve undergirds international financial stability by serving as a lender of last
resort. On the new transnational issues, however, success will require the cooperation of
others–and thus empowering others can help the United States accomplish its own goals. In
this sense, power becomes a positive-sum game: one needs to think of not just the United
States’ power over others but also the power to solve problems that the United States can
acquire by working with others. In such a world, the ability to connect with others becomes a
major source of power, and here, too, the United States leads the pack. The United States
comes first in the Lowy Institute’s ranking of nations by number of embassies, consulates, and
missions. It has some 60 treaty allies, and The Economist estimates that nearly 100 of the 150
largest countries lean toward it, while only 21 lean against it.
Increasingly, however, the openness that enables the United States to build networks, maintain
institutions, and sustain alliances is itself under siege. This is why the most important challenge
to the provision of world order in the twenty-first century comes not from without but from within.
POPULISM VS. GLOBALIZATION
Even if the United States continues to possess more military, economic, and soft-power
resources than any other country, it may choose not to use those resources to provide public
goods for the international system at large. It did so during the interwar years, after all, and in
the wake of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a 2013 poll found that 52 percent of Americans
believed that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get
along the best they can on their own.”
The 2016 presidential election was marked by populist reactions to globalization and trade
agreements in both major parties, and the liberal international order is a project of just the sort of
cosmopolitan elites whom populists see as the enemy. The roots of populist reactions are both
economic and cultural. Areas that have lost jobs to foreign competition appear to have tended to
support Trump, but so did older white males who have lost status with the rise in power of other
demographic groups. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that in less than three decades, whites
will no longer be a racial majority in the United States, precipitating the anxiety and fear that
contributed to Trump’s appeal, and such trends suggest that populist passions will outlast
Trump’s campaign.
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It has become almost conventional wisdom to argue that the populist surge in the United States,
Europe, and elsewhere marks the beginning of the end of the contemporary era of globalization
and that turbulence may follow in its wake, as happened after the end of an earlier period of
globalization a century ago. But circumstances are so different today that the analogy doesn’t
hold up. There are so many buffers against turbulence now, at both the domestic and the
international level, that a descent into economic and geopolitical chaos, as in the 1930s, is not in
the cards. Discontent and frustration are likely to continue, and the election of Trump and the
British vote to leave the EU demonstrate that populist reactions are common to many Western
democracies. Policy elites who want to support globalization and an open economy will clearly
need to pay more attention to economic inequality, help those disrupted by change, and
stimulate broad-based economic growth.
It would be a mistake to read too much about long-term trends in U.S. public opinion from the
heated rhetoric of the recent election. The prospects for elaborate trade agreements such as the
Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have
suffered, but there is not likely to be a reversion to protectionism on the scale of the 1930s. A
June 2016 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, found that 65 percent of
Americans thought that globalization was mostly good for the United States, despite concerns
about a loss of jobs. And campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, in a 2015 Pew survey, 51 percent
of respondents said that immigrants strengthened the country.
Nor will the United States lose the ability to afford to sustain the order. Washington currently
spends less than four percent of its GDP on defense and foreign affairs. That is less than half
the share that it spent at the height of the Cold War. Alliances are not significant economic
burdens, and in some cases, such as that of Japan, it is cheaper to station troops overseas than
at home. The problem is not guns versus butter but guns versus butter versus taxes. Because of
a desire to avoid raising taxes or further increasing the national debt, the U.S. national security
budget is currently locked in a zero-sum trade-off with domestic expenditures on education,
infrastructure, and research and development. Politics, not absolute economic constraints, will
determine how much is spent on what.
The disappointing track record of recent U.S. military interventions has also undermined
domestic support for an engaged global role. In an age of transnational terrorism and refugee
crises, keeping aloof from all intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries is neither
possible nor desirable. But regions such as the Middle East are likely to experience turmoil for
decades, and Washington will need to be more careful about the tasks it takes on. Invasion and
occupation breed resentment and opposition, which in turn raise the costs of intervention while
lowering the odds of success, further undermining public support for an engaged foreign policy.
Political fragmentation and demagoguery, finally, pose yet another challenge to the United
States’ ability to provide responsible international leadership, and the 2016 election revealed
just how fragmented the American electorate is. The U.S. Senate, for example, has failed to
ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, despite the fact that the country is relying on it
to help protect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea against Chinese provocations.
Congress failed for five years to fulfill an important U.S. commitment to support the reallocation
of International Monetary Fund quotas from Europe to China, even though it would have cost
almost nothing to do so. Congress has passed laws violating the international legal principle of
sovereign immunity, a principle that protects not just foreign governments but also American
diplomatic and military personnel abroad. And domestic resistance to putting a price on carbon
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emissions makes it hard for the United States to lead the fight against climate change.
The United States will remain the world’s leading military power for decades to come, and
military force will remain an important component of U.S. power. A rising China and a declining
Russia frighten their neighbors, and U.S. security guarantees in Asia and Europe provide critical
reassurance for the stability that underlies the prosperity of the liberal order. Markets depend on
a framework of security, and maintaining alliances is an important source of influence for the
United States.
At the same time, military force is a blunt instrument unsuited to dealing with many situations.
Trying to control the domestic politics of nationalist foreign populations is a recipe for failure, and
force has little to offer in addressing issues such as climate change, financial stability, or Internet
governance. Maintaining networks, working with other countries and international institutions,
and helping establish norms to deal with new transnational issues are crucial. It is a mistake to
equate globalization with trade agreements. Even if economic globalization were to slow,
technology is creating ecological, political, and social globalization that will all require
cooperative responses.
Leadership is not the same as domination, and Washington’s role in helping stabilize the world
and underwrite its continued progress may be even more important now than ever. Americans
and others may not notice the security and prosperity that the liberal order provides until they
are gone–but by then, it may be too late.
JOSEPH S. NYE, JR., is University Distinguished Service Professor at the Harvard Kennedy
School of Government and the author of Is the American Century Over?
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “Will the liberal order survive? The history of an idea.” Foreign Affairs, Jan.-
Feb. 2017, p. 10+. General Reference Center GOLD, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc
/A477642108/GRGM?u=miam11506&sid=GRGM&xid=60e5ee78. Accessed 17 June 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477642108
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av Jerome c. Glenn
Humanity is making momentous
strides forward in health, literacy,
and many other critical areas, but
also stalling or moving backward
on many others , warns The
Millennium Project in its latest
State of the Future report.
The global s ituation for humanity
continues to improve in general, but
at the expense of the env ironm ent.
Massive transit ions from isolated
subsistence agricuJture and industry
to a global, Internet-connected, plu-
ralistic civilization are occurring at
unprecedented speed and with
never-before-seen levels of uncer-
tainty.
The indicators of progress, from
health and education to water and
energy, show that we are winning
more than we are losing-but where
we are losing is very serious. As The
Millennium Project has documented
over the past 17 years in its annual
State of tfze Future reports, humanity
clearly has the ideas and resources to
address its global challenges, but it
has not yet sh own the leadership,
policies, and management on the
scale necessary.
On one hand, people around the
world are becoming healthier,
wealthier, better educated, more
peaceful, and increasingly con-
nected, and they are living longer.
The child mortality rate has dropped
47% since 1990, while life expectancy
has risen by 10 years to reach 7
0.5
years today. Extreme poverty in the
developing world fell from 50% in
1981 to 21 % in 2010, primary-school
completion rates grew from 81 % in
1990 to 91 % in 2011, and on ly one
8AOOOOI BIGSTOCK; NASA
transborder war occurred in 2013.
Furthermore, nearly 40% of human-
ity is now connected via the Internet.
However, water tables on all conti-
nents are falling, glaciers are melt-
ing, coral reefs are dying, ocean acid-
ity is increasing, ocean dead zones
have doubled every decade since the
1960s, and half the world’s topsoil
has been destroyed.
Some critical socioeconomic fault
lines are worsening, as well: Intra-
state conflicts and refugee numbers
are rising, income gaps are increas-
ingly obscene, and youth unemploy-
ment has reached dangerous propor-
tions. Meanwhile, traffic jams and
air pollution are strangling cities. In
add ition, between $1 trillion and
$1.6 trillion is paid in bribes, orga-
nized crime takes in twice as much
money per year as a ll military bud-
gets combined, civi l liberties are in-
creasingly tlueatened, and half the
world is potentially unstable.
The International Monetary Fund
expects the globa l economy to grow
from 3% in 2013 to 3.7% during 2014
www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septe111ber-October 2014 15
www.wfs.org
and possibly 3.9% in 2015. The
world population having grown
1.1 % in 2013, global per capita
income will be increasing by 2.6% or
more a year. Our world is reducing
poverty faster than many thought
was possible.
Nevertheless, the divide between
the rich and poor is growing fast:
According to Oxfam, the total wealth
of the richest 85 people equals that
of 3.6 billion people in the bottom
half of the world’s economy, and
half of the world’s wealth is owned
by just 1% of the population. We
need to continue the successful ef-
forts that are reducing poverty, but
we also need to focus far more seri-
ously on reducing income inequality
in order to avoid long-term instability.
Instability has already been erupt-
ing and expanding in many parts of
the world over the last five years,
due to a confluence of rising food
and energy prices, failing states, fall-
ing water tables, climate change, de-
sertification, and increasing migra-
tions resulting from political,
environmental, and economic condi-
tions. And, because the world is bet-
ter educated and increasingly con-
nected, people are becoming less
tolerant of the abuse of elite power
than in the past. Unless these elites
open the conversation about the
future with the rest of their popula-
tions, unrest and revolutions are
likely to continue and increase.
Although wars between states are
becoming fewer and fewer, and the
numbers of both nuclear weapons
and battle-related deaths have been
decreasing, conflicts within countries
are increasing: A third of Syria’s 21
million people are displaced or live
as refugees, and the world ignores
6 million war-related deaths in the
Congo.
Other fault lines are emerging
worldwide in the form of rapidly ris-
ing frequency of cyberattacks and es-
pionage, an escalation in territorial
tensions among Asian countries, and
overlapping jurisdictions for energy
access to the melting Arctic. It will be
a test of humanity’ s maturity to re-
solve all these conflicts peacefully.
Meanwhile, the world is automat-
ing jobs far more broadly and
quickly than it did in earlier eras.
How many truck and taxicab drivers
will future self-dr iving vehicles re-
Figure 1 2013 State of the Future Index
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
1993 1998 2003 2008 2013 2018 2023
Each of the 30 variables making up the index (Box 1) can be examined to show where we are
winning, where we are losing, and where there is unclear or little progress.
Box 1 Variables Used in the 2013-14 State of the Future Index
1. GNI per capita, PPP (constant 2005 inter-
national $)
2. Economic income inequality (share of
top 10%)
3. Unemployment, total{% of world
labor force)
4. Poverty headcount ratio at $1.25 a day
(PPP) (% of population)
5. Levels of corruption (O=highly corrupt;
6=very clean)
6. Foreign direct investment, net inflows
(balance of payments, current$, billions)
7. R&D expenditures(% of GDP}
8. Population growth (annual%}
9. Life expectancy at birth (years}
10. Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)
11. Prevalence of undernourishment
12. Health expenditure per capita (cu rrent$)
13. Physicians (per 1,000 people)
14. Improved water source(% of population
with access)
15. Renewable internal freshwater resources
per capita (thousand cubic meters)
16. Ecological Footprint/ Biocapacity ratio
17. Forest area(% of land area)
18. CO emissions from fossil-fuel and cement
2
production (billion tonnes)
19. Energy efficiency (G DP per unit of energy
use (constant 2005 PPP$ per kg of oil
equivalent)]
20. Electricity production from renewable
sources, excluding hydroelectric
(% of total)
21. Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages
16 THE FUTURIST September-October 2014 • www.wfs.org
15 and above)
22. School enrollment. secondary(% gross)
23. Number of wars (conflicts with more than
1,000 fatalities}
24. Terrorism incidents
25. Number of countries and groups that had
or still have intentions to build nuclear
weapons
26. Freedom rights (number of countries
rated free)
27. Voter turnout(% voting population)
28. Proportion of seats held by women in
national parliaments(% of members)
29. Internet users (per 100 people)
30. Prevalence of HIV(% of population
age 15-49)
www.wfs.org
place? How many industrial laborers
will lose their jobs to robotic u1anu-
facturing? How many telephone
support personnel will be sup-
planted by AI telephone systems?
In every industry and sector, the
number of employees per business
revenue is falling, giving rise to em-
ployment-less economic growth. Job
seekers will need more opportunities
for one-person Internet-based self-
employment and for markets for
their interests and abilities in other
job markets worldwide. Successfully
leapfrogging slower linear develop-
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“Because the world is better educated and Increasingly
connected, people are becoming less tolerant of the abuse of
These great conversations will be
better informed if we realize that tJ1e
world is improving more than most
pessimists know and that future
dangers are worse than most opti-
mists ind icate. Better ideas, 11ew
tools, and creative management ap-
proaches are popping up all over the
world, but t11e lack of imagination
and courage to make serious cl1ange
is drowning the innovations needed
to make the world work for all.
As a global think tank, The Millen-
4t ‘ ,… ; · tt
elite power than in the past.”
ment processes in lower-income
countries is likely to require imple-
menting futurist ic possibilities-
from 3-0 printing to seawater agri-
culture-and making increasing
individual and collective intelligence
a national objective of each country.
The explosive, accelerating growth
of knowledge in a rapidly changing
and increasingly interdepe11dent
world gives us so much to know
about so many things. Unfortu-
nately, we are also flooded with so
much trivial news Ulat serious issues
get little attention or interest, and too
much time is wasted going thiough
useless information.
At the same time, the world is in-
creasingly engaged in diverse con-
versations about how to relate to tJ1e
environment and to our fellow hu-
mans, and about what technologies,
economics, and laws are right for
our common future. These conversa-
tions are emerging from countless
international negotiations, UN gath-
erings, and thousands of Internet
discussion groups and big-data
analyses. Humanity is slowly but
surely becoming aware of itself as an
integrated system of cultures, econo-
mjes, technologies, natural and built
environments, and governance
systems.
nium Project gathers insights from a
network of more than 4,500 experts
who continuously gather and share
data via our online Global Futures
System (GFS). GFS can be thought of
as a globa l information utility from
which different readers can draw
different value for improving their
understanding and decisions.
The collective intelligence emerges
in GFS from synergies among data/
information/ know ledge, software/
hardware, and experts and others
with insight that continually learn
from feedback to produce just-in-
time knowledge for better decisions
than any of these elements acting
a lone.
In addition to succinct but rela-
tively detailed descriptions of the
current situation and forecasts, we
also formulate reco1nmendations to
address the various global chal-
lenges. Some of our recommenda-
tions are as follows:
• Establish a U.S.-China 10-year
environmental security goal to re-
duce climate change and i1nprove
trust.
• Grow meat without growing an-
imals, to reduce water demand and
greenhouse-gas emissions.
• Develop seawater agriculture
for biofuels, carbon sink, and food
without rain.
• Build global collective intelli-
gence systems for input to long-
range strategic plans.
• Create tele-nations connecting
brruns overseas to the development
process back home.
• Establish trans-institutions for
1nore effective implementation of
strategies.
• Detail and implement a global
stra tegy to counter organized crin1e.
• Use the State of the Future Index
as an a lternative to GDP as a mea-
sure of progress for the world and
nations with 30 variables that in-
cludes indicators for social equity
and well-being.
I Drld
The world is in a race between im-
pleme11ting ever-increasing ways to
improve the human condition and
the seemingly ever-increasing com-
plexity and scale of global problems.
So, how is the world doing in this
race? What’s the score so far?
The Millennium Project’s global
State of the Future Index (SOFI), pro-
duced annually since 2000, measw·es
the 10-year outlook for the future
based on historical data on 30 key
variables. In the aggregate, these
data depict whether the future
promises to be better or worse. The
SOFI is intended to show the direc-
tions and inte11Sity of change and to
identify the responsible factors and
the relationships among them.
The current SOFI, shown in Figure
1, indicates a slower progress since
2007, although the overall outlook is
prom1s1ng.
Some Kev Trends AffecUng
lb s, e n, Ulf.’ ·n,u
• Computing. The EU, United
States, Japan, and China have an-
nounced programs to understand
how the brain works and apply that
knowledge to make better comput-
ers wit11 better computer-user inter-
faces. Google also is working to cre-
ate artificial brains that could serve
us as personal artificial-intelligence
assistants. Another great race is on to
make supercomputer power avail-
able to the masses with advances in
IBM’s Watson and with cloud com-
puting by A1nazon and ot h ers.
www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septernber-October 2014 17
www.wfs.org
Figure 2 Where We ‘re Winning , Where We ‘re
Losing
Winning
Mortality rate, infant
(per 1,000 live births) ============—-
School enrollment,
secondary(% gross) t=============—-
Electricity production from 2023
renewables, excl. hydro (% of total)
2013
Number of wars (conflicts with
2003more than 1,000 fatalities) 1–…;;;;;;..,.
1993
Seats held by women in national
parliaments(% of members) I-==::;-….
Losing
Ecological footprint/
biocapacity ratio (x10) t===::
CO
2
emissions from fossil fuel
and cement production •-~——
(billion tonnes; GtC0
2
) t=======:-
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Note: Some data has been amended to fit the graph: [/100] means the real number has been divided by 100, while [x10] means a multiplication by 10.
18 THE FUTURIST September-October 2014 • www.wfs.org
www.wfs.org
About 85% of the world’s popula-
tion is expected to be covered by
high-speed mobile Internet in 2017.
• A Web-connected world. More
than 8 billion devices are connected
to the Internet of Things, which is
expected to grow to 40 biUion-80 bil-
lion devices by 2020. According to
tl1e UN’s International Telecommu-
nications Union, nearly 40 % of hu-
manity now uses the Internet. This
global network is close to becoming
the de facto global brain of humanity.
So what happens when the entire
world has access to nearly all the
.– .-.~. ·.,….,. t·~ • ,, : -“: r,j • ·,1 ”
, I .., , ” , ·• – ~ . ~ri·’ .;. .”!- . e-l I ,… ·J!.i,, •
“It is not vet clear that humannv will grow from shon-term,me-first
thinking to longer-term, we-first,planet-oriented decision making.”
attacks over 24 hours on July 24,
2013, the majority of which attacked
targets in the United States. Cyber-
attacks can be thought of as a new
kind of guerrilla warfare. Prevention
may involve an endless intellectual
arms race of hacking and counter-
hacking software, setting cyber
traps, exposing sources, and initiat-
i11g trade sanctions.
• Civil strife. The long-range trend
toward democracy is strong, but
Freedom House reports that world
political and civil liberties deterio-
rated for the eighth consecutive year
world’s knowledge, along with in-
stantaneous access to artificial brains
tl1at can solve prob lems and create
new conditions like geniuses, while
blurring previous distinctions be-
tween virh.tal realities and physical
reality? We have already seen bril-
liant financial experts-augmented
with data and software-n1aking the
short-term, selfish, economic deci-
sions that led to the 2008 global fi-
nancial crisis, continued environ-
mental degradation, and widening
income disparities. It is not yet clear
that humanity will grow from short-
term, me-first thinking to longer-
term, we-first, planet-oriented deci-
sion making.
Human i ty may become more
responsible and compassionate as
the Internet of people and things
grows across the planet, making us
n1ore aware of humanity as a whole
and of our natural and built environ-
ments. Yet multi-way interactive me-
dia also attracts individuals with
common interests into isolated ideo-
logical groups, reinforcing social po-
larization and conflict and forcing
some political systems into gridlock.
And although the Internet’s
growth may make it increasingly dif-
ficult for conventional crimes to go
undetected, cyberspace has become
the n1edium for new kinds of crimes:
According to the cloud-services pro-
vider Akamai, there were 628 cyber-
in 2013, with declines noted in 54
countries and i.Jnprovements in only
40 countries. At the same time, in-
creasing numbers of educated and
mobile-phone/ Internet-savvy
people are no longer tolerating the
abuse of power and may be setting
the stage for a long and difficult
transition to more global democracy.
• Climate change. The Intergov-
e rnm en ta I Panel on Climate
Change’s Fifth Assess111ent Report
found that world greenhouse gas
emissions grew by an annual aver-
age of 2.2% between 2000 and 2010,
up from 1.3% per year between 1970
and 2000. Each decade of the past
three was warmer than the previous
decade. The past 30 years was likely
the warmest period in the Northern
Hemisphere in the last 1,400 years.
Furthermore, even if all CO
2
emis-
sions are stopped today, the IPCC re-
port notes that “most aspects of cli-
mate change will persist for many
centuries.” Hence, the world has to
take adaptation far more seriously,
in addition to reducing emissions,
and creating new methods to reduce
the greenhouse gases that are al-
ready in the atmosphere.
Without dramatic changes, UN
Environment Program projects a 2°C
(3.6°F) rise above preindustrial levels
in 20-30 years, accelerating changing
climate, ocean acidity, changes in
disease patterns, and saltwater intru-
sions into freshwater areas world-
wide. The UN Food and Agriculh.tre
Organization reports that 87% of
global fish stocks are either ful ly ex-
p loited or overexploited. Oceans ab-
sorb about 33% of human-generated
CO
2
, but their ability to continue do-
ing this is being reduced by chang-
ing acidity and the die-offs of cora]
reefs and other living systems.
• Energy needs. The wor ld also
needs to create enough electrical
production capacity for an addi-
tional 3.7 billion people by 2050.
There are 1.2 billion people without
electricity today (17% of the world),
and an additional 2.4 billion people
will be added to the world’s popt1la-
tion between now and 2050.
Compounding this is the require-
ment to decommission aging nuclear
power plants and to replace or retro-
fit fossil fuel plants. The cost of nu-
clear power is increasing, while the
cost of renewables is falling-wind
power passed nuclear as Spain’s
leading source of electricity. How-
ever, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natu-
ral gas) will continue to supply the
vast majority of the world’s electric-
ity past 2050 unless there are major
social and technologica l changes. If
the long-term trends toward a
wealthier and more sophisticated
world continue, our energy de-
mands by 2050 could be more than
expected. However, the convergen-
ces of technologies are accelerating
rapidly to make energy efficiencies
far greater by 2050 than forecast today.
• Water stress. Major progress
was made over the past 25 years that
provided enough clean water for an
additional 2 billion people. But as a
result of water pollution, accelerat-
ing climate change, falling water
tables around the world, and an ad-
ditional 2.4 billion people in just 36
years, some of the people with safe
water today may not have it in the
future unless significant changes oc-
cur. According to the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and De-
velopment (OECD), half the world
could be living in areas with severe
water stress by 2030.
• Population growth . The UN’s
mid-range forecast is that the
world’s population, which now to-
tals 7.2 billion people, will number
9.6 billion by 2050. By that date, the
www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septe,nber-Oclober 2014 19
www.wfs.org
.
.
number of people over age 65 will
equal or surpass the number under
15.
Average life expectancy at birth
has increased from 48 years in 1955
to 70.5 years today. Future scientific
and medical breakthroughs cou Id
give people longer and n1ore pro-
ductive lives than most would be-
lieve possible today. For example,
uses of genetic data, software, and
nanotechnology will help detect and
treat disease at the genetic or molec-
ular level.
direct regard for social issues? On
tl1e other hand, might social co11sid-
erations impair progress toward a
truthful understa11ding of reality?
• Gender equity. Violence against
women is ilie largest war today, as
measured by death and casualties
per year. Globally, 35% of won1en
have experienced physical and/ or
sexual violence. While the gender
gaps for health and educational at-
tainment were closed by 96% and
93% respectively, according to the
2013 Global Gender Gap report by
,,, – ;:,.,,-….. .-T
• ,” ; .. , ~ JJ ~ 1 ~ r’.-~–·’ • , ·” ,.’fl ‘ .., ‘ ·t
,I ,.. ,::;.i ~- ” ..
“It is unreasonable to expect the world to cooperativelv create
and implement strategies to build abetter future without some
general agreement about what that desirable future is.”
• Accelerating technologies. Sci-
ence and technology’s continued ac-
ce leration is fundamentally chang-
ing what is possible, and access to
this knowledge is becoming univer-
sally available. For example, Chlna’s
Tianhe-2 supercomputer is the
world’s fastest computer, at 33.86
petaflops (quadrillion floating point
operations per second)-passing the
computational speed of a human
brain. Individual gene sequencing is
now available for $1,000-and the
price could go dowi1 much further in
comi11g years-a developn1ent that
will enable individualized ge11etic
medicine for every patient.
Although advances in syntl1etic bi-
ology, quantum entanglement,
Higgs-like particles, and computa-
tional science seem remote from im-
proving the human co11dition, such
basic scientific endeavors are neces-
sary to increase ilie knowledge that
scientists can use to develop and in1-
prove technologies to benefit hu-
manity. But witl1 little news coverage
and educational curricula, the gen-
eral public seem unaware of the ex-
traordinary changes and conse-
quences tl1at need to be discussed: Is
it ethical to clone ourselves, to bring
dinosaurs back to life, or to invent
thousands of new life forms through
synthetic biology? Should basic sci-
entific research be pursued witl1out
ilie World Economic Forum, tl1e gap
in economic participation has been
closed by only 60%, and the gap i11
political outcomes by only 21 %:
Women account for only 21.3 % of
the membership of national legisla-
tive bodies worldwide, up from
11.3% in 1997.
• “Hidden” hunger. Food markets
in n1uch of the developing world ex-
hibit an increasing problem of hid-
den hunger- that is, the intake of
calories is sufficient, but those calo-
ries contain little in nutritious value,
vitamins, and minerals. A lth ough
t11e share of people in the world who
are hungry has fallen from over 30%
in 1970 to 15% today, concerns are
increasing over the variety and nu-
tritional quality of food. The FAO es-
timates that some 30% of ilie world
population (2 billion people) suffers
fro1n hidden hunger.
• Vulnerable urban coastal zones.
Human construction is diminishing
the land structures that the world’s
coastal zones rely on to blunt the im-
pacts of hurricanes, tsunamis, and
pollution. This is a harmful outcome,
not onJy for flora and fauna, but for
us, as well, since more tl1an half the
world’s people live witl1in 120 miles
of a coastline. Without appropriate
mitigation, prevention, and manage-
ment of the natura l infrastructure
withln w·ban coastal zones, billions
of people will be increasingly vul-
nerable to a range of disasters.
• “Lone wolf” terrorism. Individ-
uals acting alone can wield increas-
ing amounts of damage. The number
of terrorism incidents increased over
the past 20 years, reaching 8,441 in
2012 and more tl1an 5,000 in the first
half of 2013.
Of all terrorism, the lone-wolf type
is the most insidious, because it is
exceedingly difficult to anticipate,
given the actions and intent of indi-
viduals acting alone. The average
opinion of our i.nternational panel is
that nearly a quarter of terrorist at-
tacks carried out in 2015 might be by
a lone wolf, and that the situation
might escalate: About half of t11e par-
ticipants that we surveyed tl1ought
that lone-wolf terrorists might at-
tempt to use weapons of mass de-
struction by around 2030.
It is unreasonab le to expect the
world to cooperatively create and
implement strategies to build a bet-
ter future without some general
agreement about what that desirable
future is. Such a future can 011ly be
bui lt with awareness of the global
situation and of the extraordinary
possibilities.
What we need is a global collec-
tive intelligence system to track sci-
ence and technology advances, fore-
cast consequences, and docun1ent a
range of views on them. The acceler-
ating rates of changes iliat the world
now experiences call for new kinds
of decision making witl1 g lobal real-
time feedback. The Global Futures
System is an early expression of tl1at
future direction. 0
About the Author
Jerome C. Glenn is CEO of
The Millennium Project and
The Global Futures System,
www.themp.org. This article
is adapted from 2013-14
State of the Future, co-
authored by Glenn with
Theodore J. Gordon and Elizabeth Florescu
(published by The Millennium Project,
millennium-project.org/millennium/201314SOF
.html).
20 THE FUTURIST Septe1nber-October 2014 • www.wfs.org
www.wfs.org
https://millennium-project.org/millennium/201314SOF
www.themp.org
