In the United States as in Europe, the dictatorship of immediacy, combined with the preference for conceptual analyses have brought about a real failure of anticipation. The World in 2030, published by the National Intelligence Council [LINK], has been unable, for example, to imagine the world within 15 years. The reason is simple: this report has widely neglected cultural and political weak signals in favour of a flawed statistical approach.
As if the world could merely be understood by the simple use of economic indicators. In fact, the world will be very different from the predictions of the CIA. An international team from Sorbonne University has just published its own analysis on the subject: The world in 2030, what the CIA had not imagined. Its conclusions run as follows.
In 2030, France will be still recovering from a major economic collapse. The economic implosion will bring about the fall of the dead elites composed of technocrats unable to give a sense to existence in a time of collapse. The ruling classes will thus experience the same evolution as the officer corps at the beginning of the 1914-1918 war: violence will spawn a sudden re-organisation.
In 2030, European competitiveness will be at half-mast. The ousting of Greece from the euro area, and the subsequent collapse of the monetary unit will bring about the loss of European assets placed in Athens. Germany will experience spasmodic armed riots in its old industrial valleys between the Old Germans and the self-directed Islamic regions.
Scotland will have left the United Kingdom. In Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish forces will have been overwhelmed by the flows of migrants. On the reverse, Russia will have strengthened its internal cohesiveness by reviving its own identity. Thanks to sweeping reforms finalized to the defence of its territory, it will have reconfigured itself defensively behind the Northeast route.
In effect, global warming will bring about the rise of maritime traffic in this area. In Western Europe, the Russian cultural centres will select qualified asylum seekers and send the best ones to the University of St. Petersburg that will welcome carefully-selected researchers.
In 2030, Ukraine will have regained its place of matrix territory of the Slavic world, under the protection of Russia. Indeed, the active lobbying of countries like Greece, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria will have influenced the bigger European States to take a more measured position vis-à-vis Russia.
Yet Russia will face a strong Chinese migration pressure in Siberia. Marked brutally by imperial decline, the United States will have returned to their isolationist tradition. Exploiting their own shale gas and having lost interest for the world affairs, America will become more isolated than ever and will experience a religious revival. This new era will be marked by a return to wilderness.
What about the emerging powers? Their emergence will be regarded retrospectively as a mystification. Unable to reduce its most glaring social inequalities Brazil will have become a weak state. Insecurity in cities such as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo will be so high by 2030 that violent insurrections will break out from the favelas, crippling Brazilian economic lungs for long.
To curb the tensions, Brazil will buy social peace by developing its social system. This will bring about a sharp increase in public spending. In fact, Brazil will experience an outright recession after the explosion of the euro zone. However, Brazil will continue its international influence policy in the former colonies of the Portuguese empire (Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau). In fifteen year, Africa will be comparable to a panther skin: small spots of wealth in a sea of poverty. Periodically, riots will flare up in order to protest against rising food prices. In order to meet the growing arable land demand, some African states will have transformed parking buildings into irrigated fields.
In South Africa, the climate of inter-ethnic violence will involve a permanent mobilization of the army. Once destined to a great future, the rainbow Republic will gradually sink into chaos. As far as the Middle-East is concerned, it will be deeply destabilized by the new American isolationism. Having become less dependent on Saudi Arabia because of the exploitation of their own shale gas, the United States will let the country sink into chaos once the dollar has lost its function of global currency reserve. The support of the United States to Israel and Turkey will become increasingly discreet as American entrepreneurs invest in Iran again. Because the vacuum left by the United States, the Middle East will undergo a profound reconfiguration. In the north, Turkey, humiliated by the delaying tactics of the EU, will create its own competing model: the Turkic Union.
In the East, however, Iran will recover its central geopolitical role through a clever policy of balance between Turkey and India. In 2030, India will undoubtedly have become the most populous country in the world. Indian vitality, less constrained than elsewhere by suicidal Malthusian policies will encourages innovation. By 2030, Hindu nationalism will structure the Indian identity. Assimilated to chaos, democracy will be presented as an absolute counter-model against the valuation of a social order supported by a hierarchy. In this context, the caste system will stand as the best safeguard for the social order. Based on family solidarity, the Chinese civilization will -- on the reverse -- have been seriously weakened, by its demographic problems. Apparent competitor to the US in the race for naval supremacy in the 21st century, it will return a quarter of a century later to its ontological isolationism. In 2030, Chinese and American frigates of the 2010s will rust together in the Turkish ports to be deconstructed and recycled. Meanwhile, riots will break out between Chinese and Indian immigrants in Australia.
Contrary to what one might think, the spectacular development of social networks will increase the isolation of individuals. On the web, the competition between the minorities with strong cultural values, to control the masses will exacerbate. Broken into pieces by the power of immediate messaging, time for individual creative thinking will have become the exception. In this sense, the explosion of communication will further reduces any form of free thought. Within the Crypto-democratic countries, the illusion of a government by the people will have shattered long ago.
Having been reduced to use violence in order to compensate their inability to diffuse creative emotions, dead bureaucratic elites will have given way to new leaders. More than ever, the need for political action in the long term, guided not by self-interested lobbyists, but by the common good, will be felt. Yet despite the low signals that can already be perceived now, prospective is not prophecy. Indeed, contrary to the illusion distilled by frozen religions, no future is ever written in advance. The future remains open to the inflections of, determined and creative minorities.