Atlantic Council Strategy Papers Series

The COVID-19 pandemic is an acute public health and economic crisis that is further destabilizing an already weakened rules-based international system. With cooperation, determination, and resolve, however, the United States and its allies can recover from the crisis and revitalize an adapted rules-based system to bring about decades of future freedom, peace, and prosperity.

This paper is a preliminary look at the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and sketches three scenarios for the possible direction of the global system post-COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has stressed pressure points in the global order and threatens to unravel the rules-based international system. This paper examines the geopolitical implications of the pandemic by identifying key strategic shocks and tensions exacerbated by the virus. It also identifies uncertainties for the global order and provides policy recommendations for how the United States and its allies should address the pandemic.

AI is expected to have a transformational impact on the future of geopolitics, defense, and security. In this fluctuating environment, where the US is engaged in a high-stakes competition with is near-peer adversaries, and AI is enabling paradigm-shifting changes in public and private sector operations, how should the US respond?

Our conclusion in 2016’s Global Risks 2035 was that state-on-state conflict posed a bigger threat than terrorism. In the two years since, the post-Cold War order has continued to unravel without a “new normal” emerging.

The United States faces threats from outside its borders, but also from within. The political system that once created a strong, prosperous, and united nation now sows division. This report, written by John Raidt, unpacks how the fuel—money—drives the cartel’s machinations as it interacts with and exploits amplifying forces—legal, structural, media, technological, and social.

According to some projections, the majority of all global economic activity could take place within Asia by 2050. Military might often follows economic power, and Asian countries are already spending more than European states on defense. Both of these developments reflect a broader shift in global power from West to East.

The balance in Eurasia is shifting. China’s President Xi Jinping has ambitious visions for Asia, while the rest of the world reshuffles to find its place in the rapidly changing global order. The United States would be better off engaging with the BRI and trying to influence its design and mechanics from within, rather than staying on the sidelines and witnessing its allies gravitating toward China.

Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, Europe faces its greatest challenges, and possibly its sharpest turning point, since World War II. In this report, Europe in 2022: Alternative Futures, Frances Burwell’s transatlantic expertise joins Mathew Burrows’ deft trends analysis to offer a sobering look at the possible future for Europe with the hope of reigniting the bond between Americans and Europeans so that we may build a better future together.

As the new administration considers ways to ensure US national security and economic growth, a newly engaged Latin America presents a wealth of opportunity on myriad fronts: urbanization, human capital, open markets, energy reform, technology, and the fight against corruption.

America’s future, and that of other nations and peoples, will be most secure in the long term with an emphasis on future prosperity unlocked by the Internet. Prosperity for the United States and the global economy is only assured if the United States and like-minded nations, civil society, and other nonstate actors all work toward a goal of making defense easier than attack.

Africa’s story is increasingly one of economic dynamism that is driven, in part, by political reform and improvements in governance. But, there are also very real security, humanitarian, and developmental challenges that remain to be confronted. The United States has a stake in helping to tackle these challenges, not least because it is in its own national interest to do so.

Framing a sustainable and achievable strategy toward Iran will be a high priority for the next administration. In the sixth Atlantic Council Strategy Paper, A New Strategy for US-Iran Relations in Transition, Ellen Laipson presents a new strategy to reduce prospects for a military confrontation with Iran; improve the regional security environment by working with trusted partners and with Iran; and, eventually, enable Iran and the United States to build cooperation in diverse areas of shared concern.

There are growing risks and threats to US satellites, civilian and military alike, and challenges to stated US goals in space. The question for the new administration, however, is whether hegemonic means to address those challenges are likely to achieve US goals.

Ten years ago, most observers predicted a period of smooth sailing for the world economy. Today, the world looks very different. To better deal with this new global economic environment, the United States requires a new strategy for the twenty-first century. That strategy should enable the country to shape, steer, and sustain a new global economic order that accomplishes several key objectives underpinning prosperity and stability for greater numbers of Americans.

The fundamental challenge for modern wealthy democracies committed to promoting better governance is that their opportunities are hostage to the preferences of national elites in closed-access polities, where political power is exercised in arbitrary ways, and where most of the population lacks access to services, including the rule of law.

The national energy system of the United States is aging and has to be renewed in a dynamic fashion to adapt to the transformative changes in the world of energy. Failure to do so will result in substantial economic disadvantage and national security vulnerabilities, and risk the United States’ position as the leading global power […]

We have entered a new era in world history, a post-post-Cold War era that holds both great promise and great peril for the United States, its allies, and everyone else. We now can call this a “Westphalian-Plus” world, in which nation-states will have to engage on two distinct levels: dealing with other nation-states as before, […]