WASHINGTON – A report released today by the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Foresight Initiative urges the Obama Administration to seize a historic opportunity to ensure America’s global interests over the long term. It outlines a US leadership strategy for the period ahead to 2030 and offers policy approaches in key subject areas to ensure a positive outcome at this inflection point toward a “post-Western world,” with historic shifts in political and economic influence from west to east and south.
Offered as a companion to the US National Intelligence Council (NIC)’s Global Trends 2030 quadrennial assessment released today, the Council’s Envisioning 2030: US Strategy for a Post-Western Worldsurveys the emerging economic and geopolitical landscape; it describes the unprecedented policy challenges that landscape presents; and it outlines a US strategy to avoid a zero-sum, conflictual future and move toward a more cooperative and prosperous 2030. Six elements of strategy for President Obama emerge from this report:
- Frame second-term policies from a more strategic and long-term perspective, recognizing the magnitude of the moment and the likelihood that the United States’ actions now will have generational consequences.
- Continue to emphasize “nation-building at home” as the first foreign policy priority, without neglecting its global context.
- Recognize that the United States must energetically act to shape dynamic, uncertain global trends, or it will be shaped unfavorably by them.
- Pursue more collaborative forms of leadership through deepening current alliances and interacting more effectively with a diverse set of actors.
- Deepen cooperation with China as the most crucial single factor that will shape the international system in 2030.
- Creatively address the locus of instability in the 21st century—the greater Middle East from North Africa to Pakistan—a major threat to US strategy and world order.
“The United States has something rare among history’s great powers—a second chance at molding the international system to secure its long-term interests,” said Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe. “No other nation is likely to have as much impact in influencing the global future. Yet in a more complex and competitive world, the US margin of error is smaller.”
Global Trends 2030 Conference
Today and tomorrow, the Atlantic Council will host a high-level conference in partnership with the NIC to formally release both reports. Global policymakers, business and media executives, and technology experts will join in an unprecedented gathering to discuss global futures, the potential for disruptive change, and a US strategy for the coming “post-Western world.” Speakers include Atlantic Council Chairman Chuck Hagel and CEO Frederick Kempe; NIC Chairman Christopher A. Kojm and Counselor Mathew J. Burrows; former National Security Advisors James L. Jones, Jr., Stephen J. Hadley, and Brent Scowcroft; former US Department of Defense Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy; and many more.
To see a complete list of speakers, view the conference agenda, and watch the live webcast beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern today, please visit /event/global-trends-2030-us-leadership-post-western-world and join the conversation on Twitter @AtlanticCouncil and conference hashtag #gt2030.
Established in 2011 as a critical component of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, the Strategic Foresight Initiative is an international hub for global trends experts who aim to enhance futures analysis and policymaking through a better understanding of the challenges ahead. The Initiative builds on a long-term partnership with the US National Intelligence Council to support the ability and capacity of other nations to engage in long-term trends assessments.