GeoStrategy Initiative Analysis and Events

Technology will keep changing everything— and will do it faster

By Banning Garrett

In this report, writer and independent consultant Banning Garrett lays out how these technologies are combining to create new, disruptive breakthroughs with potentially unforeseen second- and third-order effects that will alter the way we live forever.

Takeaways from the Global Strategy Forum

By Larry Luxner

The Washington establishment is unprepared for the technological and geopolitical risks of the future, America is losing influence around the world—and while the United States is still indispensable as a superpower, there’s debate on whether it ought to remain so. These are among the takeaways from the Atlantic Council’s Global Strategy Forum held April 29-30 […]

Enhancing Foresight: Experts See a Future of Robot Swarms, DNA-Modified People

By Larry Luxner

Tiny robots that can predict the exact fruit yield of apple trees while helping farmers cut water usage. Drone swarms which respond to 911 emergency calls without risking human lives. Genetically modified humans free of dozens of diseases that once killed millions. Science fiction? Maybe, but not for long, say two scholars who spoke April […]

Defining US Strategy for a World in Transition

By Larry Luxner

With war tearing apart eastern Ukraine, ethnic strife claiming lives from Libya to Yemen, and record numbers of African refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, it’s easy to conclude that the once-familiar world order is falling apart. Whether or not that’s true, few scholars would dispute that the United States is no longer in charge as […]

Dynamic stability: US strategy for a world in transition

By Barry Pavel, Peter Engelke, and Alex Ward

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. This era calls for a new approach to national strategy called "dynamic stability."

Authoritarianism Stages a Comeback

From Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, dictators seem to be gaining the upper hand these days—outsmarting the most determined pro-democracy activists with a clever mix of 21st-century technology and old-fashioned repression.

Sharing the Stage with China

By Daniel Pearson

US position on investment bank risks isolating it from its partners The Obama administration’s mishandling of the emergence of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has meant that the United States now finds itself sitting outside the Chinese-led organization that includes many of Washington’s most significant regional and global partners and promises to be a […]