Leibowitz: A Disturbing International Assessment—What Does it Mean?

The DNI report on “Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World,” outlines the development of threats to the existing world order over the next two decades. I think it’s useful to see what the intelligence community thinks is important and how it can affect all of our lives. It is more valuable as a “state of mind” document than an accurate prediction of what the world will look like in 20 years.

The first interesting element is that both assessments are not classified. It certainly has classified exhibits that are kept secret to conceal intelligence “sources and methods” and thereby save lives. But the general observations about the current state of global crises and their trends are open for all the world to see.

The Global Trends report focuses on five major drivers of trends: global challenges, fragmentation, disequilibrium, “contestation” and “adaptation.” Shared global challenges include problems like climate change, disease, financial crises and technology disruptions. One important result of these trends is international migration. The report says that in 2020 more than 270 million humans were living in a country to which they have migrated, an increase of 100 million in only 20 years. The United States is not the only country that is experiencing the effects of increased migration, which the report concludes is a result of these “shared challenges.” And the United States is not the only country that is struggling with how to deal with the migration.

The issue of “fragmentation” is important because the degree of connectivity we have seems to affect the divisions among us concerning shared experiences and shared values, according to the report. One prediction: the number of connective devices in the world is likely to increase from 10 billion in 2018 (more than one device per person on average) to “trillions” by 2040. This trend will have both good and bad results, including, it is predicted, on “societies divided over core values and goals to regimes that employ digital repression to control populations.”

As a country whose “core values” are ideals of self-reliance, individual responsibility and equality before the law, the implication is that the United States may be in more danger than authoritarian regimes from this trend. I don’t really agree with this; but as I said, the value of the report is the mind-set of the authors who happened to be in charge right now.

The reports contain many more points that could be discussed, but time and space prevent me from going overboard here. The overall theme of both reports is that the “institutions” (mainly government) are not equipped to manage these global trends. One such institution is global trade. The World Trade Organization needs reform, but the very structure of it requires consensus among governments, which, as the report acknowledges, is dissolving rather than coalescing.

With reference to the pandemic, we have seen over the last year or so an increasing desire to “go it alone,” from localizing production of ventilators and personal protective equipment to production of vaccines. Even if this worked well for the United States, what are countries like India or the Bahamas or Angola supposed to do? Globalization can help those countries cope; and another pandemic (not to mention the one that is still raging across many areas of the world) could fracture the world if global supply chains don’t work better. This “go it alone” attitude is increasing with the recent infrastructure plan putting an emphasis on “Buy America” and increasing unionization in the work force.

On the other hand, the threat assessment sees a greater need for global cooperation to address climate change. In an effort to “lead by example,” the United States offered a “target” of a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in carbon emissions from the United States by 2030. That is roughly double the carbon reduction target pledged by President Obama in 2015. So it’s more ambitious—but is it realistic?

To get to the “targets,” the theory is that government must regulate carbon emissions much more than it does now. Other countries, such as the EU, have pledged more reductions from 2005 levels than the U.S., but all of these are only pledges. And developing countries like China (yes, China still considers itself a developing country) and India will not even pledge to reduce current carbon emissions but only to “flatten the curve.” If the doomsayers on climate change are right, we are nowhere near the goal of zero emissions by 2050, which they say is needed to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

So the contradiction seems to be that, because of the pandemic and infrastructure, we need less dependence on trade (to increase local production), but on climate change we need to work together to solve a global problem. As one observer, it seems to me that the world needs to work together more on both problems and many others. Cooperation rather than confrontation on global problems is the way forward—if we make enough vaccine for ourselves, why not make it for those countries that don’t have the resources to do it? And why not offer to do so in exchange for cooperation on the climate? Perhaps it’s pie in the sky; and businesses that rely on their competitiveness will not want to sacrifice efficiency for pie in the sky.

The “lesser” problems we face every day did not even rate a mention in these Intelligence Community reports. The words “steel” and “aluminum” were not mentioned, for example. But they surely will be affected by the policies adopted by governments to address the climate and pandemic preparation.

Lewis Leibowitz

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