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http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2020_project.html
MAPPING THE GLOBAL FUTURE:
REPORT OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL'S 2020 PROJECT
Mapping the Global Future is the third unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the past seven years that takes a long-term view of the future. The National Intelligence Council, as a center of strategic thinking and over-the-horizon analysis for the US Government, takes this as one of its key challenges.
As with the earlier NIC efforts—Global Trends 2010 and Global Trends 2015—the project's primary goal is to provide US policymakers with a view of how the world developments could evolve, identifying opportunities and potentially negative developments that might warrant policy action. We also hope this paper stimulates a broader discussion of value to educational and policy institutions at home and abroad.
We consulted experts from around the world in a series of regional conferences to offer a truly global perspective. We organized conferences on five continents to solicit the views of foreign experts on the prospects for their regions over the next 15 years.
Significantly, the NIC 2020 Project employed information technology and analytic tools unavailable in earlier NIC efforts. We created an interactive Web site which contained several tools including a "hands-on" computer simulation that allows novice and expert alike to develop their own scenarios. This "International Futures" model is now available to the public to explore.
The entire process, from start to finish, lasted about a year and involved more than a thousand people. We appreciate the time and effort that each contributed to this innovative project.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/2020/2020.pdf
New Challenges to Governance
The nation-state will continue to be the dominant unit of the global order, but economic globalization and the dispersion of technologies, especially information technologies, will place enormous strains on governments. Regimes that were able to manage the challenges of the 1990s could be overwhelmed by those of 2020. Contradictory forces will be at work: authoritarian regimes will face new pressures to democratize, but fragile new democracies may lack the adaptive capacity to survive and develop.
* With migration on the increase in several places around the world�from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean into the United States, and increasingly from Southeast Asia into the northern regions�more countries will be multi-ethnic and multi-religious and will face the challenge of integrating migrants into their societies while respecting their ethnic and religious identities.
Halting Progress on Democratization
Global economic growth has the potential to spur democratization, but backsliding by many countries that were considered part of the �third wave� of democratization is a distinct possibility. In particular, by 2020 democratization may be partially reversed among the states of the former Soviet Union and in Southeast Asia, some of which never really embraced democracy. Russia and most of the Central Asian regimes appear to be slipping back toward authoritarianism, and global economic growth probably will not on its own reverse such a trend. The development of more diversified economies in these countries�by no means inevitable�would be crucial in fostering the growth of a middle class, which in turn would spur democratization.
* Beset already by severe economic inequalities, aging Central Asian rulers must contend with unruly and large youth populations lacking broad economic opportunities. Central Asian governments are likely to suppress dissent and revert to authoritarianism to maintain order, risking growing insurgencies.
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