GLOBAL TRENDS 2025

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World was prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Some of its preliminary assessments:

• The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
• The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
• Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
• The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

Comment: We need to prepare a new generation to live and master a different world than the one in which I grew up. We also need to build a whole new set of global institutions capable of dealing with globalized markets, a global information and transportation infrastructure, global migration patterns, and global problems.