The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

by Al Gore

  Nationalism became a potent new cause of warfare over the three centuries between the Treaty of Westphalia and the end of World War II. As the weaponry of war was industrialized—with machine guns, poison gas, tanks, and then airplanes and missiles—the destructive power unleashed led to the horrendous loss of life in the wars of the twentieth century. And the imposition of order by nation-states within their own borders sometimes created internal tensions that led their leaders to use the projection of violence against neighboring nation-states as a means of strengthening internal cohesion by demonizing “the other.” Tragically, the monopoly on violence granted to the state was also sometimes brutally directed at disfavored minorities within their borders.

  In the wake of World War I, a number of nation-states were formed in the imagination of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European nations that were seeking to create stability in regions like the Middle East and Africa, where tribal, ethnic, sectarian, and other divisions threatened continued destabilizing violence. One of the premier examples of an imagined community was Yugoslavia. When the unifying ideology of communism was imposed on this amalgam of separate peoples, Yugoslavia functioned fairly well for three generations.

  But when communism collapsed, the glue of its imagined nation no longer could hold it together. The great Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko described what happened next with the metaphor of a prehistoric mammoth found frozen in the ice of Siberia. When the ice melted, and the mammoth’s flesh thawed, ancient microbes within the flesh awakened and began decomposing the mammoth. In like fashion, the ancient antagonisms between Serbian Orthodox Christians, Croatian Catholics, and Bosnian Muslims decomposed the glue that had formed what is now referred to as the “former Yugoslavia.”

  Not coincidentally, the border between Serbia and Croatia had marked the border 1,500 years ago between the Western and Eastern Roman empires, while the border between Serbia and Bosnia marked the fault line between Islam and Christendom 750 years ago. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the new leader of independent Serbia went to the disputed territory of Kosovo to mark the 600th anniversary of the great battle there in which the Serbian Empire was defeated by the Ottoman Empire; in a demagogic and warmongering speech, he revivified the ancient hatreds wrapped in memories of that long ago defeat and launched genocidal violence against both Bosnians and Croats.

  The legacy of empires has continued to vex the organization of politics and power in the world long after nation-states became the dominant form of political organization. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, European countries colonized 10 million square miles of land in Africa and Asia, 20 percent of all land in the world, putting 150 million people under their rule. (Indeed, several modern nation-states continued to govern colonial empires well into the second half of the twentieth century.) To pick one of many examples, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I resulted in the decision by Western powers to create new nation-states in the Middle East, some of which pushed together peoples, tribes, and cultures that had not previously been part of the same “national” community, including Iraq and Syria. It is not coincidental that both of these nations have been coming apart at the seams.

  With the weakening of cohesion in nation-states, wherever peoples feel a strong and coherent identity that is separate from the one cultivated by the nation-state that contains them, there is new restlessness. From Kurdistan to Catalonia to Scotland, from Syria to Chechnya to South Sudan, from indigenous communities in the Andean nations to tribal communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, many people are shifting their primary political identities away from the nation-states in which they lived for many generations. Although the causes are varied and complex, a few nations, like Somalia, have devolved into “post-national entities.”

  In many parts of the world, nonstate terrorist groups and criminal organizations such as those who are now wielding power in so-called narco-states are aggressively challenging the power of nation-states. There is an overlap between these nonstate actors: nineteen of the forty-three known terrorist groups in the world are linked to the drug trade. The market for illegal narcotics is now larger than the national economies of 163 of the world’s 184 nations.

  It is significant that the most consequential threat to the United States in the last three decades came from a nonstate actor, Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. A malignant form of Muslim fundamentalism was the primary motivation for Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. (According to numerous reports, bin Laden was revulsed by the presence of U.S. military deployments in Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites.)

  The damage done by the attack itself—the murder of more than 3,000 people—was horrible enough, but the tragic response it provoked, the misguided invasion of Iraq, which, as everyone now acknowledges, had nothing whatsoever to do with attacking the U.S., was ultimately an even more serious blow to America’s power, prestige, and standing. Hundreds of thousands died unnecessarily, $3 trillion was wasted, and the reasons given for launching the war in the first place were later revealed as cynical and deceptive.

  The decision by the United States government to abandon its historic prohibitions against the torture of captives and the indefinite detention of individuals without legal process has been widely seen around the world as diminishing its moral authority. In a world divided into different civilizations, with different religious traditions and ethnic histories, moral authority is arguably an even greater source of power. Even though the ideologies of nations vary widely, the values of justice, fairness, equality, and sustainability are valued by the people of every nation, even if they often define these values in different ways.

  The apparent rise of fundamentalism in its many varieties may be due, in part, to the pace of change that naturally causes many people to more tightly embrace orthodoxies of faith as a source of spiritual and cultural stability. The globalization of culture—not only through the Internet, but also through satellite television, compact discs, and other media—has also been a source of conflict between Western societies and conservative fundamentalist societies. When cultural goods from the West depict gender roles and sexual values in ways that conflict with traditional norms in fundamentalist cultures, religious leaders condemn what they view as the socially destabilizing impact.

  But the impact of globalized culture goes far beyond issues of gender equity and sexuality. Cultural goods serve as powerful advertisements for the lifestyles that are depicted, and promotions for the values of the country where such goods originate. In a sense, they carry the cultural DNA of that country. As the global middle class is exposed to images of homes, automobiles, appliances, and other common features of life in industrial countries, the pressure they exert for changes in their own domestic political and economic policies often grows accordingly.

  The longer-term impact may well be to break down differences. A recent study in Cairo found that there is a strong correlation between the amount of television watched and the decline of support for fundamentalism. One of the sources of the enhanced influence of Turkey in the Middle East is the popularity of its movies and television programs. The dominance of American music has enhanced the impression of the United States as a dynamic and creative society. The ability to influence the thinking of peoples through the dissemination of cultural goods such as movies, television programs, music, books, sports, and games is increasing in an interconnected world where consumption of media is rising every year.

  WAR AND PEACE

  The second half of the twentieth century saw a decline in the number of people killed in wars, and a decline in the number of wars in every category, international and civil—even though millions continued to die because of the pathological behavior of dictators. The decline has continued in this century, leading some to argue that humankind is maturing, humane values are spreading, and military power is less relevant in an interconnected world. It is a measure of this change that the people of the United States feel a palp
able loss of national power at a time when its military budget is larger than those of the next fifty other nations combined. However, self-described foreign policy “realists” (who believe that nation-states always compete in an inherently anarchic international system) warn that similar predictions made in past eras proved to be false.

  History provides all too many examples of unwarranted optimism about the decline of war during previous eras when a new appreciation for the benefits of peace seemed to be on the rise. The best-selling book globally in 1910 was The Great Illusion by Norman Angell, who argued that the increased economic integration that accompanied the Second Industrial Revolution had made war obsolete. Less than four years later, on the eve of World War I, Andrew Carnegie, the Bill Gates of his day, wrote a New Year’s greeting to friends: “We send this New Year Greeting, January 1, 1914 strong in the faith that International Peace is soon to prevail, through several of the great powers agreeing to settle their disputes by arbitration under International Law, the pen thus proving mightier than the sword.”

  Human nature has not changed and the history of almost every nation contains sobering reminders that the use of military power has often been decisive in changing their fate. Nationalist politicians in many countries—including the United States and China—will, of course, seek to exploit fears about the future—and the fear of one another—by calling for the buildup of military strength. In the present era, some Chinese military strategists have written that a well-planned cyberattack on the United States could allow China to “gain equal footing” with the U.S. in spite of U.S. superiority in conventional and nuclear weaponry. And as has often been the case in history, fear begets fear; the buildup of a capacity for war leads those against whom it might be used to infer that there is an intent to do just that.

  The fear of a surprise military attack has itself had a distorting influence on the priority given to military expenditures throughout history, and is a fear inherently difficult for the people and leaders of any nation to keep in proper perspective. That is one reason why national security depends more than ever on superior intelligence gathering and analysis in order to protect against strategic surprise and to maintain alertness to strategic opportunities.

  In addition, new developments in technology have frequently changed the nature of warfare in ways that have surprised complacent nations who were focused on the technologies that were dominant in previous wars. The Maginot Line painstakingly constructed by France after World War I proved impotent in the face of new highly mobile tanks deployed by Nazi Germany. Military power now depends more than ever on the effective mastery of research and development to gain leverage from the still accelerating scientific and technological revolution, which has an enormous impact on the evolution of weaponry.

  While the utility of military power may indeed be finally declining in significance in a world where the people and businesses of every nation are more closely linked than ever before, the recent decline in warfare of all kinds in the world—particularly war between nation-states—may have less to do with a sudden outbreak of empathy in mankind and may have more to do with the role played by the United States and its allies in the post–World War II era in mediating conflicts, building alliances, and sometimes intervening with a combination of limited military force and economic sanctions—as it did, for example, in the former Yugoslavia to limit the spread of violence between Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.

  Supranational entities have also been playing an ever growing role, intervening in nations unable to halt violent conflicts and mediating the resolution of disputes. These international groups include not only U.N.-sponsored global efforts, but also, increasingly, efforts by regional supranational entities like the African Union, the Arab League, the European Union, NATO, and others. Nongovernmental organizations, faith-based charitable groups, and philanthropic foundations are playing an increasingly significant role in providing essential public goods in areas where nation-states are faltering. When sustained military operations are necessary and established supranational entities are unable to reach consensus, “coalitions of the willing” have been formed.

  But in many of these interventions—particularly where NATO and coalitions of the willing were involved—the United States has played a key organizing and coordinating role, and has often provided not only the critical intelligence collection and analysis but also the decisive military force as well. If the equilibrium of power in the world continues to shift in ways that weaken the formerly dominant position of the United States, it could threaten an end to the period some historians have labeled the Pax Americana.

  The recent decline in war may also be related to two developments during the long Cold War between the United States and the USSR. First of all, when these two superpowers built vast arsenals of nuclear bombs mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and bombers, the quantum increase in the probable consequences of all-out war became so obviously and palpably unacceptable that both the U.S. and the USSR soberly backed away from the precipice. The escalating cost of maintaining and modernizing these arsenals also became a burden for both superpowers. (The Brookings Institution has calculated that since 1940, the U.S. has spent $5.5 trillion on its nuclear war fighting capability—more than on any other program besides Social Security.) Though the risk of such a war has been sharply reduced by arms control agreements, the partial dismantling of both arsenals, and enhanced communications and safeguards (including a recent bilateral nuclear cybersecurity agreement), the risk of an escalation in tensions must still be continually managed.

  Second, during the last third of the twentieth century, both the U.S. and the USSR had bitter experiences in failed efforts to use overwhelming conventional military strength against guerrilla armies using irregular warfare tactics, blending into their populations and fighting a war of attrition. The lessons learned by the superpowers were also learned by guerrilla forces. Partly as a result, the continued spread of irregular warfare tactics is now seriously undermining the nation-state monopoly on the ability to use warfare as a decisive instrument of policy.

  The large excess inventories of rifles and automatic weapons manufactured during previous wars are increasingly available not only to insurgent guerrilla forces, but also to individuals, terrorist groups, and criminal organizations. When a new generation of weapons is manufactured, the older generation is not destroyed. Rather, they find their way into the hands of others, often magnifying the bloodshed in regional and civil wars. Unfortunately, the lobbying power and political influence of gun and munitions manufacturers and defense companies has contributed to this spread of weapons throughout the world. President Barack Obama reversed U.S. policy in 2009 and resumed advocacy of a treaty to limit this destructive trade, but progress is slow at best because of opposition from several countries and the dysfunctionality of global decision making.

  The U.S. continues to dominate the international trade in weapons of all kinds—including long-range precision weapons and surface-to-air missiles—some of which end up being trafficked in black markets. In his final speech as president, Dwight Eisenhower warned the United States about the “military industrial complex.” As the victorious commanding general in World War II, Eisenhower could hardly have been accused of being soft on national security. Although there are undeniable benefits to the United States from weapons deals, including an enhanced ability to form and maintain useful alliances, it is troubling that more than half (52.7 percent in 2010) of all of the military weapons sold to countries around the world originate in the United States.

  More significantly, the dispersal of scientific and technological knowledge and expertise throughout Earth Inc. and the Global Mind has also undermined the monopoly exercised by nation-states over the means of inflicting mass violence. Chemical and biological agents capable of causing mass casualties are also on the list of weapons now theoretically accessible to nonstate groups.

  The knowledge necessary to build weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear weapons, has already been dangerously dispersed to other nations. Instead of the two nuclear powers that faced off at the beginning of the Cold War, there are now thirty-five to forty countries with the potential to build nuclear bombs. North Korea, which has already developed a handful of nuclear weapons, and Iran, which most believe is attempting to do so, are developing longer-range missile programs that could over time result in the ability to project intercontinental power. Proliferation experts are deeply concerned that the spread of nuclear weapons to some of these countries could markedly increase the risk that terrorist groups could purchase or steal the components they need to make a bomb of their own. The former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A. Q. Khan, developed extensive ties with Islamic militant groups. North Korea, strapped for cash as always, has already sold missile technology and many believe it is capable of selling nuclear weapons components.

  National security experts are also concerned about regional cascades of nuclear proliferation in regions like the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. In other words, the development of a nuclear arsenal by Iran would exert pressure on Saudi Arabia and potentially other countries in the region to develop their own nuclear arsenals in order to provide deterrence. If North Korea were to gain the credible ability to threaten a nuclear attack against Japan, the pressure on Japan to develop its own arsenal would be intense in spite of Japan’s historic experience and opposition to nuclear weapons.

  Because leadership in the community of nations is essential, there is an urgent need to restore the integrity of democratic decision making in the United States. And there are hopeful trends, not least the awakening of reformist activism on the Internet. Throughout the world, the Internet is empowering the rapidly increasing members of the global middle class to demand the kinds of accountability and reform from their governments that middle-class citizens have historically always been more likely to demand than the poor and underprivileged. Stanford political science professor Francis Fukuyama notes that this is “most broadly accepted in countries that have reached a level of material prosperity sufficient to allow a majority of their citizens to think of themselves as middle class, which is why there tends to be a correlation between high levels of development and stable democracy.”