According to the U.S. Global Trends 2040 report, global challenges include climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions that will affect almost every region and country. In this context the difficulty of addressing these transnational challenges is compounded in part by increasing fragmentation within communities, states, and the international system. The scale of transnational challenges, and the emerging implications of fragmentation, are exceeding the capacity of existing systems and structures, highlighting the third theme: disequilibrium.
A key consequence of greater imbalance is greater contestation within communities, states, and the international community. This encompasses rising tensions, division, and competition in societies, states, and at the international level. Adaptation is the key, climate change, for example, will force almost all states and societies to adapt to a warmer planet. Technology will be a key avenue for gaining advantages through adaptation but also demographic shifts will require widespread adaption.
In the area of threats against the U.S. the intelligence community refers to China as the major peer competitor, Russia mainly due to its military power (especially nuclear), Iran as a hybrid actor against U.S. interests in the Middle East and finally, North Korea with its nuclear and ballistic missile program, its cyber capabilities, its coercion against South Korea and various illicit activities. Finally, the report focuses also, in the issue of migration, in global terrorism, in hot spot conflicts, in the relations between China – India and India – Pakistan, in potential health danger like in the case of COVID-19 and in climate change.
As far as it concerns the trends, the analysis points out the economic trends like Reinforcing Nationalism and Polarization, Deepening Inequality, Straining Governance, Highlighting Failed International Cooperation and Elevating the Role of Nonstate Actors. Another major trend regarding the global population is the slowing population growth, aging populations and transformation in the working age populations. Others are climate change trends, economy transformation drivers, technology and innovation in a hyperconnected world, societal dynamics, state tensions, uncertainty in international norms and different types of conflicts.
Internal problems are according our team the most serious threat for the U.S. The United States with likeminded governments—but especially with civil society, with nongovernmental organizations, with think tanks, with the private sector—should work to protect human rights, to demonstrate that democracies can deliver for people as the world navigates this extraordinary digital transformation that is having an impact on the lives of virtually everyone on this planet. In this framework the U.S. should work to support its own resilience, to try and mitigate major cleavages within the society, to foster societal coherence, to revitalize its economy, to mitigate political extreme posture and combat the drugs abuse problem.
A great challenge is to strengthen the Transatlantic relation, in light of the current challenges to international peace and stability, and with the full engagement and continued support by all NATO Allies and EU Member States common action is needed. The U.S alongside with EU must deepen and expand their mutually beneficial cooperation among others in fields such as in countering hybrid threats, in maritime issues, in cyber security and defence, in defence capabilities, in defence industry and research, in exercises, in defence and security capacity building and in political dialogue.
For the U.S also, a great danger remains terrorism both internally as we have seen lately with mass shooting, but also from outside actors. It should be stressed that the defeat of “Islamic State” (ISIS) on the ground does not imply elimination of the phenomenon, as there was no effective treatment of the related generators causes. In this context, it must be not ruled out the possibility of a resurgence of “ISIS-like” groups, holders of chemical, biological and radiological substances, who would carry out organized attacks with “Dirty bombs” against American cities.
Closing, other serious security challenges include the instrumentalization of migration, organized crime and, the “twin” energy and food crisis from the South of the Transatlantic Community, which African countries with large populations are extremely difficult to manage, despite the support provided it can provoke global turbulence that will affect seriously the United States.
Download this PDF to get more info: US Global Trend Report.