Executive Summary

The National Intelligence Council in its new report,Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, argues that the historic moment the Obama Administration now confronts “recalls past transition points–such as 1815, 1919, 1945, and 1989–when the path forward was not clear-cut and the world faced the possibility of different global futures.”

The Atlantic Council report that follows, Envisioning 2030: US Strategy for a Post-Western World, agrees with the NIC’s premise that the period we are entering is of a historic significance that has not yet been widely recognized nor acted upon. However, this report also goes a step further, given the NIC’s mandate that limits it from making policy recommendations. It outlines a US leadership strategy for the period ahead and offers policy approaches in key subject areas to ensure a more positive outcome.

We are approaching an inflection point that could lead to a future of vast economic and political volatility, environmental catastrophe, and conflicting, inwardlooking nationalisms that would be unlike any period that the United States has seen before. Alternatively, we could create a more cooperative, rules-based world of reduced poverty and human advancement. More likely, we may face countless variations in between. As has been the case at such historic moments previously, it will be human agency–how key actors, and most importantly the United States–adapt and respond to dynamic global trends that will determine whether we can avoid the worst and achieve the best.

What’s required is a shift in US strategy and a new “mental map.” The United States–unlike other great powers in history–has a second chance at molding the international system to secure its long-term interests.

No other nation is likely to have as much impact in influencing the global future. Yet in a more complex and competitive world, the US margin of error is smaller, while the opportunity to lead remains due to the country’s unique assets and the lack of any power or set of powers that is able and willing to replace it.

Considering the host of challenges the Obama Administration currently faces, this report surveys the emerging economic and geopolitical landscape; it describes the unprecedented policy challenges that landscape presents; and it outlines a US strategy to avoid a zero-sum, conflictual future and move toward a more cooperative and prosperous 2030. What emerges from this report are the following six elements of strategy for President Obama:

1. Frame second-term policies from a more strategic and long-term perspective, recognizing the magnitude of the moment and the likelihood that the United States’ actions now will have generational consequences.

• President Obama should map directions that recognize that the scale and rapidity of change the world will face over the next two decades may be without historic precedent. Thus, policy actions should reflect longer-term goals, and not just be aimed at achievements within the next four years, as President Obama will be setting the tone and direction for “US policy in a post-Western world.”

• The context will be a new and growing array of global challenges, which include further integrating China and other emerging powers into the global order as wealth shifts from west to east; environmental threats and the need to ensure energy, water, and food resources; and demographic patterns that will double the size of the global middle class, offering potential support for Western values, but at the same time greatly increasing political and resource demands.

• The United States is entering not only into a post-Western world but also, in many respects, a post-Westphalian global system in which the nation state will play a less dominant role among a host of new non-state actors, networks and super-empowered individuals.

2. Continue to emphasize what has been called “nation-building at home” as the first foreign policy priority, without neglecting its global context.

• President Obama has been right to emphasize “nation-building at home,” for the revitalization of US economic strength and innovation will be the irreplaceable foundation of any sustainable international strategy. This will not only increase US confidence and capabilities in managing global issues, but it could help restore as a model the American democratic and free market system.

• The most immediate, fundamental requirement to ensure US global influence must be a reversal of the current trajectory of rising deficits and debt, and addressing the political factors that have contributed to it.

• If this can be achieved, the United States is positioned for a significant rebound due to: the improved health of financial institutions; reduced household debt, increased individual savings, undervalued housing prices; the wide-ranging benefits of a domestic shale gas and oil extraction revolution; increased investments in advanced manufacturing; and the potential impact, if unleashed by removing economic uncertainties, of $2 trillion in available corporate cash.

3. Recognize that the United States must energetically act to shape dynamic, uncertain global trends, or it will be shaped unfavorably by them.

• The status quo or “stability” approach is not viable.

The United States must lead, and it must do so actively, vigorously, and strategically.

• If the United States does not do so–if it holds back, withdraws, or remains “status quo” oriented–then it is more likely that the negative outcomes portrayed in the NIC report will come to fruition, with severe consequences for the world more broadly but for the United States in particular. The United States will be damaged greatly if it does not act now to renew its leadership in the international arena for the long term.

4. The United States must pursue more collaborative forms of leadership through deepening current alliances and interacting more effectively with a diverse set of actors to meet the challenges and opportunities of the dramatically changing times.

• Amidst a growing diffusion of power, mobilizing cooperative action tailored to each problem or situation will be crucial. In order to do so effectively, however, US strategy must begin with better leveraging and anchoring existing alliances and partnerships.

• The United States and the European Union remain the world’s two largest economies, and NATO is a unique multilateral institution and proven security actor. Thus the United States should seek ways to reinvigorate both relationships through expanded economic agreements with Europe and the widening and deepening of NATO’s global partnerships.

• At the same time, US alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and its partnership with Singapore, will be crucial in maintaining an Asian balance of power over the coming generation.

• The United States must develop new arrangements with emerging partners, including a wide range of newly emergent non-state actors.

5. US strategy to 2030 must deepen cooperation with China as the most crucial single factor that will shape th international system in 2030.

• On a broad array of global issues–the shape of multilateral institutions, the global financial system, the nuclear future, cyber security, outer space, climate change, global resource scarcities, and Asian security–the US-China relationship will be a major driver of solutions or of failure.

• Interdependence gives the United States and China a compelling and direct interest in the economic success of the other, but the two countries must more assertively work to avoid the historic pattern of a rising power posing a strategic threat to the status quo. Such conflict would be catastrophic for the world, as zero-sum behavior and conflict would be difficult to avoid.

• The myriad issues fueling recently increased mutual distrust suggests that achieving a modus vivendi will be a difficult and protracted process.

6. US leaders must more creatively address the locus of instability in the 21st century—the greater Middle East from North Africa to Pakistan—a major threat to US strategy and world order.

• If efforts in the Middle East and North Africa fail, the threats posed to international order—from nuclear-armed regional powers, failed nuclear states, and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction–could lead to unprecedented destruction and vast instability across a broad swath of the earth.

• The Arab awakening will, in most cases, result in volatile, Islamist-oriented governments over the rest of this decade. Their futures will depend largely on whether elected governments demonstrate work toward good governance and economic growth.

• US strategy can help catalyze the right outcome—Arab efforts to realize economic modernization and stable political pluralism—by understanding that this is fundamentally an internally-driven process of change and being aware of its limits as well as its opportunities.

• A coordinated US, EU, and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) approach to work with international financial institutions could develop an incentive structure mixing aid, debt relief, and conditioned grants or loans to help foster market-oriented reforms. The GCC and Turkey could play acatalytic role in encouraging a MENA customs union and perhaps adoption of a common currency.

The United States in 2012 is still accustomed to be being the world’s dominant superpower. Since the end of the Cold War, even as relative US power has declined, the United States still has fared extraordinarily well in reaping the benefits of an international order that was largely designed in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

In light of the vast changes sweeping the world between now and 2030, the United States must redesign and renew its approach to the world along the lines outlined above. If US leaders fail to do so, both the United States and the world will pay a heavy price.

The stakes are high for getting US strategy right for a post-Western world.

Read the report : Envisioning2030 web