When it comes to foreign policy, the United States is notoriously averse to long-term thinking. Particularly since the end of the Cold War, our strategic culture has tended to cycle through fads, in which the terms of reference change even as the underlying policies remain continuous.
Partly as a corrective to this tendency, every four years, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases an unclassified report forecasting the future’s most significant geopolitical developments. The most recent of these, “Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World,” was published in April. If taken seriously, it offers a valuable guide to planning for the long haul.
Although ODNI doesn’t make explicit recommendations, its findings suggest the need for a major course correction. Over the next two decades, the U.S. will face headwinds that constrain its freedom of action even as they raise the costs of overreach. To adapt will require a humbler approach, along with an acceptance that, even if we do everything right, we are likely to see our ability to shape events decline considerably.
As the report’s subtitle indicates, this future will be shaped by competition, particularly between the U.S. and China. The ODNI says that within nations, populations will splinter along sharper identity-politics lines. Friction between ordinary people and elites will intensify. The climate crisis will worsen, and stagnation (both economic and demographic) will set in for the developed world despite accelerating technological advances.
Three of the report’s five scenarios are defined by the Sino-American rivalry. These range from division into rival blocs (“Separate Silos”), to a gradual eclipse of America by China (“A World Adrift”), to a preservation of the status quo (“Competitive Coexistence”). There is also an exaggeratedly optimistic “Renaissance of Democracies,” (in which authoritarian regimes fail to keep pace with democratic competitors), as well as a scenario of mass environmental disaster (“Tragedy and Mobilization”).
Enmeshed in great power competition, riven by internal cleavages, buffeted by a worsening climate emergency — if this forecast is correct, America’s situation in 2040 will be rather grim. So, how can the country meet these challenges?
The first order of business will be to restore a realistic vision of what U.S. power can and can’t do. This will be most important in the Indo-Pacific region, where China’s continued growth is reshaping the geopolitical balance. By the end of the 2020s, China is projected to surpass America and become the world’s largest economy. Together with Beijing’s rapidly expanding military capabilities, this suggests we must revise our strategic approach, replacing unrealistic aims such as “overmatch” with more achievable goals such as denying adversaries command of the commons. America can also boost its chances by judiciously managing resources elsewhere, cutting commitments in less critical theaters such as the Middle East. It’s worth noting that the 150-page report makes virtually no mention of “rogue states” such as Iran or North Korea.
The persistence of competition in any likely future raises another issue.
As the ODNI observes, the risk of interstate conflict is likely to spike, thanks to “advances in technology, a greater variety of actors, more difficult dynamics of deterrence, and weakening in treaties and norms.” Even if it stayed conventional, any war between major powers would be unthinkably devastating; to forestall this risk, the U.S. should look to reinvigorate the failing nuclear arms control regime and prevent arms races in new areas such as artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles.
The report also identifies less traditional threats such as climate change and internal divisions. To meet these, the U.S. will need to transcend its means-based strategic culture, in which the tools at hand determine our goals. Melting ice caps cannot be stopped by a $750 billion defense budget, nor can the growing fault lines in society be fixed by tough talk on China. These demand a more holistic approach to strategy, along with an understanding that geopolitical rivals are only one of a number of national security threats.
The great international relations scholar Hans Morgenthau once noted that America preferred to conduct its strategy on an ad hoc basis. “This improvisation,” he observed, “was largely successful, for the margin of American and allied power has generally exceeded the degree to which American improvidence has failed.” Unfortunately, this will not be the case going forward; as “Global Trends 2040” makes clear, the U.S. will confront the challenges of the future with less power and fewer resources. Rather than improvisation, success will require careful planning and a clear-eyed view of priorities through 2040 and beyond.
Luke Nicastro is a fellow with Defense Priorities and a defense analyst based in Washington, D.C.
