“Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand.” Guinean proverb
"Intelligence advice for next president: Rocky Road Ahead”
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-03-13/intelligence-advice-for-next-president-ready-for-rocky-road
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — To: The next president of the United States.
From: U.S. intelligence officials.
Welcome to the White House. Now read our take on global political landscape and trends for the next five years and beyond. Bottom line: Get ready for a rocky road.
Their forecast calls for a slowing global economy dragged down by sluggish growth in China, and political volatility across the world, spurred by disillusionment with the status quo. Insecurity will deepen rifts among social classes and religious groups. Extremists will consolidate into large-scale networks across Africa, the Arab world and parts of Asia.
Competition among the U.S, China and Russia will heat up, raising the risk of future confrontations. Climate change is a problem now. And technological advances will force governments and their citizens to wrestle with securing data, privacy, intellectual property and jobs lost to high-tech innovations.
The National Intelligence Council, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, serves as a bridge between intelligence agencies and policymakers. Its global trends report is compiled every four years so it can be handed to an incoming president or the incumbent. A summary of a draft of its latest findings was to be released Monday at a conference in Austin, Texas.
These trends follow 20 years of unprecedented reductions in poverty and increased access to education and information, which have empowered citizens around the world.
Suzanne Fry, director of the council's Strategic Future Group, and about 10 of her colleagues visited 30 countries since September 2014 to talk about the future with an estimated 1,800 people from all walks of life.
"Really for the first time in human history, people as individuals, really, really matter," Fry said in an interview.
She recalled Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit seller who killed himself in 2010 to protest police actions in Tunisia. His death sparked an uprising that led to the ouster of Tunisia's dictator and inspired Arab Spring protests against authoritarian rule across the region.
In America, public discontent is evidenced by the rise of two presidential candidates — Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders — whose anti-establishment messages appeal to anger among the general electorate, Fry said.
"They're channeling something that we're observing in a lot of countries, not just the United States, which is this real dissatisfaction with the existing social bargains or compacts in societies," Fry said.
The report suggests that this type of populism being seen in industrial nations will percolate in the developing world as those affected by a slow-to-zero rise in wages and a hollowing out of the middle class start questioning the effectiveness of traditional policies.
The council's final report is expected to be released between Election Day, Nov. 1, and the inauguration of the next president, on Jan. 20, 2017. The aim is to provide information about emerging trends to guide decisions that could alter the way the world is expected to evolve during the next 20 years.
A significant trend cited in the report is a slowdown of China's economy, which has reduced demand for commodities, especially in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Also on the economic front, the report highlights a concern about increased concentration of wealth among a small number of people.
"We have seen lots of poverty reduction in recent years and people flowing into the middle class, but how do you keep this movie going? It's not clear that the political and economic reforms can keep it going," Fry said. "We've got brand new entrances to the middle class in the developing world. Their expectations are enormous and they are about to be crushed."
The report predicts increased competition and a "desire for status" by emerging and fading powers. This will play out as transnational terrorism, conducted by groups such as the Islamic State, al-Qaida and Boko Haram, and sectarian violence continue to threaten stability in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Africa.
"Multiple power centers are possible if regional aggression and flouting of international norms go unchecked," the report says.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
10-20-23 cw Blog post. ‘FEAR populism & democracy’ briefly explained. [updated 5-29-26]
Populism is yet another self-inflicted consequence of our collective mental health problem - Anosognosia (a blindness to reality). In this case we are blind to our global interdependence due to our mind’s addiction to the illusion of independence. [Grievances are real, but populism conflate symptoms with causes thus no real change will come.]
Populism’s rise among the world’s democracies is a threat to human freedom and security globally. And it may be heading toward another world war (something that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was intended to prevent).
This predictable chaos is simple to explain and understand. But only if one can admit the fundamental reason why democratic nations are increasingly failing to protect their voting populations from the unstoppable global forces persistently ignoring their national borders. Pandemics, wars, genocides, extreme weather patterns, economic woes, corruption, cyber-crimes, violent extremism, WMD proliferation, species extinctions, toxic wastes, forever chemicals, bio lab accidents...
Democratically derived laws intended to protect a nation’s freedoms and security cannot work in a world where ‘everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.’ Humanities shared global reality requires global solutions. Solutions that provide relief from these pressures, build resilience everywhere, in order to put humanity on a sustainable path of liberty and justice for all.
The bad news is that even if all democracies united - but the billions of humans dominated by dictatorships and abject poverty didn’t join - then the movement to establish global institutions (democratically elected with the sole purpose of protecting human freedom and security as Thomas Paine’s Common-Sense pamphlet implied) would fail.
In this context achieving the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals is our best chance of uniting humanity against the insanity of our current unsustainable global governance system. A flawed system that persists in putting protection of national governments and corporations above the protection of inalienable human rights and the environment. This will not end well.
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