Global Trends 2025, A Transformed World:  Addressing the Roots of Terrorism

Dr. Robert D. Crane

Posted Nov 23, 2008      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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Global Trends 2025, A Transformed World:  Addressing the Roots of Terrorism

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  The Director of National Intelligence has made available on the internet the fourth of its five-year, long-range global forecasts, entitled ‘‘Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.’’  The last one was issued in 2004.  This is provided to subscribers by the DNI’s new office of outreach to open-source information, which communicates with scholars and think-tanks at least once weekly and holds public conferences for feedback.

  A summary of this new long-range global forecast is available in my article, ‘‘Geopolitics of the Caucasus: A Key to the Fourth World War against Terrorism,’’ in http://www.theamericanmuslim.org, November 6, 2008.  This summary is pasted below.  The full text of the forecast is available at http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html.

SUMMARY


  The American presidential election of November 4th, 2008, has raised hopes all over the world that America will abandon its zero-sum confrontational approach to global strategy and instead will seek cooperation among nations in addressing the economic and political injustices that ultimately lead to wars and terrorism. 

  The threats and opportunities have never been greater than they will be during the Administration of President Barack Hussein Obama.  Speaking on September 4th, 2008, in Orlando, Florida, to a gathering of intelligence professionals before the full effects of the financial meltdown were manifest, America’s top intelligence analyst, Charles Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence (DDNI) and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, first announced the existence and conclusions of Global Trends 2025.  This updates the U.S. Government’s last official major long-range global forecast prepared in 2004.  A preliminary version was made available to Senator Obama on September 2nd, 2008, and the official findings will be presented to President Obama as soon as he takes office on January 20th, 2009. 

  The new intelligence finding is the result of several months of open warfare between the professionals and the political appointees within the U.S. government.  It examines the “dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers” that will shape the world for the next administration and beyond.  Contrary to the grand strategy of the previous Administration, the new estimate says that military power will ‘‘be the least significant’’ asset in America’s relations with the rest of the world.

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