U.S Foreign Policy: Shaping the Future
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The article is essential in analyzing the effect of making future predictions. The article emphasizes the need to plan for a better future through policy making such as U.S Foreign policy. The future however has infinite possibilities some of which are more probable. Individual actions can affect the possibilities through the choices made in everyday life. Therefore, it is important to assess the implication of various scenarios and whatever their driving force is. Planning involves creating and maintaining policies to achieve a goal. This intelligent human aspect help integrate ideas to forecast developments while making preparations as how to react to the changes. Prediction is forecasting the future while planning involves is a clear prediction of how the future will be. Planning may involve formal procedural endeavors which include creation meetings to assess issues to be tackled, the objectives and strategies to be met. The future depends on current actions and plans. There is a need to be prepared of the processes that may be the outcome of the plans made.
The article points out that there could be a change resulting from current trends. For instance, in nineteen seventy eight, there was hardly any predict ion that China would become fourth largest economy globally. Currently, there are suggestions that geopolitics by the year twenty forty, China, India, Russia and Brazil will dominate assuming that there is minimal political disruption and a linear projection of the economic growth. The assumption ignores the conflicts of interest that may arise among the stated nations. Another issue that crop up is that precise estimates misleads in most cases. Therefore, future projections have to have a start and inevitably make assumptions (Joseph, 2009).
According to the article, The US National Intelligence Council made relative certainties regarding circa 2020. These relative certainties include continuation of globalization with reduced western orientation, larger world economy, new technologies as a result of global companies and the rise of Asia. In addition, in-ground supply of energy will be enough to meet the demand with possible supply disruptions. The council stated that non-state actors such as terrorist groups and charitable organizations will be more. Also, political Islam will continue its potency and many states will have and seek more weapons of mass destruction. There shall also be instability of Africa, Asia and Middle East with a less likelihood of a World War for great powers. The projections includes that there will be more ethical and environmental issues with United States being world’s only most powerful nation. These trends however will lead to different scenarios since the trends contradict. If that is the case, the key forces facilitating the future include demography where population will increase or decrease depending on many factors. The emergence of more powers as stated by the council might lead to diversified outcomes as reflected by the eruption of two World Wars resulting from failure to accommodate rising powers (Joseph, 2009).
From the article, geopolitics is characterized by increase in non state actors facilitated by technology. For instance, 40 years ago, global communication was restricted to corporation, governments and was very costly. Currently, this has changed due to innovations reducing cost of communicatin e.g. internet and satellite photos. Diffusion of power from states may become difficult than power movements among the states. Geopolitics will be shaped by three political agents. First, the way China uses its power may result to inequality leading to instability, or might become a responsible stakeholder in politics globally. Second, political Islam which is characterized by terrorism, civil war and oil conflicts might lead to border closure, economic dislocation and higher mortality. Third, the way United States uses its power may not be enough to protect citizens. Although, its military will still be dominant, it won’t prevent climate change, global pandemics, international crime and terrorism which need soft power and corporation to obtain a solution. Terrorism using weapons of mass destruction will cause deaths, Protectionism and loss of liberty. To defeat this, intelligence sharing and cooperation among different nations is needed, Climate change may be sudden resulting to catastrophes such as sudden fall of Antarctic ice shelf and sudden sea level rise dramatically changing the global politics (Joseph, 2009).
In my view, United States has a crucial role to create a democratic, prosperous, and a secure world. This would not only benefit the Americans but also the international community. United States has a role of safeguarding the commercial interactions through globalization and control the proliferation of technology regarding weapons of mass destruction. Foreign policies that would prioritize are military strategy and missile defense to curb terrorism and foreign wars. Foreign policies facilitating foreign aid and anti-drug war would benefit the International community and United States respectively. Investing in other energy sources to reduce overreliance on oil and handling the issue of climate change is essential. However, there are various challenges that would hinder implementation of such strategies. Future makers of the foreign policies will have to face hindrances from human right activists locally and internationally. The policy makers have to ensure that their foreign policies do not violate international law (Shea et al, 2009).
Reference
HYPERLINK “http://www.google.co.ke/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=+inauthor:%22Daniel+M+Shea%22” Shea M. Daniel, HYPERLINK “http://www.google.co.ke/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=+inauthor:%22Joanne+Green%22” Green Joanne, HYPERLINK “http://www.google.co.ke/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=+inauthor:%22Christopher+Smith%22” Smith Christopher. (2009). Living Democracy. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall.
HYPERLINK “http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/author/Joseph+S.+Nye+Jr./” Joseph S. Nye Jr. (2009). Shaping the future. McKinsey & Company.
< http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/geopolitics/shaping-the-future>
