When scanning the international scene today, it is tempting to see shadows of a dark past. Feudal powers annexing neighboring territories, maniacal cults perpetrating atrocities, pandemics threatening to wipe out entire societies—many of today’s top challenges have an eerie resemblance to upheavals of the medieval period. While there is indeed some validity to these parallels, they represent only a partial view of the extraordinarily complex realities unfolding in front of us. We face daunting challenges, to be sure, but we also face unprecedented opportunities for progress, as global poverty levels recede, access to education and medical care expand with the ranks of an international middle class, and technological advances put almost unlimited knowledge and influence into the hands of millions of individuals. Charting a way forward in the midst of this complexity—blunting threats to our security at home, seizing opportunities to advance our interests around the world, and working where possible to alleviate human suffering—is the task of American diplomacy. And if the world of tomorrow looks anything like what the trends of today suggest, effective diplomacy, and effective diplomats, will be more crucial to our national success than ever before.
None of us can predict the future, but all of us must heed the underlying trends now taking place. Broad analytical work on global trends, both inside the government and in the private sector, has shown significant consistency in tracking radical changes in the areas of technology, demography, governance, and statecraft, along with a near consensus view that the pace of those changes is accelerating. Given our previous track record in failing to anticipate dramatic change, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the rise of the Arab Spring, it is essential that we focus now on these trends and the potential paradigm shifts they represent. When contemplating the future of American diplomacy, three of these trends are particularly significant.
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