🔴 Another devastating world war? 🔴 The use of nuclear weapons? 🔴 A democratic depression? Scowcroft Center asked more than 350 global strategists and foresight experts what the world might look like in 2035. Here’s what they found: ➡️ THREAD 🧵

40 percent of respondents expect a world war in the next decade—one that could go nuclear and extend to space.

65 percent of all respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that China will try to retake Taiwan by force within the next decade, and only 24 percent somewhat or strongly disagreed. Read expert insight from @ACScowcroft’s @Mister_G_2: Though this year’s survey findings may seem worrisome at first because respondents see increasing risks of war, I find them reassuring. The change from last year shows a greater awareness of the nature of the threats we face in the Indo-Pacific, particularly the risk of confronting simultaneous conflicts with multiple adversaries and nuclear attacks. That a clear majority of respondents now expect Beijing to try to take Taiwan by force in the coming decade is actually a hopeful signal to me. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been clearly building up military forces suited for offensive operations and has repeatedly stated that he will not renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan under control. Meanwhile, polls suggest that the vast majority of the people of Taiwan are disinclined to be ruled by Beijing, favoring either the status quo or outright independence. This would seem to set Beijing and Taipei on an inevitable collision course. Yet there is also good reason to believe that China overwhelming Taiwan is not inevitable, in part because invasion would be a far more difficult operation than is commonly recognized. It will take the increasing sense of threat of force identified by the survey to prompt Taiwan and the United States to make the investments necessary to increase their preparedness for deterring and defeating such use of force. This growing awakening on the part of the United States and its allies can become the basis for a call to action for the populations, governments, and militaries of these countries. The United States has typically waited until war was thrust upon it before preparing comprehensively. Now is the time to act, to prepare, ideally to deter such aggression, and to be ready to hold firm if deterrence fails and we face either a short, sharp war or a protracted one. — Markus Garlauskas, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

47 percent of respondents predicted that, by 2035, the world will largely be divided into China-aligned and US-aligned blocs. Read expert insight from @ACGlobalChina’s Melanie Hart: Economically, there is movement underway toward a US-and-allies versus China-aligned bloc structure, but this movement is still nascent. How far it goes will largely depend on whether the United States can overcome its domestic political reticence to actively shaping the global economic order and once again begin negotiating market-access trade deals. Beijing seeks a global system in which other nations must abide by its wishes and there are no constraints—legal, normative, or otherwise—limiting Beijing’s own actions. Beijing is using global commerce to enforce this approach. For nations that depend on trade or investment with China, Beijing is increasingly willing to shut off the flow of goods and capital to enforce its demands in other issue areas. Beijing is also using those partners as consumption dumping grounds, exporting excess capacity across a wide array of goods (such as steel and electric vehicles) at rock-bottom prices, which addresses over-supply in the China market but drives local producers out of business. This is leading many nations to reduce their exposure and vulnerabilities to Beijing’s market interference. Many of those nations increasingly view Western, US-centric supply chains as a more attractive option. As this shift unfolds, it could lead to new economic blocs—for example, a new multilateral trading structure in which the United States and its allies are at the center of a global trading bloc that China is not allowed to join. However, that will depend on Washington shaking off its trade malaise and figuring out how to negotiate new trade deals that create new, formal structures centered on US and allied rules of the road. China is busy creating its own options—such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in Asia—but the United States is hanging back. Without more assertive US-led action on the trade front, the biggest risk is that China will form a new, massive global economic bloc and write the rules to benefit itself at our expense, while the United States and its allies watch from the sidelines. As for China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, these four nations are partners with a clear shared interest—namely, their desire to undermine the United States and the liberal international order—but they are not true allies. China’s need for integration with the global economy is likely to limit the degree to which today’s partnership evolves in the future into a more formal alliance similar to the alliance the United States enjoys with its NATO partners. The Chinese Communist Party has staked its regime legitimacy—its pitch for the Chinese people’s continued support—largely on its ability to deliver economically. Unfortunately, the party has also decided that the reforms required to deliver next-level economic growth are too risky, as they would require the party to cede more internal political control over the nation’s economy, legal system, and society. As long as Chinese leaders are unwilling to do that, they will lag behind the West in technology innovation, and they will depend on access to Western companies, universities, and markets to help fill that gap. That dependence limits China’s willingness to sign up for a comprehensive alliance with Russia, Iran, or North Korea, because Beijing does not want to join those nations in an economic wilderness that cuts Chinese companies off from the world’s leading technology powers. — Melanie Hart, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub

48 percent of respondents expected nuclear weapons to be used in the coming decade, up from 37 percent in our previous survey. Read expert insight from Alan Pino: Is Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon inevitable or at least highly likely in the next decade? Far from it. Whether Iran acquires a nuclear weapon will depend on policy choices made by Iran, Israel, and the United States regarding Tehran’s nuclear program. Currently, Iran still officially disavows an intent to produce a nuclear weapon, but there has been much more talk among Iranian officials during the past year of the need for one as pressure on Iran has increased due to Israeli military actions against Tehran’s “resistance axis” and Iran itself. Iran’s military and economic weaknesses have intensified an ongoing debate between moderates and hardliners in Iran over the direction of the country’s foreign and nuclear policy. Moderates want to negotiate a freeze on Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions and an opening of trade and investment with the West and Arab Gulf states. Hardliners argue Iran must double down on its expansionist regional policies, its threshold status as a military nuclear power, its growing ties to Russia and China, and its hardline stance toward the United States and the West to rebuild deterrence and resilience. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will have to make the call on which policy to pursue, and uppermost in his mind will be which approach—or mixture of the two—best ensures the survival of the Islamic Republic, his overarching priority. Israeli officials continue to monitor Iran’s nuclear program closely and have reiterated warnings that Israel will resort to military force if Iran seeks to acquire a nuclear weapon. Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been emboldened by its military successes over the past year, including the destruction of Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capabilities and Iran’s air defenses, as well as the weakening of Iran’s missile-production capabilities. Senior Israeli officials probably believe conditions are ripe to destroy or set back Iran’s nuclear program without major threat of retaliation, given the Islamic Republic’s current vulnerability, but also seem to recognize that Israel would need US military support to do lasting damage. The Trump administration is committed to restoring its previous maximum-pressure campaign of sanctions against Iran to compel it to agree to a new nuclear deal and curbs on its malign regional behavior. Trump’s transition team reportedly discussed the possibility of a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities given that Iran now has enough highly enriched uranium for several bombs and that sanctions could take a long time to work. They may have leaked this option to frighten Iran into agreeing to negotiations, but clearly the Trump administration is signaling a willingness to go beyond sanctions and diplomacy to achieve its objectives. With Iran’s axis of resistance shredded, and Iran itself weakened militarily and economically, the United States has an extraordinary opportunity—working with Israel, Arab allies, and European countries—to use economic and diplomatic pressure backed by the threat of military force to secure an agreement that walks Iran back from the nuclear brink and curbs its destabilizing regional policies. — Alan Pino, former US national intelligence officer for the Near East North Korea and Russia are considered the most likely to launch a nuclear-weapons attack Read expert insight from @ACScowcroft’s @MatthewKroenig: This finding demonstrates that nuclear weapons have returned to the center of geopolitics. For years after the end of the Cold War, many assumed that nuclear weapons were obsolete relics from the past. The Obama administration made eliminating nuclear weapons a top priority. At the time, Washington assessed that there was virtually zero chance of a nuclear war among states and the greatest nuclear threats came from terrorism or accident. Now, nearly half of our respondents assess that nuclear weapons will be used in the coming decade. This shows that nuclear weapons are not twentieth-century curiosities but the ultimate instrument of force and essential tools of great-power competition. China is engaging in the most rapid nuclear buildup since the 1960s, Russia is issuing regular nuclear threats, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal continues to grow, and Iran’s dash time to the bomb is now measured in weeks. This means that the United States will need to once again strengthen its strategic forces to deter adversaries and assure allies. By doing so, I hope the United States can prove our respondents wrong and ensure that the world’s most powerful weapons are never used again. — Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

71 percent expect the United States to remain the world’s dominant military power by 2035. Read expert insight from @ACScowcroft’s @MatthewKroenig: In the United States, declinism is a national pastime with a poor track record. In the 1970s, many thought the Soviet Union was on a trajectory to overtake the United States as the world’s leading superpower. In the 1980s, economists projected that Japan would unseat the United States as the world’s leading economy. In the 2010s, many thought it was inevitable that China would become the world’s largest economic power. All of those predictions turned out to be incorrect. The United States is now a rising power, claiming 26 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), its largest share in two decades. Meanwhile, China is declining; Xi Jinping’s desire to assert Chinese Communist Party control over all aspects of Chinese society is stifling Chinese growth, and his aggressive foreign policy is undercutting the global economic engagement strategy that fueled China’s rise. Europe’s share of global GDP has fallen from a quarter in the 1980s to roughly 15 percent today. Russia’s GDP is smaller than Italy’s and Spain’s. To whom then is the United States supposedly ceding all of this power? Is the United States in decline? I wouldn’t bet on it. — Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

47 percent predicted that Russia’s war against Ukraine will end on terms largely favorable to Russia, and 43 percent forecast that it will result in a “frozen conflict.” Read expert insight from @ACEurasia’s @JohnEdHerbst: Expectations about the future change in the wake of historic developments and perceptions of those developments. Perhaps the single most important factor in determining the outcome of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is US policy. Simply put, a strong US policy providing Ukraine the weapons to drive Russian forces largely out of Ukraine and rallying the political West to supply Ukraine’s economic needs would lead to a clear defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin that would return much of occupied Ukraine to Kyiv’s control, and with a US-led effort would vouchsafe Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity via @NATO membership. Alternatively, a US decision to cut off aid to Ukraine would likely lead to a disaster that would ensure Kremlin political control of the country, produce a direct threat to NATO, and encourage aggression by US adversaries in the Far and Middle East. US President Joe Biden gave substantial support to Ukraine, but he stopped well short of giving Ukraine the arms and permission to take back most of the country. Trump has stated that he wants Ukraine to survive and would not abandon the country, but he is seeking a durable peace that requires compromise from Ukraine as well as Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has indicated a readiness to compromise; Putin has not. Recognizing this, Trump and his team have identified Putin as the recalcitrant party and have spoken of major economic measures—tougher sanctions, transferring the $300 billion in frozen Russian state assets to Ukraine—to persuade Russia to negotiate. Respondents to the survey pay attention to the major factors affecting this war, including the Trump angle. But respondents to surveys are not seers, and survey questions are not written to explore the insights that seers might provide. What therefore might we expect to happen with the war this coming year? First, Trump will roll out a peace initiative that likely includes four elements already public. Two are hard for Zelenskyy: territorial concessions (at least de facto) and no NATO membership for Ukraine for twenty years minimum. And two are hard for Putin: the demilitarized zone enforced by European troops and arming Ukraine to the hilt to prevent future Russian aggression. We can expect Putin to try hard to get Trump to drop those last two points before and then during the talks. But if Putin is persuaded that Trump will arm Ukraine with far more advanced weapons if Russia is unyielding, he might agree to terms that he intends to violate. Trump’s hopes for a Nobel Peace Prize depend on him insisting that Russia compromise to the point of ensuring a viable and stable future for Ukraine, and being ready to confront the ever-treacherous Russian dictator if Putin violates an agreement whose terms would yield that outcome. — John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center

56 percent envisioned Israel having normalized diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia by 2035. Read expert insight from Alan Pino: In 2035, will Israel have the status quo that exists today, with occupied Palestinian territories? Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 has taught us the dangers of thinking a status quo will continue indefinitely. Israeli leaders’ belief that Hamas had reconciled itself to the status quo in Gaza—in which Gazans received economic benefits in return for Hamas not attacking Israel—left them unprepared for the most devastating attack on the Jewish state since its war of independence in 1948. And the war in Gaza that resulted from Hamas’s attack has brought further surprises: Israel’s almost complete destruction of Hamas as a military and political organization; the killing of most of Hezbollah’s military leaders and elimination of a majority of its vaunted rocket and missile arsenal; direct Iranian and Israeli attacks on each other’s territory, with Israel wiping out all of Iran’s most advanced air-defense systems; and the almost overnight collapse of the Syrian military and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the face of a renewed rebel offensive. The Middle East’s geopolitical landscape has been dramatically transformed, and Iran’s image as a regional hegemon and defender of the Palestinians badly tarnished. Israeli leaders have been emboldened by Israel’s military successes and seem to believe that maintaining military dominance alone will deter the country’s enemies. But some observers, looking ahead, ask whether the cycle of violence since October 7 is likely to repeat itself at some point if Israel doesn’t address the issue of Palestinian aspirations for independence. The Biden administration and others have called for a return to the idea of a two-state solution as necessary to forestall future cycles of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Admittedly, the current environment is not propitious for discussion of a Palestinian state. A large majority of Israelis, still traumatized by Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7, reject the idea as posing a grave risk to Israel’s security. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly refused calls from the United States to incorporate the concept of an eventual Palestinian state into Israel’s post-war strategy, and right-wingers in the current Israeli government want to annex a large part of the West Bank, keep long-term control of the Gaza Strip, and return Israeli settlements to Gaza. But the Palestinian issue is not likely to go away. Anti-Israel militancy and violence by Palestinians is growing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Israel hasn’t totally suppressed attacks by Hamas in Gaza after more than a year of fighting. Arab publics are seething with anger over the large number of Palestinians killed and displaced by Israeli military operations in Gaza. And world opinion has increasingly turned against Israel as Palestinian casualties have mounted. The Palestinian issue remains a roadblock to Israel becoming fully integrated into the region, a key goal of Netanyahu’s that he hopes will put a capstone on his legacy as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Responding to popular sentiment, Saudi leaders have indicated that Riyadh won’t normalize relations with Israel—an essential step to create a political and security bulwark against renewed threats from Iran—unless Jerusalem endorses a clear pathway to Palestinian statehood. New elections will probably need to take place in Israel, bringing new leadership open to the idea of a political horizon for the Palestinians, if the current status quo is to change. The United States has an important role to play here by encouraging Israeli leaders to think about how to translate their military success into a regional strategy that includes a vision for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The odds of such a development seem long right now, but October 7 is a reminder that clinging to an unstable status quo can be riskier than seeking to change it. — Alan Pino, former US national intelligence officer for the Near East

As global organizations become less capable of solving the world’s problems, regional groupings and the BRICS may rise in importance. Read expert insight by @ACGeoEcon’s @joshualipsky: The findings show in hard data what many analysts believe—that the international financial institutions, in particular the Bretton Woods institutions, remain the most functional parts of the multilateral system. That’s because they deliver real money every day to countries around the world. But the responses also show a growing recognition that these institutions are not self-perpetuating. The tenuous consensus that allows them to go about day-to-day business is predicated on an understanding that functioning IMF and World Bank institutions serve every country (including the United States) better than dysfunctional ones. With Donald Trump’s return to office, there are questions about whether that consensus will hold. For what it’s worth: The first time Trump was in office, it did, and Trump and his team saw the value in both institutions, even if they disagreed with some policy decisions. The one area of the findings that seems off-target is on the BRICS. The likelihood of the BRICS succeeding in fulfilling their main goals seems vastly overstated in these findings (likely a product of media reporting on BRICS expansion during 2023 and 2024). Here’s the question that is much tougher to answer: What do the BRICS actually want to achieve? What they oppose—the Western-led system—is clear. But what is their proactive agenda? Until they answer that question, the ability of BRICS to succeed as an institution will be limited at best. — Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center

@Mister_G_2 @ACGlobalChina @MatthewKroenig @ACEurasia @JohnEdHerbst @ACGeoEcon @joshualipsky Just under half of respondents envisioned the current “democratic recession” worsening and becoming a “democratic depression.” 65 percent of respondents also forecast that global press freedoms will decrease by 2035.

Women are more pessimistic about the global future than men are. 61 percent of female respondents predicted that nuclear weapons will be used in the coming decade, compared with 44 percent of male respondents who said the same. Women (54 percent) were also more likely than men (44 percent) to expect a democratic depression. Read expert insight by @ACGeoEcon’s @nicolegoldin: The pessimism from women likely reflects persistent inequities in military, economic, and political representation and participation, as well as the disproportionate impacts of crises and shocks—whether those are economic (like inflation), security-related (from wars such as those in Ukraine or Gaza), the result of political turmoil or transition, or the product of natural disasters and climate events. Compounding these situations are the challenges of child or family care and pay gaps, which limit the work and earnings of many women, and worsening domestic and gender-based violence, which devastates women’s lives in all dimensions. In the United States, the rollback of Roe v. Wade has left many women believing their rights and protection more broadly are at risk. — Nicole Goldin, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and head of equitable development at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research

@Mister_G_2 @ACGlobalChina @MatthewKroenig @ACEurasia @JohnEdHerbst @ACGeoEcon @joshualipsky Explore the full survey results here. ⤵️

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