Yogi Berra, the great sage of baseball, is reported to have said, “Never make predictions—particularly about the future.” He had a point. If we think back three decades, to the late 1970s, the Cold War was in permafrost, and conventional wisdom held that American power was in decline. No one saw the Internet coming. Why should we think we can do any better looking forward 30-plus years?

Perhaps we won’t, but planning is necessary. Some planes and ships in use today were developed more than 40 years ago, and some planned today will be the workhorses of the air force and navy in 2040. Current energy investments will help determine the extent of our future dependence on oil and our impact on climate change. That kind of planning is really a form of prediction, and it requires us to stretch our horizons and imagine—and perhaps to shape—a better future.

Two caveats. First, current trends won’t necessarily continue; conditions can change so much that even sensible seers look ridiculous and the ridiculous comes true: in 1978, was anyone predicting that China would have the world’s fourth-largest economy or that entire encyclopedias would be embedded on a silicon wafer smaller than a newborn’s fingernail? Right now, conventional wisdom suggests that geopolitics in 2040 will be dominated by Brazil, Russia, India, and China. But this scenario assumes that their economic growth will rise in a linear projection and that they will experience only minor political disruptions, and it ignores possible conflicts of interest among them. Second, it’s important to remember that the more precise the estimate, the more likely it is to mislead. There are many possible futures.

To project a future, you have to start somewhere, however, and that means making certain assumptions. Among mine: the populations of Europe, Japan, and Russia will continue to fall; India’s economy won’t surpass China’s; the giddy pace of technological change will continue to drive globalization; and the US economy will remain open and innovative.

In a recent study, the US National Intelligence Council (which I headed in the early 1990s) made a similar list, projecting a dozen “relative certainties” about the global landscape circa 2020:

1. Globalization will continue but with a less Western orientation.
2. The world economy will be substantially larger but with important gaps between the haves and the have-nots.
3. Global companies will spread new technologies.
4. Asia will rise in importance.
5. In-ground energy supplies will be sufficient to meet demand, but supply disruptions are possible.
6. Nonstate actors, ranging from charitable organizations to terrorist groups, will grow in number and power.
7. Political Islam will remain a potent force.
8. Some states will increase the capabilities of their weapons of mass destruction, while others will seek to acquire them.
9. An arc of instability will span the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
10. A world war among great powers isn’t likely.
11. Environmental and ethical issues will come to the fore.
12. The United States will remain the world’s single most powerful actor.

These 12 trends, I believe, are likely to fit 2040 as well as 2020, but each trend won’t be of equal strength, so very different scenarios are possible. A future in which, say, weapons of mass destruction are used repeatedly will be substantially different from one in which the most important trend is the spread of wealth through globalization and technological change for the better.

That brings us to a related matter: what will be the key forces driving the future? Demography is a good place to start. Right now, the world has 6.7 billion people; by 2040, it will have almost 9.0 billion—and that simple fact will reshape everything. Think of the world in 2040 as a village with 100 inhabitants. The population of the village would break down in this way: 56 Asians, 16 Africans, 4 Americans, 9 people from the rest of the Western Hemisphere, 5 from Western Europe, 7 from the rest of Europe, and 3 from the Middle East. Alone among the richest countries, the United States will probably see its population increase, to about 400 million (from roughly 306 million); Russia’s could fall by almost a third, to 100 million (from 141 million).

With that as the context, and remembering the 12 relative certainties of the National Intelligence Council, what might that augur for global politics? So far as conventional nation-state politics is concerned, the most important factor will be the continuing “return of Asia.” In 1750, the continent had three-fifths of the world’s population and three-fifths of the world’s GDP. By 1900, after the industrial revolution in Europe and America, Asia’s share had shrunk to one-fifth of the world’s GDP. By 2040, Asia will be well on the way to regaining its historical share. The greater clout of China and India could create instability, but the emergence of new powers is a problem with precedents, and history can show how to influence the outcome. A century ago, Britain managed to accommodate the rise of American power without conflict, but the failure to accommodate German power led to two devastating world wars.

One of the signal features of geopolitics today, however, is the rise of nonstate actors aided and abetted by technology. Forty years ago, instantaneous global communication was costly and restricted to governments and corporations. Today, anyone who can pay a few cents in an Internet café has the world at his keyboard. Satellite photos that once cost the superpowers billions of dollars are now commercially available for nothing. The barriers to entry into world politics have fallen, which is why nonstate actors now crowd the stage: on September 11, 2001, one such group killed more Americans than the government of Japan did at Pearl Harbor. This is a new world in which we have little experience. The problems of the diffusion of power away from states may turn out to be more difficult than the movement of power among them.

Three key political agents of change will shape geopolitics. The first is China and the way it uses its power. China’s income per capita is only one twenty-fifth that of the United States. While it is possible that China’s total economy could equal the US economy by 2040, the US per capita income will remain four times greater. This is not like a century ago, when Germany surpassed Britain in industrial strength by 1900. The key question for China will be its internal evolution. Growth has lifted 400 million Chinese out of poverty since 1990, but another 400 million still live on less than $2 a day. This enormous degree of inequality could well become a source of instability. In addition, China hasn’t solved the problem of political participation. If it turns to aggressive nationalism as a social glue, that could generate conflicts. Alternatively, China may deal with its problems pragmatically and become what World Bank President Robert Zoellick calls a “responsible stakeholder” in world politics.

Political Islam and its development will be the second key political agent of change. The current struggle against transnational Islamist terrorism is sometimes characterized as a “clash of civilizations.” More accurately, it is a civil war, within Islamic civilization, between a radical minority that uses violence to enforce a simplified and ideological version of Islam and a moderate mainstream majority. The largest number of Muslims actually live in Asia, particularly Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. But they are influenced by what happens at the heart of this civil war, in the Middle East, which has lagged behind the rest of the world in globalization, openness, institutions, and democratization. If the Middle East catches up, the mainstream could be strengthened over time. The way Muslims are treated in Europe and America, as well as Western policies toward the Middle East, will also be a factor in attracting (or repelling) mainstream Muslims.

The United States and the way it uses its power will be the last of the three key agents of change. Although the United States will still be the world’s most powerful country in 2040, the paradox of its power is that this nation—the strongest since the days of imperial Rome—may not be powerful enough to protect its citizens by itself. The United States will remain militarily dominant, but it will not still be sufficient to deal with transnational threats such as global pandemics, climate change, terrorism, and international crime. These issues require cooperation and the soft power of attraction. Defeating Islamist terrorism, for example, calls for cooperation, such as the sharing of intelligence among the police forces of different countries. It will also be necessary to attract the hearts and minds of mainstream Muslims. While US military power will remain crucial, used incorrectly it could undercut the soft power needed to win in the future.

Other things being equal, if these three political forces play out favorably, the most likely future is a globalized world with an Asian face and protected by a Pax Americana. But this outcome is not inevitable. After all, economic globalization in the first half of the 20th century was reversed by the rise of communism and fascism, disruptive forces unleashed by growing social inequality. Today, my top candidates for disruptive forces include the following:

• Political instability in China, generating a prolonged slump, violence, and a more aggressive foreign policy
• Major Persian Gulf revolutions or other conflicts that disrupt access to oil reserves * A pandemic producing widespread death, economic dislocation, and the closure of borders
• Acts of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, leading not only to millions of deaths but also to protectionism and the loss of liberties; in the jujitsu of terrorism, where the smaller fighter tries to leverage the power of the larger one, this may be the greatest danger
• Climate change, if it occurs more quickly than expected or leads to a catastrophic event—such as the collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf and a rapid rise in sea levels—which would change world politics dramatically

An infinite number of futures are possible, but some are more probable than others, and our actions can affect those probabilities. Every day, we make choices that help to determine which future will actually happen. The important point is not whether my picture of the geopolitical world in 2040 is correct but that we start thinking about the implications of different scenarios and what drives them.

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