What U.S. intelligence predicted the world would look like in 2015

The future depicted in the National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2015” report, published in December 2000, contains numerous contemporary echoes, as my colleagues at Defense One have pointed out. There’s financial volatility; anonymous cyberattacks; widening economic divisions; an increasingly assertive China; a WMD-wielding North Korea; growing illegal migration to the U.S. from Central America; a mercurial, authoritarian Russia that “remains internally weak and institutionally linked to the international system primarily through its permanent seat on the UN Security Council”; a Middle East tormented by “demographic pressures, social unrest, religious and ideological extremism, and terrorism,” and shaped by the destabilizing impact of new technology and the allure of political Islam.

But there are also developments that are difficult to imagine in 2015: a new state of Palestine; Iraq acquiring nuclear weapons; Japan losing its position as the world’s third-largest economy. Instead of a country reeling from 13 years of war, the study envisioned an “internationally isolated” Afghanistan offering “a haven for Islamic radicals and terrorist groups” (Osama bin Laden was holed up there at the time). Instead of forecasting grinding conflict between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces in Ukraine, U.S. officials wrote that “Ukrainians of all political stripes [are] likely to opt for independence rather than reintegration into Russia’s sphere of influence.” They prophesied that “most technological advances in the next 15 years … will not have substantial positive impact on the African economies,” missing the role that, say, cell phones have played in stoking economic dynamism in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, they noted, “Europe’s agenda will be to put in place the final components of EU integration”—integration that is now threatened by the region’s ongoing economic crisis.