EditStrategic foresight analysis: strengths and limits
Far-reaching developments affecting international relations have often escaped advance detection
One lesson from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s relentless implementation of Project 2025 is that we should listen more carefully to what political leaders actually say, writes Michel Leigh.
Sir Michael Leigh is Academic Director Master of Arts in Global Risk and European Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe.
Strategic foresight analysis serves as an early warning system, raising awareness about potential risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. This offers valuable insights into geostrategic developments and helps detect emerging trends and risks. It enhances our understanding of complexity by distinguishing noise from key drivers of change, thereby aiding preparation for high-impact events.
Scenarios, often used in foresight planning, set out alternative narratives without assigning probabilities to them. They are plausible stories about the future, not forecasts or predictions.
However, there is a wide gap between scenario building and horizon scanning, on the one side, and policy makers’ willingness to think about worrying outcomes, on the other.
Since the 1970s, when foresight analysis was developed by Shell Oil and the Rand Corporation, far-reaching developments affecting international relations profoundly have often escaped advance detection, or warnings about them were ignored.
Some of these disruptive developments were unknown unknowns, complete shocks, or black swans in the foresight menagerie. But others were known unknowns, highly visible grey rhinos or black elephants, which could have been foreseen and acted upon, but weren’t.
The most obvious examples include the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks (2001), the global financial crisis (2008), the Arab spring (2010-2012), the rise of ISIS (2014), Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the 2015 migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), the fall of the Assad regime in 2024, and Donald Trump’s implementation of Project 2025, including attacks on “the deep state,” liberal democracy and Europe.
In fact, there had been advance warnings about these shattering events but they were ignored. What future high-risk eventualities are being ignored or discounted today? Rapid technological disruptions, climate change shocks, social and political polarization, cybersecurity threats, health hazards, resource scarcity, geopolitical instability?
Geopolitical risks, widely ignored, except in the countries most concerned, include possible Russian annexation of Moldova and Georgia, a putative Russian attack on a NATO country, a Chinese blockade or attack on Taiwan, a full-scale India-Pakistan war, mass migration from Africa sparked by conflict, terrorism, and climate change, and democratic backsliding in EU and NATO countries.
Foresight analysis is mainly the province of foreign ministries and planning cells. But increasingly heads of government take foreign policy decisions themselves without even consulting or informing the minister. So, the output of foresight analysis is largely ignored. Presidents and prime ministers listen mostly to trusted advisers who may not dare to warn them of the worst.
To increase their potential impact, some strategic foresight units have been set up close to top decision-makers. But proximity to power can dilute their findings and they often end up providing raw material for speeches rather than advance warning. Heads of government listen mostly to trusted advisers who may not dare to warn of the worst.
Did anyone warn President Francois Hollande against destroying a precautionary stock of millions of face masks three years before Covid-19 struck? How advanced are contingency plans today for a possible Russian attack on a NATO country? Did European governments or the EU make plans to counter Project 2025 measures, if incoming President Donald Trump implemented them?
One lesson from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s relentless implementation of Project 2025 is that we should listen more carefully to what political leaders actually say. When Putin says that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century and that he aims to bring former Soviet Republics back under Russian authority, perhaps he means it. When Trump threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of NATO allies, perhaps he, too, means it.
Maybe we should go back to George Kennan, who created the policy planning staff in the state department in 1947 and who reputedly said that he felt like a court jester, privileged to say shocking things to the King. Perchance we could do with more court jesters today.
Caption: Rescue workers continue their efforts at the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York, New York, USA, 24 September 2001. [EPA-EFE/Ted S. Warren / POOL]
Updated: May 9, 2025 - 08:08
