Forecasting Trends in International Relations After the Global Crisis Cover Image

Предвиђања тежишних праваца међународних односа после глобалне кризе
Forecasting Trends in International Relations After the Global Crisis

Author(s): Jelica Stefanović-Štambuk
Subject(s): Supranational / Global Economy, International relations/trade, Policy, planning, forecast and speculation, Globalization
Published by: Институт за политичке студије
Keywords: international relations; globalization; global crisis; deglobalisation; power; multilateralism; regionalism; networked society; wikinomics; non-state actors;

Summary/Abstract: Sudden startling shifts, despite the efforts undertaken to curb recognized global crisis and locate the paths for getting out of its grips, is playing an additional incentive to make forecasts of future major trends in international relations. It turns out that entire predictive industry is not driven anymore by mere curiosity what future holds in stock for human race or by deeply seated conviction in knowledge society. The very trade of forecasting is now stirred more by yearning to detect strategies better suited for sailing safe and sound over the troubled waters of ongoing crisis. But the foundational bases of predicting who will be decisive actors, which structures are to be in place and which likely processes is going to shape foreseen outcomes in coming years are not unfailingly safe. Competitively disparate values, in particular, are spoiling the solidity of prognostic underpinnings. Future trends in international relations are already set forth for 2025. At the same time, inability to grasp, whether international relations are just slipping temporarily out of the track or parting permanently from the pattern laid down after the Second World War, is admitted. Incompatible assessments of globalisation lead forecasts into opposing camps. The following examination of trends in international relations and accompanying strategies of action offered by three selected sorts of prediction has been premised on assumption that global crisis props up both thinking the unthinkable, that guides to new insights into existing state of affairs, as well as to holding fast to solutions taken out from the past, either because of contemporary discontent or fright of future. In conclusion we state next findings. All forecasts placed under meticulous enquiry, by following maps inherited from the old ways of thinking, are hardly apt to discern how to pull out from the ongoing global crisis. Consequently, they barely operate better in accessing the future trends in international relations. The old ways of thinking are getting in the way of orienting ourselves in our time and space by narrowing cognition. The real landscape of existing international relations is, still, not mapped. Instead of drawing reliable maps we are relying on maps done at the workshops of the old ways of thinking. That is why actions that we take increasingly are ending up in all to deeper ruin. By giving up obsolete maps of the outdated ways of thinking, we would be able to get hold of the best suited compass reading for both governing better our global present and getting more perceptive insights into the trends in international relations that future holds at stake.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 297-333
  • Page Count: 37
  • Language: Serbian