{"id":33983,"date":"2017-09-04T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T20:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=33983"},"modified":"2017-09-01T17:42:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T07:42:19","slug":"oz-intelligence-review-challenges-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-intelligence-review-challenges-threats\/","title":{"rendered":"Oz intelligence review: challenges and threats"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The new normal of international affairs has lots of abnormalities. Not least is the way the norms of the system of states are being tested and stretched and pushed and punished.<\/p>\n

Along with all the noise, the biggest of shifts just keeps on keeping on. See the trajectory forecast five years ago by all of America\u2019s intelligence agencies, sitting as the US National Intelligence Council, in their Global Trends report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a tectonic shift, by 2030, Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The US will still be the number 1 world power. Yet it\u2019s about to become the number 2 economic power. That is a power paradox to ponder. And it\u2019s one of the paradoxes expressed in the title for the new US Global Trends report, The paradox of progress<\/em><\/a>, issued as Donald Trump was sworn in.<\/p>\n

The next five years will see rising tensions within and between countries. Global growth will slow, just as increasingly complex global challenges impend. An ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals will shape geopolitics. For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War. So, too, perhaps is the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. It will be much harder to cooperate internationally and govern in ways publics expect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

China became the biggest economy in the world in 2014<\/a> (measured by purchasing power parity). And about 10 years from now, China will reconfirm its place atop the world economic table, based on exchange rates. That means America and China and the rest of us still have a further 10 years to get used to the megatrend that has already happened. Trend moments get no bigger. We\u2019ve been living with this for a while, so it has lost some of its surprise element. But not its sense of danger.<\/p>\n

In the 20th century, Europe\u2019s wars were world wars. In the 21st century, world wars will come\u2014if they come\u2014from Asia. For Asia, power has arrived. In the world of states, that shift is profound. Paradox, indeed. That\u2019s why the modern Metternich, Henry Kissinger, was moved to pen the book World order<\/em><\/a>, arguing that the ultimate problem of our day is \u2018the crisis in the concept of world order\u2019. And, says Dr K, the ultimate challenge for statesmanship is \u2018a reconstruction of the international system\u2019.<\/p>\n

As Kissinger commented in August<\/a>, \u2018the United States and China will become the world\u2019s two most consequential countries both economically and geopolitically, obliged to undertake unprecedented adaptations in their traditional thinking\u2019.<\/p>\n

Just stroll around that last thought: the two biggest beasts on the planet will have to make \u2018unprecedented adaptations in their traditional thinking\u2019. And the tradition in both countries, as Dr K notes, is to \u2018think of themselves as exceptional, albeit in fundamentally different ways\u2019. Tough for exceptional countries to alter their fundamental thought processes, much less cope with a geopolitical equal that also thinks itself unique.<\/p>\n

The tectonic stuff in the world of states is matched by the shifts in the other realms of peoples and technologies. That inelegant phrase \u2018non-state actors\u2019 only hints at all the acting up these non-state players are conjuring. The modern age of terror arrived with the first decade of this century. The age of cyber drives this second decade.<\/p>\n

Australia finds itself \u2018wedged between the limits of sovereignty and the constraints of multilateralism\u2019. That phrase is from Michael L\u2019Estrange, in the second of the ASPI interviews on the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The L\u2019Estrange\u2013Merchant review spends its first chapter surveying Australia\u2019s national security environment. It\u2019s a six-page sprint through the abnormalities of this new international normal, arguing that Australia\u2019s security interests have become \u2018more complex, less predictable and more volatile\u2019 because of:<\/p>\n