To many, the world seems to be on fire. A small, newly nuclear-armed authoritarian country is incessantly taunting the world's sole remaining superpower. That superpower itself is now increasingly seen even by some of its staunchest allies as a "threat to world peace". Russia's large military exercise along its Western borders has Europeans on their seat's edge. And less mediatized, but no less impactful for the world was the tense military standoff between the two giant and nuclear-armed Asian great powers. In the midst of these events are unprecedented technological changes and climate-related cataclysms, that potentially herald fundamental shifts. Are all these events glimpses of a larger underlying iceberg or merely a statistical anomaly of our fascination with extreme events? And how can we even be sure?
These questions are not purely of academic interest - also not (limited) to the Netherlands. On January 1, 2018, the Kingdom of the Netherlands will take a seat at the most prominent and prestigious international table - the United Nations Security Council - for a period of one year. It will even chair the Security Council during the month of March 2018. As it prepares for this weighty responsibility, getting a better evidence-based understanding of the actual geodynamics behind the current international order is of the utmost importance. This alert presents a few selected highlights from our datasets in 'nowcasting' geodynamics in the period Jan- Jul 2017.
Photo credit: Kate-2112 via Visualhunt.com / CC BY
To many, the world seems to be on fire. A small, newly nuclear-armed authoritarian country is incessantly taunting the world's sole remaining superpower. That superpower itself is now increasingly seen even by some of its staunchest allies as a "threat to world peace". Russia's large military exercise along its Western borders has Europeans on their seat's edge. And less mediatized, but no less impactful for the world was the tense military standoff between the two giant and nuclear-armed Asian great powers. In the midst of these events are unprecedented technological changes and climate-related cataclysms, that potentially herald fundamental shifts. Are all these events glimpses of a larger underlying iceberg or merely a statistical anomaly of our fascination with extreme events? And how can we even be sure?
These questions are not purely of academic interest - also not (limited) to the Netherlands. On January 1, 2018, the Kingdom of the Netherlands will take a seat at the most prominent and prestigious international table - the United Nations Security Council - for a period of one year. It will even chair the Security Council during the month of March 2018. As it prepares for this weighty responsibility, getting a better evidence-based understanding of the actual geodynamics behind the current international order is of the utmost importance. This alert presents a few selected highlights from our datasets in 'nowcasting' geodynamics in the period Jan- Jul 2017.
