On the 3rd of July 2024, The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) invited experts from across the transatlantic community, specifically the US National Intelligence Council, NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), and the EU Institute for Security Studies to exchange views on future security trends in the transatlantic community and their implications for the Netherlands and Europe. This was the first event in a three-part series called ‘The Hague Strategic Foresight Forum Talks’. The first event was titled ‘Navigating Tomorrow: Transatlantic Outlooks on the Future Security Landscape and its Implications for the Netherlands’. Check out the event recap here.
The energy transition, climate change, artificial intelligence, great-power competition between the United States and China, and large-scale war on the European continent. These challenges are currently at the centre of attention for policymakers in Europe and the Netherlands, but their buildup has been years in the making.
Preparing for such future challenges is always difficult, since ‘the future’, does not exist. Futures are created by the perceptions of those making policy today. Therefore, engaging in conversation with other producers or consumers of foresight exercises is valuable, as it can augment collective understanding of certain trends and actors, thereby informing thinking about the future. Further, as choices are made the possible number of futures becomes more restricted as alternative paths are closed off.
Aside from the billions of possible futures floating around in the minds of people all over the world, there are also ‘dominant futures’. These are the result of capstone exercises from a select group of elite organisations specialised in foresight, which translate the perceptions of their experts into a single document, thereby establishing ‘a baseline’ in foresight, often-times for elected political leaders. Finding areas of agreement, possible disagreement, and exploring mutual blind spots are important areas for the community of foresight experts to engage in.
This write-up of the event provides a summary of what was discussed, the trends, drivers, shocks and provides some key takeaways for practitioners.
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