Thu, 11/05/2020 - 4:46pm
A Map with No Edges
Anticipating and Shaping the Future Operating Environments
By Richard Kaipo Lum
Introduction
Today, we in the United States are confronted with a bewildering array of changes, occurring on multiple levels and unfolding at different rates. The world order is clearly undergoing a set of transitions and with rising geotechnological competition and unraveling global integration, it is even more challenging to make confident statements about the future. In fact, there is no single future “out there.†We are always confronted by a range of possibilities for how the world could change and today, given the breadth and depth of changes underway, effectively dealing with those possibilities requires us to address the future in new ways.
Given the reality that confronts us, we need to take a more expansive approach to thinking about the future. We need to think about it in more rigorous ways and we need to approach “the future†from a different point of view – one that is oriented towards shaping the emerging landscape rather than making bets on competing prophetic statements about what shape it will take. And lest anyone start to object to this activist approach to the future, let’s be clear that it works. Years ago, our geopolitical competitors were deeply unsatisfied with their assessments of what was, at the time, the future operating environment of the 21st Century. They set about to alter things, and we are all presently living through the success of their efforts.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/map-no-edges-anticipating-and-shaping-future-operating-environments
