Pivotal countries, alternate futures : using scenarios to manage American strategy

273 Pages·2016·1.56 MB·English

by  Michael F. Oppenheimer

PIVOTAL COUNTRIES,
ALTERNATE FUTURES

Pivotal Countries,
Alternate Futures
Using Scenarios to Manage
American Strategy
Michael F. Oppenheimer
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This book is dedicated to my wife Donna,
and to my three sons, Harry, Julius, and Peter.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments | ix
Introduction | 1
1. The Problem: Fateful Decisions in Uncertainty | 7
A Global Most Likely Scenario | 8
Russia: Working Authoritarianism | 13
China: Strong State | 37
Making Decisions in This Most Likely Future | 54
Can We Do Better? | 56
2. Historical Cases | 60
The Disintegration of Yugoslavia | 60
The Failure of the Doha Round of Trade Negotiations | 61
The Terrorist Attacks of 9/11 | 63
The US Invasion of Iraq | 64
Iraq Scenario 1: National Unity Dictatorship | 65
Iraq Scenario 2: Contained Mess | 68
Iraq Scenario 3: Contagion | 70
The Arab Spring | 71
Obama’s Grand Strategy | 74
The Syrian Civil War | 80
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Syria Scenario 1: Regionalized Conflict | 81
Syria Scenario 2: Contained Civil War | 82
Syria Scenario 3: Negotiated Settlement | 83
Conclusion: American Policy Choices
Across Alternate Scenarios | 85
3. Value of Scenarios | 93
What about Prediction? | 99
Timing Is Almost Everything | 104
Beyond Timing: The Importance of Process | 106
What’s a Good Set of Scenarios? | 108
4. The Scenario Construction Process | 113
Design of Scenario Process | 119
Selecting Participants for Scenario Workshops | 122
Preworkshop Research on Drivers of Change | 125
Drivers Paper | 127
China 2020 | 127
Ukraine 2020 | 141
The Scenarios Process: Syria | 161
Syria 2018: Potential Scenarios | 162
The Scenario-Building Workshop | 164
How to Facilitate | 176
Composing the Scenario Narrative | 177
Turkey Scenario 3: Political Pluralism | 183
Some Lessons Learned | 202
Traps | 204
5. Future Applications and Policy Process | 208
NOTES | 223
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READINGS | 237
INDEX | 241
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book represents the accumulated insights of many years of
thinking, advising, and teaching about the future; first at a path-
breaking consulting company called the Futures Group, founded
and presided over by Ted Gordon; then at my own consulting
company, Global Scenarios, working principally on behalf of the
National Intelligence Council and several think tanks; and cur-
rently as professor at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) in the
School of Professional Studies at New York University, where
I oversee a Masters Degree concentration in International Relations
Futures and have been blessed with extraordinary colleagues and
students. As such, the people deserving my thanks are too numer-
ous to list, and if I tried, I would doubtless leave several out.
So selectively, I am greatly indebted to the many graduate
students at CGA who worked closely with me on the Scenario
Initiative, an alternate futures study of several countries pivotal
to US interests. For the Iraq post-2010 and the Iran 2015 studies,
Ethan Cramer-Flood and Chris Janiec provided essential support;
for China 2020, Bernadette Shaw wrote the scenario and the driv-
ers paper reproduced in this book; for Russia 2020, Eduard Berlin
wrote the scenario in this book and the notes on the Russia sce-
nario discussion, and Jessica Bissett provided additional support;
for Turkey 2020, Samuel Mueller and Melanie Vogelbach helped
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