Crystal ball for world affairs

YOGI BERRA once observed that "it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." And to their credit, the analysts at the National Intelligence Council have taken his insight to heart in producing a new report called "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World." They are properly cautious about extrapolating current trends into the future.

Nevertheless, the intelligence council's report offers at least one major, sweeping prediction: It foresees an accelerated "diffusion of authority and power" on the world stage in coming years. In 2025, the international system will be more fragmented and multipolar. Ascending powers such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil are projected to enjoy ever-greater influence.

For all the report's prudent weighing of differing possible developments, this is one key general conclusion that is not hedged - and that President-elect Barack Obama and his foreign policy team would do well to make the guiding beacon of their relations with the rest of the world.

If ever there was a need for a president to be guided by a sound preview of future developments, now is that time.

President Bush refused, for most of his two terms, to accept evident realities in the international arena. His propensity for unilateral action, preventive war, and a division of the world into good and evil nations reflected the prevalence of wish-fulfillment over reality-based statecraft. He decided America had no need to rely on the international institutions and treaties earlier administrations created after World War II. Instead, Vice President Dick Cheney and fellow neo-conservatives who helped shape Bush policies propounded the fanciful notion of a unipolar world order.

By contrast, "Global Trends 2025" forecasts a much more fluid world system. In this environment, there will be an enhanced role for "shifting coalitions" of countries and for "international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations and companies." Consequently, the United Nations, particularly with an expanded Security Council, is likely to be less and less able to resolve problems through "effective multilateral actions."

Leadership in a fluid world
A successful president will be one who enlists other nations to solve international problems. Obama has wisely intimated that he will not try to go it alone when confronting challenges that have no unilateral solutions. In the words of the report: "Most of the pressing transnational problems - including climate change, regulation of global financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. - are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states."

The purpose of the report is to help policy makers understand where events are headed. The authors disavow any intention to prescribe any specific responses. Nevertheless, the major international developments they anticipate often seem to point toward the general contours of a suitable foreign policy for the incoming Obama administration.

To adapt America to the international order that is coming into being, the next administration will need to build alliances and cooperative initiatives with diverse groups of countries. As the intelligence forecast observes repeatedly, rising powers China, India, Brazil, and Russia will have to gain a share in decision-making commensurate with their mounting financial clout.

New groupings for new times
Creating such new groupings to cope with common threats and challenges will require the give-and-take bargaining that Bush abhorred. This approach will also call for a 21st-century version of power-balancing among nations. In this sense, the future envisioned by the National Intelligence Council resembles a long-receded, pre-Cold-War past.

On two current threats that have preoccupied Washington of late, Al Qaeda terrorism and Iran's nuclear program, the intelligence forecast offers a refreshingly even-keeled, less-than-hawkish assessment: It suggests that Al Qaeda could fade away "sooner than people think" because of "its harsh ideology, unachievable strategic objectives and inability to become a mass movement." Obama ought to heed this evaluation.

The danger foreseen should Iran develop a nuclear weapons capability is that some of its neighbors are almost certain to follow suit. There would then be an increased risk of "theft or diversion of nuclear weapons, materials, and technology - and the potential for unauthorized nuclear use." The best way to counter this threat is to assemble the sort of cooperative grouping of countries to apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran - a coalition that would need to include Russia, India, and China.

In this respect, as in many others, the future has already arrived.