Images of the Global Future

Abstract

Theories can help us to understand the world. But as the preceding chapters make clear they have significant limitations in helping us to predict the likely shape of global politics in the twenty-first century. A useful starting point for such a discussion is perhaps provided by a range of sometimes stark, even dramatic, images, which academics, policy analysts or political commentators have advanced, often with the explicit intention of predicting the global future. Frequently having an impact well beyond academic circles, and influencing popular discourse about world affairs, these have, amongst other things, announced the arrival of a ‘borderless world’, proclaimed the ‘end of history’, predicted an emerging ‘clash of civilizations’ and announced the birth of the ‘Chinese century’. Such images have been thrown up by the shifts and deep transformations that have occurred in global politics in recent decades — the advance of globalization, the end of the Cold War, the advent of global terrorism and so forth. As old certainties have been thrown into question and the contours of global politics have become more indistinct, a thirst has grown for pithy explanations and neat hypotheses — that is, for images. What trends do these images highlight, and how persuasive are they as visions of the global future? These images nevertheless raise still larger questions, notably about whether we can ever know the future, and, if so, how far into the future we can see.