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Reading Crystal Balls in Foreign Policy

Michael Oppenheimer of NYU - Image Credit: NYU

Michael Oppenheimer of NYU – Image Credit: NYU

In May I was invited to be an observer at the Scenarios Initiative of the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU. The focus of the session I attended was Turkey’s possible futures over the next decade.  It is a fascinating and useful process, described on its website in the following way:

The NYU Center for Global Affairs Scenarios Initiative is a mediated workshop series designed to produce cross-disciplinary, forward-looking thinking on countries and issues critical to U.S. national interest. By gathering experts from diverse areas of expertise and nationalities to participate in scenario-building workshops, the Initiative aims to raise the quality of US foreign policy by improving policymakers’ understanding of and reaction to change.

Basically, this initiative gets a group of very smart people (the group assembled for Turkey was extraordinary, see listing here) in a room for a day and a half to come up with three scenarios that are plausible and offer directions that are distinct from the other.  The process forces people who are leading authorities in their fields to ponder other possibilities.  In other words, every expert involved probably has a scenario they think most is likely to happen.  However, they are still required to think through the other possibilities and what drivers might send things in a direction they had not considered (or at least not considered as seriously as other possible outcomes).  This isn’t just an interesting intellectual exercise – it brings to the fore possibilities and variables that might not be as evident as they should be.  Foreign policy experts can succumb to group think as much as any group, particularly in the policy hothouse inside the D.C. Beltway.   The CGA scenarios report on Iran gives an excellent justification of forcing experts off the dependency of the beaten path:

Too often, in both official and academic policy debates, the future is expected to parallel the recent past. Potential discontinuities are dismissed as implausible, information that conflicts with prevailing mindsets is unseen or viewed as anomalous, pressure for consensus drives out distinctive insights, and a fear of being ‘wrong’ discourages risk-taking and innovative analysis. Too much good thinking falls to the cutting room floor, while consensus coalesces around lowest common denominator extrapolations of recent data, or around the policy commitments of ‘clients.’ This built-in conservatism can artificially restrict policy options and reduce foreign policy choice.  The CGA Scenarios project aims to apply imagination to debates about global conditions that affect U.S. interests. The project will assemble the combination of knowledge, detachment and futures perspective essential to informing decisions taken in the presence of uncertainty. The project will comprise long term research on forces for change in the international system and workshops attended by experts and policy makers from diverse fields and viewpoints. The workshops will examine the results of current research, create alternative scenarios, identify potential surprises, and test current and alternative policies against these futures.

The scenarios event is ably led by Michael Oppenheimer and his team of students.  They make sure that grandstanding is kept to a minimum and that the focus remains on building a persuasive case for each scenario, identifying key drivers of change and which factors precipitate and propel each scenario.  Prof. Oppenheimer guides the assembled team and urges them to consider both domestic and regional factors and what sorts of wild card events might add momentum to the various scenarios.  This requires a suspension of disbelief that, in my opinion, is absolutely crucial if these scenarios are to add something new to the collective thinking and accepted wisdom.  Imagine, for example, what scenarios might have been considered for Europe in the early 1980s if no one pondered the possible fall of the Berlin Wall (almost everyone missed that call).   What wild card variable would have been able to predict the Iranian Revolution?  Or 9-11?  The line between plausible and possible is a thin one and foreign policy experts often return to the comfort of the probable.  Michael Oppenheimer and his team gently nudge them out of that comfort zone and the results are well worth reading.   I have participated in similar kinds of exercises at the Marine Corps War College and conferences at Ditchley Park in the UK.  Both were extremely interesting and informative.  But the CGA Scenarios Initiative’s focus on devising three specific, distinct and detailed scenarios adds a useful twist.

The initiative has already tackled China, Iraq and Iran (reports available here) and will address Ukraine later this year.   More details on the Turkey scenario are available here and here. I recommend that you take a look and see what the future might hold.


 

Author

James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program. He previously served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo and before that as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 2007-2008 he served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education. He previously served as Director of the SUNY Center for International Development.

Ketterer has extensive experience in technical assistance for democratization projects, international education, legislative development, elections, and policy analysis – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. He has won and overseen projects funded by USAID, the Department for International Development (UK), the World Bank and the US State Department. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House, as a policy analyst at the New York State Senate, a project officer with the Center for Legislative Development at the University at Albany, and as an international election specialist for the United Nations, the African-American Institute, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and has also held teaching positions in international politics at the New School for Social Research, Bard College, State University of New York at New Paltz, the University at Albany, Russell Sage College, and the College of Saint Rose.

Ketterer has lectured and written extensively on various issues for publications including the Washington Post, Middle East Report, the Washington Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He was a Boren National Security Educational Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and in Morocco, an International Graduate Rotary Scholar at the Bourguiba School of Languages in Tunisia, and studied Arabic at the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Morocco. He received his education at Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Fordham University.

Areas of focus: Public Diplomacy; Middle East; Africa; US Foreign Policy

Contributor to: Global Engagement