Background

A key part of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy’s (GCSP) strategy is to look over the horizon to anticipate, explain, and prepare for future risks and challenges. Anticipation Space provides a setting at the GCSP for exchange on issues that need greater attention today, to prepare for tomorrow. As actors in peace and security we spend much of our time reacting to crisis and focussing on topics with short-time horizons. We invite you to this space to explore a range of interconnected issues that may grow in importance and enhance your anticipatory governance capabilities to manage them.

Anticipation Space at GCSP rests on the concept of strategic foresight. That is, the need to explore multiple futures in structured and policy-orientated ways in order to be better prepared today for what is to come (for more information on GCSP's work on strategic anticipation please see here).

In this respect, GCSP continues its mission to help people to anticipate and understand global threats and challenges.

Event description

Colonel Joachim Isacsson OBE, the Senior Swedish team member of the Defence Futures, Strategic Command, UK Ministry of Defence (UM MOD), will lead a discussion on global strategic trends. This will be based on the latest report of the UK MOD’s Defence Futures unit “Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055” (7th edition). 

This influential and highly anticipated report that is issued every five years, offers foresight analysis from a thematic and geographic perspective, complemented by five scenarios which describe hypothetical pathways into a future world order. The report identifies six global key drivers of change and 22 underlying trends that form the basis of an analysis that recognizes how these influence, counteract or accelerated each other, in unexpected ways.  

Following the presentation, we will enter into a discussion to hear from attendees on their diverse perspectives on global strategic trends. 

Introductions 

• Ms Emily Munro, Head of Strategic Anticipation and Senior Advisor, Research and Policy Advice, GCSP

Presentation of “Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055” (UK Ministry of Defence, 7th edition) 

• Colonel Joachim Isacsson OBE, Assistant Head 2 Strategic Foresight Team, Defence Futures, Strategic Command, Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom 

Closing Remarks 

• Brigadier General Marcel Amstutz, Senior Defence Advisor, GCSP