Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

Florentino Portero Rodríguez
Some problems have shifted from a particular geographical environment
to the global stage, affecting regions as a whole. How these problems
are tackled is going to determine the immediate future, the balances
between the major powers and, lastly, international security.
Our economy will continue to depend on fossil fuels for several decades.
Following the slump in demand caused by the current economic
crisis, we will enter another phase in which scarcity of resources will clash
with the industrialised nations’ urgent need for them. Out of the major
powers, only Russia can provide its own supplies. The rest have to have
to resort to the international markets, which are exposed to very considerable
political and international tensions. The Persian Gulf, Central Asia
and the Caribbean are, or could be, willing to make politics of hydrocarbon
supplies, leading to limit situations with an unclear outcome. Competition
between major powers for access to these still indispensable resources
may spark serious tensions.
Indeed this competition has led to the failure and consequent crisis
of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which will foreseeable drive new
states to develop this technology for military purposes as a deterrent to
problematic neighbours. An increase in the number of members of the
nuclear club and the fact that some of them have unstable or radical
regimes will make nuclear war much more likely than it is now. The major
powers will engage their diplomatic efforts in addressing this threat during
the coming years.
Internal tensions derived from the complex process of modernisation
Muslim societies are undergoing as they adapt to a globalised world have
triggered a rise in Islamist movements. These trends are expressed in two
ways: through the use of force and through more long-term strategies of
cultural penetration aimed at seizing power and imposing regimes based
on the Sharia in the case of states with a Muslim majority; and elsewhere
through the Muslim population’s rejection of integration into host states in
order, in the medium term, to bring about the collapse of common law and
the recognition of these communities’ right to live under the Sharia. The
failure of many of these states, particularly in the Arab World, to transform
themselves into democratic regimes with dynamic economies has degenerated
into corruption, incompetence, economic and cultural backwardness
and large flows of emigrants. The double challenge of modernising
while combating radicalism will continue to be a fundamental problem
whose effects will be felt in very different areas.
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