Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

CROSS-LANGUAGE DOMAIN PERSPECTIVESPolitical and economic instruments are seen as less prevalent. Thiscorresponds to our findings on the domain parameter, where the politicaland economic domains also scored relatively low. This may give pausefor reflection to analysts who anticipate a shift towards ‘softer’ forms ofconflict.If we take a closer look at the differences between the languagedomains, we see that information/psychological means (and even moreoverwhelmingly the electro/cyber/info/psycho combo 177 ) end up in thefirst spot in every single language domain. The HCSS team considersthis to be one of the important findings of our study – one that oursecurity and defense establishments would be well advised to heed. Aswas the case with the domain parameter, we once again note that theEnglish set of studies seems the more traditional one of the three here 178 .English studies, on the other hand, put more stock, besides the traditional(physical) means, also (relatively speaking) in political and economicmeans.PaceLike the duration of conflict, its pace is not discussed very frequentlyeither, with the partial exception of the English set in which it ends upin fourth place in the ranking of parameters. In the Chinese set, thisparameter is not mentioned at all. Experts in the English and Russianlanguage domains diverge widely with a majority foreseeing a high paceof conflict in the future.SalienceThe salience of conflict – how much conflict there will be in thefuture – receives surprisingly little attention in the foresight community.The studies that do touch upon this subject are divided over the questionwhether conflict is going out of fashion or whether the 21 st century willwitness the return of conflict in various guises – inter-state, intra-state,non-state etc. A majority of the foresights anticipate a future in which177 See also footnote 176.178 We do have to point out the English that set goes back a bit further in time than the two otherones. But we invite the reader to take a closer look at the more detailed data in Annex C, whichshow that even if one takes out those earlier studies, this finding still stands.HCSS Report 135