Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

THE METAFORE PROTOCOL2 The Metafore ProtocolForesight is often – explicitly or implicitly – of a normative (visionary,exhortative, cautionary, etc.) nature. This project is different in that it aimsto present a more exploratory analysis of the future contours of conflictas seen by different groups across the globe. It draws upon an approachto foresight that HCSS has developed over the past few years and thatwe have labeled Metafore. 2 The essence of the Metafore approach is topresent readers (and especially policymakers) with a more dispassionatemeta-analysis of the bandwidth of views in the expert community onthe future of any given topic. This mapping is then used as the basisfor a more in-depth discussion of the broader implications of this metaanalysis.For this project, HCSS compiled a new and unique database of studiesabout the future of conflict across four language domains (Arabic,Chinese, English and Russian). The main reason for selection of theselanguage domains was the fact that the countries and regions wherethese languages are spoken either play or will play an important role inthe strategic environment in the years to come. We furthermore assumedthat there is a significant degree of cross fertilization amongst Westernresearchers, and the richness and variety of the Western views are largelycaptured by the English discourse. 32 For more general background on the Metafore protocol, see Stephan De Spiegeleire et al.,STRONG in the 21st Century. Strategic Orientation and Navigation under Deep Uncertainty(The Hague: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2010).3 It will be clear to the reader that not all language domains are covered in this study – examplesof important uncovered domains include the Brazilian, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, Turkish,French and German language domains. The modular and scalable method we used lends itselfvery easily to adding such additional language domains.HCSS Report 17