DEVELOPMENT

4 The Afd2025 scenarios
Faced with the century’s critical challenges,
tensions thaw
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
I
More sustainable pathways are slowly being put in place. The economic, political and
social tensions that swept the world during the first half of the 21st century have not led
to the predicted widespread doom. But awareness was long in coming. Although the major
global players seem to have been long cognizant that a lack of cooperation on major
issues would adversely affect the whole planet, this has not been enough to influence
their decisions – at least, not until a few seeds of change gradually emerge.
In the same vein as Prince Metternich’s remark on France at the time of the Congress of
Vienna (1814 –1815), (9) when China sneezes, everyone catches a cold. And indeed China
has triggered one of many changes of direction. Mired in internal conflicts that increasingly
impair its economic growth and the legitimacy of its political power, China has decided
to make steep cuts in its military spending and start easing regional tensions, a move that
is welcomed by an international community determined to follow suite.
The re-emergence of soft power thus fashions a more conciliatory multilateral governance
in which world leaders rely more on joint initiatives to tackle the main cases of conflict,
opening up governance to influential and better informed non-state actors. The results in
terms of regional stability are considerable. Of course, many crisis situations persist or
emerge (South Asia, Middle East, etc.), but multilateral cooperation, particularly on
poverty and climate, greatly reduces the risk not only of instability but above all contagion.
Box 13
South Asia, a hotbed of instability in the 2030s
India’s economic revival has led to serious tensions with Pakistan, which continues to
upgrade its nuclear capability and remains, along with Afghanistan, a battleground prey
to competing foreign interests. Against a backdrop of severe drought, Pakistan accuses
New Delhi of retaining water in its dams on the Indus, while India sees Islamabad as the
main architect of renewed pro-independence tensions in Kashmir. In United Nations
Security Council talks, the European Union, China and the United States have persuaded
both sides to resume their strategic and trade dialogue in exchange for massive
transfers of technical and financial resources.
9/ Metternich is said to have remarked: “When France sneezes, Europe catches a cold.” The Congress of Vienna was attended
by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and France, thus bringing to a close long years of turmoil in Europe.
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