The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security is pleased to share the first component of its latest Atlantic Council Strategy Paper, Global Foresight 2023.
This is the second edition of the Scowcroft Center’s annual Global Foresight report. For the past decade, the center has been home to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops.
We are excited to share the first part of this year’s installment (which is part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series): our ranking of 2023’s top risks and opportunities. This year, we have asked the leaders of the Atlantic Council’s sixteen programs and centers to predict the biggest global risks and opportunities that 2023 could bring.
What should we watch for in the year ahead? Potential risks include:
- Democracies descend into instability: Some democratic countries are heading into 2023 with highly divided societies, shaky institutions, and question marks hanging over their political leaders. Over the past several years, for example, we have seen repeated changes in leadership in the United Kingdom and Israel, and disputed elections in the United States and Brazil, all of which could be ominous signs for the health of global democracy.
- The internet splits forever: Watch for a slow roll toward two internets: one designed to facilitate government control with built-in surveillance, and one that’s free, open, and secure—or at least trying to be.
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Support for Ukraine plummets: Though support has held steady thus far, several variables affect the resolve of US, European, and other allied governments—and voters—to continue paying the costs of arming Ukraine and isolating Russia over the coming year. Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats, energy prices and associated cost-of-living crises, and a looming recession all threaten the backing Ukraine needs to win the war.
- The transition away from fossil fuels hits an inflection point: 2023 could be a bellwether year for the energy transition—and net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions could be within sight by 2050 if we play our cards right.
- The European Union acts more like a great power: After Russia’s invasion, and with more hawkish views on China in ascendance, Europeans broadly agree on the question of the EU’s relationship with power, even if the EU still lacks instruments for exercising hard power.
- Funding for climate resilience doubles: While countries pledged $230 million to help the places most vulnerable to a changing climate adapt at the 2022 UN climate summit, private investors on the sidelines discussed new ways to channel capital to cities and regions facing extreme heat.