The World Ahead

15th May, 2006

In the years to come, four major, inter-related challenges are set to dominate the world outlook:

• global modernisation
• resurgent nationalism
• finite resources
• the crisis of American power

Modernisation

The first takes a number of different major strands (and innumerable smaller ones). 

As modernisation spreads across the planet, countries and societies at much earlier stages of political development than the trend-setting West are being forced to adapt. In many cases, the result is a bewildered return to roots, an emphasis on traditional values – and, sometimes, a violent response.

This is the so-called challenge of Islam – not some arcane clash of civilisation but a re-assertion of traditional values in the face of sometimes bewildering change seemingly imposed from outside. 

Just a hundred years ago, much of Arabia, for example, was populated by wandering tribal nomads with virtually no resources. It is hardly surprising that it is proving hard for the ...

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