What will be making the world a more dangerous place in the coming two decades? There’s no shortage of looming threats: weapons of mass destruction; automation and artificial intelligence taking hundreds of millions of jobs; extensive surveillance and intrusion by states. But three core drivers of insecurity transcend these. They are:
- a failing neoliberal economic system;
- environmental limits, especially climate breakdown;
- an entrenched security paradigm.
Neoliberalism puts us in danger by deepening socio-economic divisions, which marginalises many people and so increases the risk of violent revolts from those margins. Climate breakdown is of course a global danger and will be catastrophic if not prevented. And our military-industrial complex, with the use of force as its excuse for existing, has proved disastrous in the 18-year ‘war on terror’ and is incapable of responding to a divided and constrained world.
Economics, environment and security are not independent issues, however. They create vicious circles that could become virtuous if we approached them as a single integrated problem.
