Quite in contrast to the bold claims of rational choice theory, human behavior is not easily

modeled, whether at personal or state level.

Researchers are trying to understand wars to make them more predictable.

Since 2010, nearly 900,000 lives were lost to politically motivated violence, and in 2019 alone
the world witnessed 121 active conflicts.

There have been broadly three approaches used to anticipate conflict: those looking at push
factors (including aspects such as socio-economic development, political institutions, and arms
acquisitions), those looking at pull factors (including the regional or international context), and
those trying to understand the shape and tactics of conflicts to come.

Whereas the insights of the first two are primarily useful to policymakers interested in
conflict prevention, the latter is useful to those preparing for the worst-case scenario,
war.

The first area, looking primarily at internal causes for conflict, has made remarkable
progress over the last decade thanks to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

Models such as the Early Warning Project or Uppsala University’s ViEWS, Lockheed Martin’s
Integrated Crisis Early Warning System, or the EU’s Conflict Early Warning System (CEWS) use
historical data on conflicts and their (assumed) drivers and statistical inferences and machine
learning techniques to forecast future conflict trends.

Working within a window of 1-36 months before conflict onset, their predictive accuracy can
reach 80% – but they are better at forecasting the continuation of a conflict or spill-over of
conflicts than anticipating new conflicts.

But for the time being, they are only of limited use to policymakers. One of the reasons is
that they focus on conflict probability, but not on conflict pathways. Rather than measure
how a conflict unfolds, these models measure under what conditions it is likely to erupt.

In addition, these models cannot offer insights into how the conflict will be fought. This is
important to know because it could indicate the lethality of the conflict and the impact on the
economy and people’s livelihoods.

Lastly, these models mainly aim at forecasting armed violence within a state, rather than
between states.

In sum, these models are not yet ready to serve as a basis for decision-making – here,
old-fashioned qualitative analysis of drivers and possible solutions will be the safer bet for the
time being.
The second approach, largely established during the Cold War, posits that conflict
likelihood depends on the international or regional system of which a state is a part.

Born out of inductive thinking rather than data, international relations theory was, in effect, an
attempt to “understand international politics, grasp the meaning of contemporary events, and
foresee and influence the future”, as the founder of the discipline, Hans Morgenthau, stated.

His main assumption was that the international state system was anarchic, and as a result
insecure. Because states can never be sure about the behavior of other states, they are in a
‘security dilemma’: no war is certainly the best option, but it is not the most certain one. When
applied in hindsight, this theory seemed to explain a host of conflicts such as World War I, the
origins and end of the Cold War, and conflicts in Yugoslavia and Africa.

Perhaps crucially, these theories remained silent on the internal conflict which is the
dominant form of conflict in the twenty-first century.

International relations is not a data-heavy field. There are no numbers on concepts such as
‘polarity’, ‘deterrence’, or ‘hostility’, and it is near to impossible to survey the perceptions and
decision-making processes leading to conflict.

The third approach to conflict focuses on the ways and means by which conflicts will be
fought. As a result, it has no ambition to develop generalized theories or predict a conflict’s
onset before it actually happens. Instead, its contribution is to ready societies and
institutions for a coming conflict.

Whereas the first two schools use either history or assumptions about the world as
starting points for conflict anticipation, this approach combines the two with imagination.

Because of this, and because concrete policy ideas can be deducted from it, of the three it is the
one of the greatest use for policymakers – when they decide to act on the findings.

In contrast to the other two approaches which rely on science, history, and deduction (asking
“what is?”) this field adds imagination.

To be clear: this field, too, suffers from the same degrees of inaccuracy as the other two.
Where this is the case, it derives primarily from being tied to advocacy – the desire to trigger a
policy change; to the present – seeing the future as an extrapolation of today’s trends, or from
disruptive illusion – the idea that future conflicts will be completely different from past ones.

As one of the contributors to this volume puts it, “knowledge without imagination can tell you
where you are but not where to go.”
War games and scenarios, too, can be included in this field, as they rely not just on the past, but
also on the future to put together an approximate idea of what conflict could look like + works of
fiction

This Chaillot Paper belongs to the third school of conflict anticipation in that it uses
imagination along with past and present trends.

A word on methodology. The authors in this volume were given no further instruction
other than to imagine a conflict set in 2030.

They were not allowed to be too fantastical: no aliens, fictional countries, or non-existing
technology were to be used. After all, this work is not science fiction, but fictional
intelligence (FICINT): rooted in reality.

But because the scenarios present situations that are unexpected or surprising, they are
probably not perceived as very likely – but this should serve even more as a reason to engage
with them. After all, most conflicts come as a surprise (but seem entirely predictable in
retrospect).

Here, a surprising consensus emerges from speculative analysis – but instead of indicating
certainty, it could also simply indicate a collective bias → the chosen participants were
heterogenous

1. Conflicts are assumed to be more common in the future. This expectation derives
from a number of assumptions: geopolitical tensions, the rise of civil activism, slow
economic growth, and the effects of climate change on weak states all feature in
the perception that the likelihood of all types of conflict will increase – including direct
confrontation between major powers.
2. Conflicts are assumed to be both more and less violent. Lower lethality is expected
on the one hand because hybrid methods do not cause large-scale casualties – in turn,
this could also make conflicts more frequent as preventing and resolving them is harder.
3. Conflicts are expected to last longer.
4. Battlefields will be urban: where urbanization, climate migration, and digitalization
merge, and future conflicts must take place in cities.
5. Technology will affect the battlespace: innovations such as AI and robotics will
change the way conflict is conducted. If AI favors offense, it could indeed make
conflict an interesting option for some – but if it favors defense, it would make conflict
less likely.
6. Actors are assumed to be diverse. As a result, future conflicts are expected to involve
growing numbers of guerrilla groups, hackers, terrorists, private security companies, and
other types of irregular actors.

Yet even though the number and diversity of conflict actors will increase, states
 will remain the central actors in future conflicts – this, too, is an extrapolation of an
ongoing trend.

SCIENCE FICTION FOR CONFLICT FORESIGHT

An idea of the future is passed around by the many different actors that make it and then taken
up by the general public. The term ‘loop-looping’ is used to designate these back-and-forth trips
between worlds that contribute to making the ‘imagining’ of ideas a stage in a process of
innovation to be thought of on a collective scale.

The military field is no exception to this rule. The atomic bomb and its use, for instance,
was first imagined by H.G. Wells in 1914, in his novel The World Set Free. He described a
bomb dropped from an aircraft in a (then) hypothetical conflict between Britain, France, America
and Germany, and Austria. Of course, Wells did not ‘invent’ the concept, but rather fleshed out
somebody else’s idea – that of a scientist, Frederick Soddy, himself a pupil of the physicist
Ernest Rutherford.

Wells’ story went on to influence Hungary’s Leo Szilard, who invented the chain reaction in
1934. The principle of the nuclear bomb was now made not only possible but plausible. Thus,
science fiction does not predict conflicts, but tests ideas of conflict in tandem with those that
play an active role in setting the scientific agenda.

Works of fiction, therefore, have the potential to test and transform ideas and concepts,
contributing not only to their dissemination but also to their enhancement in terms of
relevance and plausibility.

This process can be stimulated by two approaches.

The first is to increase the contribution of authors and creators from around the world when it
comes to conceptualizations of the future.

The second is to leverage existing creative works. For instance, the French FELIN (Fantassin à
Équipement et Liaisons Intégrés – Integrated Infantryman Equipment and Communications, an
infantry combat system) has a firing capability directly inspired by the 1980s Japanese manga
Apple Seed (1985-1988).

Creativity and innovation are not necessarily what we think. For most of us, innovative,
original ideas appear to be simply ‘born’ out of nowhere. But in reality, innovation is an
aggregative process whereby existing ideas are put together in a new way.
If the imagination offers us visions of futures where technology is popularised, it also allows us
to discover futures where technology is used in an extreme way in conflicts.

When fiction writers speculate about future conflicts, they also allow actors to respond and
adapt to often more powerful enemy technologies.

How far is it possible to imagine warfare futures? Fantasy pushes the cursor much further
by offering visions of conflicts that are literally off-limits, where civilian populations are targeted
as much as military or state targets.

Genocidal Organ (2007) thus describes a world where a researcher has found a way to
trigger civil wars on demand through linguistics. The issues raised are complex and go
beyond the keys to understanding current conflict. There is no real target or pivotal point to
attack, with the entire population being manipulated at a quasi-genetic level.

This example of a true ‘fusion war’ shows both the abundance and the limits of fantasy.

To be relevant, the approach we propose must rely on a large number of

science fiction and fantasy novels in order to identify those that stand out
from the rest, as well as to reveal the way in which these imaginative takes
on the future evolve over time.

These imaginative constructs of the future have the potential to confront us

with alternative and challenging versions of what lies ahead.

The following five scenarios share one particular feature: the active
involvement of non-state actors. They, therefore, reflect the increased activism
by civil society in violent conflict, a trend that started in the late 1990s.

The authors of these scenarios paint a picture where violence might not be highly
lethal, but disruptive enough for states to be worried. The other feature we find in
all five scenarios is that those are states that are held responsible for causing
this violence in the first place: for not acting earlier on the energy
transition, on socio-economic reforms, or even foreign policy changes.
SCENARIO 1: THE RISE OF THE WORKING CLASS

While the transnational character of the protest movement has enhanced its effectiveness, a
new series of pacts sealed by several authoritarian regimes has been able to prevent any
changes that might pose a threat to their rule from materialising. In consequence, the situation
in which socio-economically deprived populations are pitted against their militaristic regimes has
resulted in a protracted stand-off, where neither side can successfully push back against the
other, making this confrontation a constantly ticking time bomb.

Critique from the lens of idealism (constructivism): the transnational social uprising emerges
from the rise of the new ideas that circulate in the society, and in this particular case, the rise of
the working class emerged because there was no consensus on the values between the states.
Wherever there is no agreement on the mutual values, there is no political order.

SCENARIO 2: THE GREEN TERROR

SCENARIO 3: PEOPLE VS TECH

Cyber technologies were expected on the one hand to deliver better services to citizens
(thereby increasing their levels of satisfaction and making it easier for the authorities to keep the
population mired in political apathy). On the other hand, these served to enhance the state’s
capacity for electoral fraud (e-vote), surveillance and more surgical repression (reducing the
possibility of a popular backlash).

SCENARIO 4: CULTURE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Possession goals relate to the preservation or enhancement of a state’s narrow national
interest—for example, in relation to territory or trade relations. In contrast, milieu goals
pursued by a state aim to shape and improve the international political environment
beyond parochial national interest—which in this context relate to the fostering of
favorable conditions for concerted action on climate change.

Crucial
Climate conference
Glasgow -> historic agreements on climate change
197 countries, biggest climate event
Conference of the parties
Hosted by the UN
Produce international response to climate change
‘Together!’

Cop21 - countries agreed to take action to limit the climate change (keeping 1.5
degrees)

The Paris agreement → no exact actions were discussed…

The success will be determined by the binding of those plans

The us and china → problems in relations, two superpowers

Those problems do not interfere with the fact that COPS have to be a success