We live in the age of knowledge. Knowledge is the basis of the 21st economy, security and progress at the macro as well as micro levels. The individual, the society or the nation that has developed high skills in processing knowledge is bound to succeed in the modern world.

Information is the basic element of knowledge. However, information is not knowledge. It is necessary to have an ability to analyse and synthesise information in order to produce knowledge. It is then necessary to process knowledge to take decisions that help us to anticipate and influence future.

The developed countries of North America, Europe, Japan and increasingly China have realised this. That’s why they invest huge amount of resources in expanding and deepening capacities to acquire, analyse, synthesise information, create and process knowledge and use it in decision-making. The pursuit of knowledge is the main driver for the growth of IT that we have seen in recent decades. It will also drive the growth of new biology, bio-technology and genomics. It has always been an inspiration for space technology and will be so even more in the next few decades.

The main difference between developed and developing countries in the 21st century is in the ability to appreciate, create, process and use information and knowledge. I was once invited to address a conference of government security agencies in North America and Western Europe. I said that the United States faced terror threats from National Alliance and Aryan Nation, as per the analysis made by the Strategic Foresight Group. Following my talk, FBI officials who were in the room asked me what probability value I would ascribe to these threats. I said that it was between 2 and 5%. They said that 2-5% was a very high risk and they were monitoring it closely (They were doing so in any case, not because of my talk). There has not been any serious attack by National Alliance and the Aryan Nation in the United States in the last few years.

However, the wisdom showed by the American security agencies with regards to domestic terrorism is not to be found in other organs of the US decision-making. SFG is not the only one to be consistently warning that an economy based on excessive debt is bound to collapse. I had written a column in this series in September 2007 reminding us of the glorious days merely weeks before the stock market crash of 1929 and warning of crisis in 2009 or 2010. In my column, and in SFG research, we have mostly focussed on the crash of currency markets and not so much on capital and money markets. I hope that President Obama finds creative ways to control American fiscal deficit and public debt. Otherwise, the world may give him a year or so before it blinks. The risk of currency market collapse has been postponed but it has not disappeared. We earnestly hope that the new US administration will prove us wrong. The purpose of strategic foresight is to signal risks and then expect that the decision makers will take the necessary actions to avert them. Therefore, we seek our success in the failure of our warnings.

The case of the Iraq War and the aborted Iran War is interesting. When we published Shifting Sands, three days after the war started in March 2003, we warned that it would lead to the consolidation of the conservative forces in Iran, growth of drug trade in Afghanistan and increase in terrorism the world over. All our interactions with government officials in the United States and Western Europe convince us that security experts in the Western governments had reached similar conclusions at every stage from 2003 to 2008. However, political leaders stubbornly refused to heed any such analysis. Therefore, the war was a complete disaster when Donald Rumsfeld was at the steering wheel. It is thanks to the leadership of Robert Gates that the situation has somewhat improved in Iraq and a war in Iran has been averted. The Obama administration provides greater hope in the Middle East. President Obama, Vice President Biden, NSA James Jones and Defence Secretary Gates are leaders who will use credible analysis and knowledge to understand the world and shape policies accordingly rather than determining policies first and later on looking for analysis that will justify them.

If an urgent attention is not paid to resolving various conflicts in the Middle East, catastrophes await us. In our new report Cost of Conflict in the Middle East, we have identified various future risks if sustainable peace is not established in a year or two. We wish we are proved wrong.

We feel gloomy when our warnings are proved right. But we rejoice when our projections of positive change come true. Strategic foresight is not only about seeing dark clouds on a sunny day. Strategic foresight is more about seeing light before the sunrise. We foresaw the Arab Islamic Renaissance. Maybe the term ‘renaissance’ is not appropriate. However, we are delighted to note that the rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar have invested billions of dollars in promoting knowledge-driven modernisation of the Arab economies. We foresee a world where large-scale collaboration between China, India and other nations in Asia as well as Syria, Israel, Jordan and a new Palestine State will help them meet the challenge of water stress and climate change. We foresee a world where collaboration between leading nations will facilitate the exploration of new frontiers of science, post-hydrocarbon energy and inclusive globalisation. We wish we are proved right.

We worry about one serious threat to humanity and wish we were wrong. Our analysis has proved to be unfortunately accurate with regards to Pakistan. In our report, The Future of Pakistan, we had warned in 2002 that General Musharraf would be forced to leave office in 3-4 years time. It did not happen in 2006 but it did happen in 2008. In the same report we warned that Pakistan would try to invoke a war with India by sponsoring terrorist attacks on urban centres outside Jammu & Kashmir when its internal institutions began to disintegrate. This is precisely what is going on at present. The war hysteria which is being whipped up in Pakistan following the military’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai has a lot to do with internal cleavages.

While the United States has demanded that Pakistan take action against terrorist groups, it has sanctioned millions of dollars of military aid in the last six months alone (leave aside what has been done in the last six years). These have included F-16 aircrafts which can enable Pakistan to use nuclear bombs against India or other targets. The United States has also treated the issue of smuggling of nuclear material and technology by Pakistani scientist A Q Khan in the mildest possible manner. These two facts are important since in recent weeks Khan and other Pakistani scientists have been urging the Government of Pakistan to launch a nuclear attack on India as a pre-emptive measure before India considers any action against Pakistan-based terrorist camps. As Pakistan’s institutions disintegrate internally, the army will plan more and more terrorist attacks on Indian civilian targets to provoke a war – as the first step in its global stratagem.

The United States, its allies and India seriously erred by pampering the military regime of General Musharraf for more than 8 years. The Pakistani army used this period to strengthen terrorist infrastructure steered by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad even though they helped FBI to nab about 700 Al Qaeda operatives. The army does not wish to stay out of power since General Musharraf’s forced resignation. Benazir Bhutto was killed following an email she sent to a friend blaming the Pakistani army for her possible assassination. The army has now subjugated the civilian government led by her husband. Nevertheless, internal institutional problems are mounting and the army wants a nuclear war to consolidate its position in Pakistan and to realise its old dream of dominating the entire South Asia and the world beyond. Those who believe that the Pakistani army’s long term ambitions are confined to engineering troubles in Afghanistan and India do not want to use the information they have defying the rules of the age of knowledge. Never mind what we experienced in Iraq when inconvenient knowledge was ignored for a political agenda. So long as democracy is a façade, the army calls shots, the gates of Murdike are open to innocent boys in Pakistan and the Pakistani army continues receiving funds, weapons and nuclear bomb carrier aircrafts from those who talk of democracy, counter-terrorism and non-proliferation, the risk of the Pakistani army one day, in a considered way, causing a worldwide havoc using some combination of its terrorist infrastructure and nuclear weapons is very real. Alas! We wish we were wrong.