Issue Scenario: backcast from large-scale war in 2030

Summary

The strategic foresight chapter of the report uses backcasting, tracing events in reverse from a point at which large-scale war has materialized. The story opens in 2030, with armies of people and machines mobilizing and the world at the edge of total war. At the earlier stage of 2028, several crises pile up and weigh on the world order, while natural resource shortages, economic fragmentation, misinformation and weaker multilateral institutions push geopolitical tension higher. The present of 2026 is cast as a moment when warnings from separate risks grow louder and today's policy choices move the world either towards war or away from it. The report states that the exercise is not a forecast but a way to reveal how planning premises, policy choices and outcomes interlock. Its aim is to let policymakers see in advance the second- and third-order effects of their decisions.