A world pandemic. The rise of terrorism. The loss of speed of Europe, weakened by the distance from the United States and the rise of China. These geopolitical findings were announced a long time ago. All in the same place: in public reports written by American intelligence. By immersing itself in these documents, L’Express has counted several scenarios which ended up realizing itself. First edited in France by Robert Laffont editions, commented by journalist Alexandre Adler, the works “The CIA report: how the world will be in 2020” and “the CIA report: how the world will be in 2025” , published in 2005 and 2009, deliver a “prospective diagnosis” exercise which has often been verified with surprising efficiency.
The future depicted by the National American Intelligence Council – a team attached to the White House, which has several CIA executives – echoes the multiple challenges encountered by the United States and Europe today. Some, such as the advent of a multipolar world, the end of Western hegemony or the aging of Europe, are built on substantive trends. But others, much more unexpected, illustrate the talent for prospective of the experts mobilized.
The first of them, and the best known, came to life in 2020: that of a pandemic caused by the appearance “of a new virulent, extremely contagious” and “human respiratory disease for which it does not exist adequate treatment “, imagines the CIA in 2009. The espionage agency thus warns against” highly pathogenic strains of avian flu such as H5N1 “, but also” other pathogens, such as the coronavirus of Sras “. Strongly inspired by the Sras epidemic which had spread mainly in Asian countries and Canada between 2002 and 2004, the experts imagined the spread of a virus similar to that of the COVVI -19 – Eleven years before its arrival . Even its potential origin is right: a “area with high population density”, they predicted, like “China and in the Southeast Asia” (COVID-19 was born in Wuhan, Central China). The predicted scenario is perceptive. “The disease would slow to be identified if the country of origin did not have adequate means to detect it,” it is written, analysts stressing that it would take weeks for laboratories to provide final results confirming the existence of a disease risking mutating into pandemic “. Full cardboard.
The end of the international order
But far beyond the emergence of COVID-19, analysts managed to distinguish deeper geopolitical tendencies. In 2009, the CIA envisaged sixteen years later the end of a “single” international community, “with new actors introducing new rules of the game, and increased risks while traditional Western alliances will lose their strength” . In its previous edition, designed in 2004, its experts already see the paralysis of international organizations, “the United Nations and international financial institutions” running the “risk of sliding in obsolescence, unless they take into consideration The growing power of rising powers “.
The transfer of wealth for the benefit of China and India is likely to “strengthen states like Russia which intend to question Western order”. “By 2025, the international system will be planetary and multipolar”, notes the report, which continues, seeming to predict the emergence of tech giants: “The relative power of various non -state actors – that it is act of companies, ethnic communities, religious organizations, criminal networks – increasing Irald “. The threat of wars with territorial aims – such as that led by Russia in Ukraine since February 2022 – has been advanced. “We cannot exclude a scenario of arms racing, territorial expansion and military rivalries, similar to that of the 19th century”, it is written in 2009. In its previous edition, CIA experts also put in Scene of Americans whose population is “tired of playing the gendarmes of the world”. With words strangely echoing the campaign of Donald Trump, the editor of this scenario – a senior American civil servant – is concerned in particular with the influence of “groups defending the principle of America first ‘”.
“Decentralized” terrorism
Beyond these major trends, the work is distinguished by its pure fiction scenarios – which manage, in some cases, to fall just. In the first, the CIA imagines a world “without West”, in reality a new deal where the West is less influential. A Russian official of an imaginary organization (the president of the Shanghai cooperation organization) writes to the Secretary General of NATO. He notes the appearance in the United States and Europe of “protectionist movements conducted by a coalition of forces sweeping away the political range from one extreme to another” and the rise of hostility towards China. The West, confronted with a recession that is dragged, is looking for “a scapegoat”. “These events were a real gift from heaven because they threw Russians and Chinese into each other,” writes the Russian manager. The 2009 report also devotes an important chapter to nuclear risk, stressing that “new politico-military developments contribute to eroding the taboo linked to this armament”. Difficult, today, not to think of the Orechnik ballistic missile, launched by Russia in November 2024 against a Ukrainian city. Designed to transport nuclear heads – but without load – sending this weapon was perceived in the West as a strategic signal.
Published eight years after September 11, 2001, the CIA report examined the rise of another risk: that of the spread of radical Islam, and particularly of Salafism, which “risks undermining the influence of Western allies in The Muslim world, especially in the Middle East “. In its previous edition – providing in 2004 the world of 2020 – the report gave even more place to the developments presented by the radical Islamist movement. In 2020, “Al-Qaeda was supplanted by extremist groups of similar Islamist inspiration”, he notes, emphasizing the “non-negligible risk” to see them “merge with local separatist movements”.
The Islamist terrorism of the coming years will be “decentralized”, have warned the experts, who had perceived the arrival “of a Kyrielle of eclectic groups, cells and individuals who do not need fixed generals to project and perform operations “. In a scenario providing for the 2020 world, CIA experts imagine the proclamation of a “new caliphate” which seduces, thanks to the Internet, far beyond its physical borders. In his foreword, Alexandre Adler himself showed rare clairvoyance concerning the situation in the Middle East, providing that in 2020 “Hezbollah challenges its agreement with the Union government of Saad Hariri and resumes Both acts of provocation in the face of Israel “. The report imagines, a few years in advance, the fall of Bashar el-Assad, and the coming to power in Damascus, via a coalition, of Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.
Prospective errors
Prospective is not, however, an exact science. In their reports, CIA experts have also imagined hypotheses that have little chance of getting realized, including in the near future. They are marked with the seal of the time when they are written, putting on the fears and hopes of the current year. In their 2025 projection, the 2009 experts imagine, for example, the end of the North Korea partition/South Korea – whose border is a permanent point of tension. Another hypothesis also stages an international scene strongly dominated by NGOs: faced with the extent of disasters linked to global warming, the UN would have “reserved twenty seats for NGOs which are competing each year the right to take part for One year and have a vote equivalent to that of the nations states “. In 2004, a year after the term was popularized by the Bush government during its invasion of Iraq, analysts traced the scenario of a population struck by attacks with weapons of mass destruction.
The following editions of the CIA report have the same qualities – and the same flaws. Published in 2021 -in France by Equators Documents editions -, its latest version imagines Le Monde in 2040, with among others, a scenario where the Pandemic of Covid -19 has never been jugged. The latter had series consequences, notably opening the way to a unification of China and Taiwan. In another, the world is separated into “silos”, into fragmented blocks opposed to each other. The efforts to deal with climate change are “sporadic”, even non -existent. Access to an open Internet is limited to the United States and a few allies. Another, finally, is positive, and imagines a “world coalition led by the European Union and China” which would manage to reduce the harmful effects of climate change. To find out if the third eye of the CIA is still working, go to 15 years.
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