Guidance

Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055

This publication describes the future global strategic context, offering tools to test assumptions and prepare for an uncertain world.

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Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055

Details

Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055 (Seventh Edition) (GST 7) offers foresight analysis from a thematic and geographic perspective, complemented by five scenarios which describe hypothetical pathways into a future world order.  

The publication identifies six global key drivers of change, connected in turn to 22 underlying trends that can be observed today, and which are likely to shape the coming decades. Taken together, these drivers represent a complex set of dynamics which serve to influence, counteract or accelerate each other, often in unexpected ways.  

Who should read this publication

This publication portrays a future strategic context for those involved in developing long-term plans, strategies, policies and capabilities in the Ministry of Defence and wider government, as well as for the UK’s allies and partners. It will be an important body of evidence for the recently announced Strategic Defence Review. 

By describing the key drivers of change and illustrating alternative outcomes, it helps to test assumptions and prepare for an uncertain world. Without context, there is a risk that planners, policy makers and capability developers will assume a future that conforms to preconceived ideas and assumptions.

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Published 27 September 2024

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