It is standard practice for those working on issues of national and international security, from political and military leaders, to diplomats and bureaucrats, to academics and think-tankers, to found their work on forecasts of potentially dangerous developments. The record of success in this endeavor, however, ranges from the disappointing to the lamentable. Policy-makers are still regularly taken by surprise – by Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the sudden collapse of the former Yugoslavia into a series of violent conflicts, the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, and the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Here are some recent examples of surprising developments. They should be salutary to anyone who thought that wise and experienced commentators should be able to forecast how events might unfold. Expectations have been regularly confounded.
 

— Even as the EuroMaidan protests were intensifying in Ukraine in early 2014, some saw that the Russophile President Yanukovych might end up out of office but most assumed that any response by President Vladimir Putin would be in the realm of energy prices or supplies. Few predicted that Crimea would be annexed. Once this had happened, and with Russian-backed separatists carving out enclaves in Eastern Ukraine, opinion moved in the other direction. Fears were now expressed that Putin was in an aggressive mood, and that other neighbors better watch out. Yet, at least to now, the aggression was confined to Crimea and the initial enclaves. Late in 2018 Russia was opening a new form of coercion by trying to close off the Sea of Azov to Ukrainian shipping. This once again led to speculation about an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine without explanations of why Russia would wish to do this.
 

— Until the votes were being counted in November 2016 few expected Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the United States (including Mr Trump). Many of the foreign policy positions he took as President – including his distaste for free trade and alliances, and his sympathy for authoritarian leaders – followed on from positions he had adopted as candidate. An area of great concern was whether the stage was being set for a confrontation with North Korea. The North was already close to a long-range nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and its testing led to tensions rising. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un exchanged insults in 2017. Many then hoped for some diplomatic initiative to calm the tension but no one predicted that the two men would end up exchanging warm letters of mutual admiration in 2018. […]

OUTLINE

• Political forecasting: uncertainties and consequences
• The future of warfare

Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He is the author of seminal works on military issues, including Strategy: A History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.