Titel pagina - De Balie

The problems and threats that the international community has to deal with in the coming twenty years are considerable. Climate change, fighting poverty, environmental degradation, access to energy and other resources, local and regional conflicts, terrorism, etc. Solutions to these problems have to be found during a period in which the rules of governing the international community are unclear.

On the one hand this is caused by the increasing economic and political power of several countries, especially China, that operate on the basis of a different set of assumptions in the international arena than Western countries. On the other hand this is due to the conduct of several western countries, especially the United States, that has been in contradiction with the rules, largely developed by the same countries, governing international relations.

In the past five years more and more actors at the international stage seem to be tired of being mere extras in a play written by Western playwrights. It appears that China, Russia and India do not necessarily oppose the US and the EU, but neither are they willing to just follow the traditional Western rule-book. If that is the case, we can ask ourselves what the rulebook of the future will be. What do tomorrow’s mores, that will govern international relations, look like? And yet one step further, what will the changing pattern of power and interactions between major actors mean for international cooperation on important topics such as climate change, peace and security, poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals?

These questions are central to The Globalised Crystal Ball project. The idea is to explore possible future developments on the basis of actors’ behaviour today and how this behaviour is perceived by other actors. The project is about action and reaction, about the actual shaping of the international community. Not as some vague, distant and complex structure, but as a man-made construct in which the positioning of individuals and countries matter to the actual outcome. The project aims to return actors their room to manoeuvre.

This project is (a part of) De Balie’s contribution to active international citizenship. In the educative and informative project De Balie will spend a year navigating the field of tension ideals and interests in the international community of the future. Once a month three experts and opinion makers from different countries and with different expertise will engage in a discussion in an informal atmosphere. The meetings will be broadcasted live via De Balie livestream. Summaries will be posted on Youtube. The discussions will be interspersed with the international version of ‘OOG, Visual Correspondents’ and short films which focus on the personal/individual side of international relations.

The Globalised Crystal Ball is a series by De Balie in association with De Volkskrant newspaper and has been made possible by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NCDO.