ent cases (i.e., global regions and political economies) that may be set against the variables of unavoidable change: population, development of high technology, environmental alterations.
The basic message of this book is that the twenty-first century is being shaped by a raft of complex problems that will develop in an environment of perpetual instability. This book is a cautionary tale that the incipient threat of instability comes from the massiveness and substance of the problems themselves, which have gotten out of hand for a variety of reasons.
To make his case, Kennedy assumes that corporate interests are the principal agents of international development and change and to some degree lie outside nation-state influence or politics. Secondly, Kennedy assumes that older concerns than those presented by population explosions, the technological revolution, and the global economy tend to exacerbate the negative and limit the positive changes that are going on as the world moves to the twenty-first century. In other words, tribalism and factionalism also surface where other problems arise. Kennedy also posits the validity of chaos theory as a formative element of the future that exacerbates whatever problems are already present.
Kennedy cites the enormous population explosion (particularly acute in India and China), which in this period has been complicated by the poverty and diversity of peoples and cultures, as well as the ethnic rivalries that accompany such diversity. He warns that extreme nationalism is one consequence of the fears that diversity produces; similar consequences include the repression of women as a means of protecting ethnic or national purity. Meanwhile, the surge in communications and technology capability, including the New Industrial Revolution, as Kennedy terms it, has perforce contributed to the growing complexity of the world. This has been complicated by the fact that such technology is co...