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Interview with Commodore Peter Olive, Head of Futures and Strategic Analysis at the Defence, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC)

By Ippeita Nishida, Senior Research Fellow

February 13, 2023

8 Min. Read

SPF recently welcomed the Futures team from the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), a think tank affiliated with the U.K. Ministry of Defence, back to the foundation to discuss the team’s work toward creating the newest Global Strategic Trends (GST) report. During their visit, SPF Senior Research Fellow Ippeita Nishida spoke with the Head of Futures and Strategic Analysis for DCDC, Commodore Peter Olive, about the relevance of the GST in the face of unexpected shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as his thoughts on the shifting dynamics across the strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific looking toward the next 30 years. Excerpts from the conversation are below, edited for length and clarity.

Nishida san: We are pleased to welcome the members of the Development Concept and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) team back to the foundation for a second time. Based on our previous conversations, we understand that the Futures Team that you lead works to analyze the long-term trends in the strategic environment to produce an outlook that illustrates the potential challenges that may emerge 30 years down the road. Could you tell us about your work in DCDC?

Commodore Olive: My team in DCDC provides foresight and futures analysis to set the context for policymakers in the future, and the Global Strategic Trends is our major publication. We develop it to publish ahead of an Integrated Review or a Defence Review to inform that process as well as to help policymakers identify shocks and disruptions as they shape their strategies.

The work we do is a combination of two disciplines: the futures discipline and what you might understand as the classic international studies work. We do a lot of in-house research, commission external research, and conduct many engagement activities. That's why we’re here in Japan this week to talk with colleagues here in this country to get different perspectives because we seek to try and make the document have a global view as opposed to just purely a British view. Within the team as well we have many multinational partners.

We've been meeting with countries in the Indo-Pacific throughout the year, and Japan is the last country on our schedule of engagements. I think this speaks to the broadening and deepening of the U.K.-Japan relationship, which as you know was signaled in the last Integrated Review as part of the tilt to the Indo-Pacific. This is my fourth visit to Japan since 2015 and my seventh to the region, and it’s fantastic to be back.

Nishida san: We have seen many changes since the publication of Global Strategic Trends 6 (GST 6) report in 2018. We were expecting to have Brexit, which officially happened, but we also saw some unforeseen changes like COVID-19 and the Ukraine crisis, to name a few. How useful was the GST 6 for the U.K. in preparing for and responding to those new emerging challenges?

Commodore Olive: I'd say on reflection it was very useful. I was browsing through GST 6 a few days ago and contained within its pages are the warning of a pandemic and also of more assertive and aggressive action by Russia. In many ways, though nobody attempts to predict the future with any accuracy, it was warning of those possible shocks.

SPF Senior Research Fellow Ippeita Nishida (left) and Commodore Olive

The GST 6 then triggered policy responses by informing the Integrated Review, which was a significant event for the U.K. This was the first uplift in defense and security spending in a generation, and it saw investments by the government to modernize the U.K.'s military forces to face the new range of threats that we now face. It re-emphasized the primacy of Russia as the proximate threat to the United Kingdom, and it also signposted our tilt to the Indo-Pacific as part of a broader global approach to security concerns.

Nishida san: Now that you are preparing for the next edition of the GST, what are the main issues and findings so far?

Commodore Olive: The work for the next GST is still ongoing, so we haven't quite put the pen down, but there are a few things to highlight that are going to be new on this occasion.

One of the big headlines is that global power competition or great power competition is becoming the driving trend and is increasingly impacting the other trends. In GST 6, we talked about the transition of power. Now it's about power competition between the global powers, and not just great powers but increasingly middle powers.

The second key thing that is different is that we are boosting our efforts not just to present trends, but also to provide instruments that allow policymakers to interpret the trends and prepare. As part of this, we're experimenting with the “Global Pathways Scenarios,” which is a futures technique that we're seeking to adopt in this edition. It essentially presents stories from the future and alternative outcomes. This allows policymakers to test interventions and strategies against a range of different outcomes. This will encourage policymakers to think not only about how they get to their preferred outcome, but what might happen that doesn't lead to that outcome.

Nishida san: What aspects of the GST 7 are different from the previous edition?

Commodore Olive: I suppose the GST 7 is little bit more realist than last time and I think it reflects the moment in which we're writing. With hindsight nobody would choose to pick up a pen one side of a major war in Europe and still be writing at the other. Those events have changed our perspective in so many ways, but we're trying to capture the sharpening of the edge of things in this edition.

I also think we can see that in some ways there are parallel trends working in opposite directions. One example is with demographics. In some parts of the Indo-Pacific, and Japan is leading this in many ways, populations are aging and population growth is coming to an end. This impacts social care, the workforce, and models of GDP growth. But in other parts of the region, populations are younger and still growing. That creates other pressures and demands.

You can also see that as well in our world that is both more interconnected than it has ever been but also more fragmented. Cooperation and confrontation are happening in parallel. We see incredible innovation in the last few years, including the response to the pandemic and the amazing work done by scientists who rolled out vaccines. We can see that in terms of incredible space technologies, and humankind might be on the cusp of colonizing the moon. Yet in other parts of the planet, we see stagnation and reversals. Trends that we had assumed in terms of indexes of human empowerment, betterment, and economic development and health, are starting to reverse.

We see growing authoritarianism at a moment where things are more transparent than they've ever been. Both weakening and strengthening of the abilities of states to exert governance whether that be in areas of what we traditionally understand as fragile or at risk, but also in the more developed economies in terms of the expansion of technologies into areas of traditional state governance and the ownership of those technologies not necessarily lying in the hands of states. Real drivers in different directions, this is another feature that we will be highlighted in this edition.

Nishida san: Based on your analysis, what are the trends that you expect to be most relevant to Japan?

Commodore Olive: There are four major trends we think will be important to Japan. The first is the one we've already mentioned is demographic changes. Japan is leading the world in terms of an aging population and getting to a point of population growth no longer being the norm, and all that means in terms of economic models and other areas. What that then means in terms of other trends sort of focusing on technology, robotics, and other areas necessary to fill the gaps in workforces and what it means to economic models. I think that’s going to be an interesting and significant challenge to navigate in the future.

The second is climate environmental pressures. The Indo-Pacific region writ large is in many ways most affected by climate change. Japan is a modern, successful, and powerful country and is managing those transitions very successfully. However, the Pacific islands are increasingly under stress, with some now having to move populations and consider technology as a way to preserve their cultural heritage if the geography can no longer sustain it.

Then we have the transitions in terms of economy. The region as a whole is hugely vibrant and will be the fastest growing region in terms of GDP, and yet there will be different variations in that model across the region. A lot of that has been driven by the emerging powers. For stable and developed powers, it’ll be a different approach.

Finally, great power competition and global power competition. We all appreciate the military dimension, which is on playing out around us both in Europe but also in this region, but there will be economic implications in terms of the divergence of value chains and economic models. There will also be discussions more around shared ideas and shared approaches, or what some call “values and norms.” Many countries in the region will have to balance those different aspects and we will have to see how different powers seek to manage that in terms of alignment or balancing or establishing their own positions. We could see many new and different dynamics appearing over the next 30 years.

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