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• The world in 2008: a year and an era , openDemocracy
  

  * Ivan Krastev

  * KA Dilday

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  Ivan Krastev: The shorter 21st century

  The historian Eric Hobsbawm introduced the notion of the "short 20th century" lasting only seventy-seven years: it started in August 1914 in Sarajevo and ended (after the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989) in December 1991 in Moscow, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the 21st century - conceptualised in the European imagination as the age of post-nationalist politics and increased interdependency - will turn to be much shorter: some future historian might even conclude that it started in 1989 and ended in 2008.

  This is the third year in succession openDemocracy has invited our contributors to look ahead to the year to come.
  
  The previous collections are:
  
  â–ª What does 2006 have in store? - parts one and two
  
  â–ª 2007: reflections and predictions

  The coming year has the potential to be a revolutionary one that forces European publics into a radical re-perception of the world. The Beijing Olympics will mark the shift from a Europe-centred world to an Asia-centred one. The hosting of this major spectacle is but one indication of China's arrival as a global superpower. A worldwide economic slowdown - perhaps recession - will accelerate the shift and make awareness of it unavoidable. And as liberal democracy continues to lose its monopoly on political discourse, the world's China-focus will increase interest in liberal democracy's competitors: Beijing's one-party capitalism or the Kremlin's "sovereign democracy".

  A much to be desired - and still possible - victory of Barack Obama in the United States presidential elections in November 2008 would wake European publics to a fact that experts have known for quite some time: that the US is not a European power any more - neither in its strategic concerns and priorities, nor in its demographics, nor in the socialisation of its elites.

  Closer to home, Russia in 2008 will challenge dramatically the foundations of the postmodern, post-cold-war European order. Turkey's debate on European Union membership ("should Turkey join?") will become as important for Turkey-EU relations as the EU debate on Turkey ("should we allow them to join?"). And the reality of EU recognition of Kosovo's independence will signal the return of "sphere-of-influence" politics in Europe.

  So, welcome to the 22nd century. This could be a long one.

  KA Dilday: On the move

  To me, migration will continue to be the most important issue in 2008: northbound trans-Mediterranean migration, trans-European migration, forced migrations born of war waged in Africa by Africans, and in Asia and the middle east by the United States and its coalition. The US will confront the moral hypocrisy of instigating wars ostensibly for humanitarian reasons and then refusing to take in the humans who suffer because of those wars. Western European countries will continue to undergo identity crises as their demographics shift and the European Union impinges on nation-state duties; east European EU member-states will discover that some people are more European than others; Africans will continue to voluntarily undertake this century's "middle passage" - the perilous journeys on rudimentary seacraft that litter the Mediterranean with the bodies of failed migrants.

  We will grow no closer to figuring out the dilemma of migration - how to preserve the good life for those of fortunate geographical birth while allowing those whose weren't so geographically lucky to share in it. I predict that this difficult issue will be a less appealing topic of discussion than environmentalism, which allows wealthy westerners to indulge in the self-obsession of purifying their bodies with organic goods and pretend they are saving the world.

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• Climate security: the new determinism, Mike Hulme
  

  There is a new form of climatic determinism on the rise and the allure of this thinking for the naïve or for the mischievous is dangerous. It finds its expression in some of the balder claims made about the future impacts of climate change: 180 million people in Africa to die from hunger; 40% of known species to be wiped out; 20% of global GDP to be lost. But such determinism is perhaps at its most insidious when found in the new discourse about climate (in)security. Here are only five recent examples, among an increasing number:

  * a report on Sudan by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which concludes that the "impacts [of climate change] are closely linked to conflict in [Northern Darfur]" (see "Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment", UNEP / Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, June 2007)

  Mike Hulme is professor in the school of environmental sciences at theUniversity of East Anglia
  
  He is currently writing a book, to be published by Cambridge University Press, called Why We Disagree About Climate Change.
  
  His website is here
  
  
  Also by Mike Hulme in openDemocracy:
  
  "Climate change: from issue to magnifier" (19 October 2007)

  * an article by David Zhang and colleagues at the University of Hong K