Archives

Our archives are a repository of original thinking that chronicles two decades of research, analysis, and policy innovation. This collection brings together articles written by SFG’s founders and research analysts between 2005 and 2025, preserving the ideas, and insights that shaped our intellectual journey. These writings reflect the evolution of our thinking as we engaged with some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.

The archive offers a rich body of material for researchers, policymakers, students, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding complex global issues through a long-term strategic lens. The articles explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including peace and conflict, water diplomacy, international relations, technology, environmental sustainability, governance, security, and the changing dynamics of regional and global cooperation. They also place regional developments within broader international and geopolitical contexts.

Many of these articles anticipated trends and policy challenges that later became central to international discourse. Others document the development of concepts and frameworks that informed SFG’s subsequent research, dialogues, and publications. Together, they provide not only historical context but also enduring perspectives that continue to resonate in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond serving as a research resource, this archive offers a window into the intellectual history of SFG. It traces how our ideas evolved over time, how new policy concepts emerged through sustained inquiry, and how our engagement expanded from regional concerns to global challenges. Readers can follow the progression of our work across changing geopolitical landscapes and appreciate our evidence-based approaches to peace, security, and international cooperation.

Whether you are revisiting landmark analyses, exploring the origins of key policy ideas, or discovering our work for the first time, we hope these archives provide valuable insights, stimulate informed debate, and inspire fresh thinking about the future.

An Inclusive World

December 13, 2005
By Sundeep Waslekar

Sundeep Waslekar, President of Strategic Foresight Group, delivered a keynote address at a special benefit event for Nelson Mandela Foundation at Dubai on 16 December 2005. This is an edited text of the speech.

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

December 13, 2005
By Ilmas Futehally

What separates man from other primates, or indeed other animals? Jacob Bronowski, a mathematician trained in physics, examines the scientific and intellectual history of humankind in his book The Ascent of Man. Though the book is based on the television series aired on BBC in the 1970s, it is far from outdated. Over 30 years after it was first published; The Ascent of Man still invokes pride in our past and instils hope for our future in the reader.

Crouching Dragon: Chinese Peasants

November 13, 2005
By Rashmi Jethani

While the world is impressed by China's industrial progress, it may be in for a shock in the rising Asian power's countryside. China might be able to manage its much-feared banking crisis and might even tide over the disharmony between political autocracy and economic liberalism. However, despite the best intensions of the new team led by Hu and Wen, it may experience a rebellion in its farmlands in the next decade.

Future of Power

October 13, 2005
By Sundeep Waslekar

I was recently at Waterloo, a small university town about an hour's drive from Toronto, Canada where my friend John English has recently established the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) with support from Jim Balsillie, founder of the Blackberry communication system. The occasion was a CIGI conference on emerging powers.

The Future of God

October 13, 2005
By Sundeep Waslekar

Strategic Foresight Group uses the 4-G framework to analyse the future of countries. Three of the 4 Gs Growth, Governance and Geopolitics represent traditional drivers that determine the destiny of a nation. Increasingly we are finding that the 4th G God is assuming importance in our calculations.

Daniel Levitas, Terrorist Next Door The Militia Movement and the Radical Right

October 13, 2005
By Devika Mistry

Wright's premise starts at the works of Paul Gauguin. A 19th century painter, Gauguin's mural asks three questions that are vital to the understanding of our own environmental dilemmas of today: Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going? For Wright, it is the third question, which intrigues him. Where are we going? Wright believes that careful reflection on the first two questions can ultimately answer where our species is headed.