Customer Reviews

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century

5 star:		(88)
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3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

Although I am a large fan of America's Secret War and respect Mr. Friedman's logical thinking and intelligence, this book is an undertaking so far beyond the capability of man -trying to outline how the next 100 years of history will look- that even though it started off captivating it ultimately left me feeling like the whole thing was a fool's errand. It's not that the author is illogical or a nutcase as some of the negative reviewers have suggested, it's just that there's no way to meaningfully try to predict the simply unpredictable, regardless of the complexity of your analysis. And as the author stretches his future history farther and farther away from the present it simply becomes an implausibility on top of an implausibility on top of another implausibility to the point that any value the reader could derive nearly evaporates and I wish I had spent my time reading actual history.

Of course the author believes some rough prediction of the future is possible based on trends analysis, an understanding of strategic nature, and other such information. I immediately concede that trying to predict the future is not only necessary as a basis for security planning but can be done profitably over maybe 10 years, 20 at the extreme, but only if you build in a huge amount of risk management / "reserve" into your planning results to account for the inevitable unexpected. Thus my critique is simply with the overly ambitious timeline of the author rather than the endeavor itself.

There are some positives of the book which were informative and argue in favor of reading perhaps the first half for pertinent information and analysis. This information revolves around such things as brief overviews of European history and it's rise to power, a brief and plausible (though not necessarily entirely convincing) theory of a cyclical nature of American politics/economics/history, explanations of Russia's geostrategic challenge and how it has historically approached it, global demographics (birth rates declining, the reasons why they are declining and the possible results) and some highlights of the Chinese economy and political system in addition to some other fascinating minor topics. Frankly these topics could have easily formed the basis for an excellent book that tries to project what they could mean over a more modest timeframe, which coupled with Mr. Friedman's direct and straight to the point writing style would have been well worth it. But beyond this the book is more interesting as a work of science fiction than a source of illumination or fuel for strategic analysis.

Even over the relatively strong first half of the book or so there were some things that struck me as cautionary flags with regards to the author's conclusions. Mr. Friedman is Bismarckian to a very high degree, and pretty much limits his assumptions of state behavior to each state trying to enforce a balance of power amongst all other states within its means. There is seemingly no consideration of moral factors, such as alignment of like minded cultures or political/economic systems because they are like minded, in his analysis. His explanation of US grand strategy culminates in what strikes me, as an active duty US Navy Officer, as incongruous. (Which I can't figure since he has close military ties and his son is also in the military.) He essentially claims that US grand strategy is to ensure dominance of the oceans, which is correct but only a single facet of a much more variegated and complex animal. But in his analysis of how this grand strategy has influenced American action he tries to explain that this has motivated America to intervene in Kosovo and Iraq, i.e. to forestall an eventual Eurasian power from building a Navy that can challenge ours! Serbia and Al-Qaeda seemed pretty far from that goal to provide the clarifying rational of American behavior, and this explanation fails to account why we are doing nothing to forestall Chinese and Indian naval developments, and why the previous CNO and current CJCS, Adm. Mike Mullen, launched the "1,000 ship Navy" designed to reduce the need for enlarging the US Navy size by leveraging closer ties with allied nations' navies and developing their naval capabilities synergistically. He also claims that as part of our strategy of preventing a dominant Eurasian continental power we went into Iraq to intentionally de-stabilize central Asia. Again, this flies completely in the face of my entire personal experience in the military, as so many of our forces are working themselves to the bone to try to re-stabilize the region away from weak and antagonistic states that allowed the growth of radical Islam to stronger, more functioning entities that can integrate better with the world and root out Islamic fundamentalism on its home territory. Such a change requires a period of instability to go from a "bad" regime to a "good" one, but that necessary instability is a daunting obstacle being actively tackled and not a goal. (Whether what we are doing is a pipe dream or not is an entirely different matter, but I personally find his explanation of our current strategy simply false, if not quixotic.) Instead it is the overtly stated belief of the US strategic community that it is exactly instability and/or weak autocratic based regimes that causes groups like Al-Qaeda to operate. Other concerns I have with his analysis are that Iran, especially a nuclear Iran, makes virtually no appearance, nor does India. Also, in my subjective opinion, he completely under-rates the strength and staying power of radical Islam essentially claiming that is already defeated and won't even be a factor beyond the mid 2010's, and thus he more or less ignores it.

And although it is probably ridiculous to critique an absurdity, there were some issues I had with his analysis of the period of the 2040's and beyond. He envisions an American space based strategy with three very large (i.e. hundreds to thousands of crewmembers) space stations he calls "battle stars" forming its core. Each would be a command and control node as well as being armed with directed energy and kinetic weapons, and he claims that they will be built under the assumption that they are invulnerable. Yet given the delicate nature of lightweight space structures (in order to be able to get them into space at an affordable cost) and the relative ease of anti-satellite weapons to wreak massive damage on such a system cheaply, his assumption that the US will think they are invulnerable flies completely in the face of a technological reality that is already widely recognized in the US space community. Last, he also envisions hypersonic aircraft providing close air support for ground forces, which is frankly ridiculous. There is more I could quibble with his far out year predictions, but honestly what would be the point?

An odd book. Mr. Friedman has some formidable strengths that shone brilliantly in America's Secret War, and glimmer here and there in the Next 100 Years, but beyond the midway point the book sadly devolves into the absurd.

When one takes into account the staggering advances that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is a brave forecaster who would even attempt to predict the course of our (still relatively) new century. George Friedman undertakes this task in "The Next 100 Years".

Friedman opens by taking the reader through the twentieth century at twenty-year intervals, showing how the concerns in any given time period are quickly forgotten and replaced by new concerns. This prepares the reader to see that the twenty-first century will also be anything but static, either, as America will not be facing the same set of challenges by 2020 as we did on September 11, 2001, and will be dealing with many different issues as the century progresses.

The author is a very incisive thinker, relaying stunning insight after stunning insight in demonstrating how we arrived at where we are now, with Europe having been supplanted by America as the world's focal point.

Friedman contends that, far from declining (as many fear), America is just beginning its rise. The century will be characterized, he predicts, by regional powers attempting to form coalitions to limit American power, and America attempting to prevent the formation of such coalitions. This will ultimately result at mid-century in a war that will have many similarities with World War II--the war will begin with a surprise attack on a key American military target, will be fought against a familiar foe, will result in the development of stunning new technologies, and will be followed by a new golden age redolent of the one following World War II.

This book also takes a look at the worldwide population bust--policy debates in American politics will be driven in part by debates about the number of immigrants needed as a result of the bust. The author asserts that our politics operates in fifty-year cycles, and that both transition points of American politics in the twenty-first century will be driven by immigration. One of the predictions in the book is almost made as an aside--the author is really hanging his neck out on the line, since we will be able to see in not 20 or 50 years, but within the next two years whether the author is correct in his prediction about how much President Obama will be able to roll back the basic policies that President Reagan put in place in the early 1980s.

The book closes by examining some of the technological breakthroughs such as robots and space-based energy that will transform life later in the century, and asserts that the end of the century will be characterized by increasing disharmony with Mexico over the American Southwest.

Anyone interested in what the future might hold (that is, just about everyone) would enjoy reading "The Next 100 Years". The only regret you will have when you have finished reading it is the realization that you will not be around in 2100 to see if all of the predictions in this supremely fascinating book come to pass.

George Friedman's THE NEXT 100 YEARS has a serious "wow" factor. It's going to get people talking.

Friedman, as the chairman of Stratfor, the global intelligence firm, believes that geography, population, and the surprising way history has of confounding our expectations are all important. He also believes that conventional political analysis and forecasting "suffers from a profound failure of imagination." The convergence of these axioms leads Friedman to write a book that should flabbergast more than a few of the talking heads who populate the airwaves and cable frequencies. I would venture to guess that none of them have the intellectual wherewithal to engage his predictions knowledgeably. I guess we'll see, because no doubt Friedman will be making a splash in the press with this surprising book.

His predictions--they will raise your eyebrows. But two things will keep you from dismissing them for their outlandishness. One, Friedman, though ambitious and writing with a strong sense of self-confidence, keeps his ego in check. (He says he'll be pleased not if he's proven right on all points, but merely if his grandkids tell him some day, "Not bad.") And two, he makes a convincing case that throughout history, almost nothing in world affairs has turned out the way common sense or the prevailing notions of smart people (or journalists) thought that it would.

There's no arguing with any of that, though it's very easy to lose sight of.

At the start of the book, Friedman sets the table for his forecast by reviewing the changes in the world's geopolitics during the 20th century. He shows that every 20 years or so the world turned completely on its head. Though these events in hindsight seem to us today to be ordinary and unexceptional, if not completely predictable, if forecast in their day they would have seemed astonishingly unlikely. Please bear with me here...

In 1920, with Europe in tatters after World War I, the one thing that was sure was that peace had been forced on Germany and it would not soon lift itself up off the mat.

By 1940, of course, Germany not only roared back, but conquered most of Europe, with Russia as an unlikely ally. Britain stood alone. There was no way Hitler could lose.

Now to 1960. Germany is a ruin and the U.S., no world power at all in 1940, was contending only with the Soviets for world domination. The U.S. dominated the world's oceans and could dictate terms to its rivals, or, if it wished, just nuke them. Stalemate was the best the Soviets could hope for.

Come 1980, the U.S. had been beaten in a war--not by the Soviet Union, but by little North Vietnam--and was widely seen as in a slow, permanent retreat, expelled from Iran and watching helplessly as the oil fields fell into Soviet hands.

Now one more leap, to 2000. The Soviet Union had collapsed. China was communist in name only. NATO had advanced into Eastern Europe and even into the former USSR. (It was always supposed to happen the other way around!) The world was prosperous and peaceful. Everyone knew that the "end of history" was here, as considerations of war and power and realpolitik became secondary to spreading benign prosperity globally. Then came September 11, 2001, and the world turned on its head again.

Got all that? Good. After that unsettling review of recent world history, Friedman has set the stage to unleash his considerable imaginative and rhetorical gifts in predicting the following:

* That the U.S., which is now an adolescent power -- immature and impulsive -- will grow into the full glory of its power in the 21st century. By 2040, however, expect the unexpected. Two strong rivals will emerge to challenge us, and I probably shouldn't blow the freshness of the surprise by revealing here who Friedman believes it will be. (Just be sure, for one, not to buy real estate too close to the Rio Grande.)

* The industrialized world is facing a dramatic population drop, which will bottom out in 2050. As a result, we're in for a severe global labor shortage. The result? Today's immigration debate will flip 180 degrees as countries actually compete for immigrant laborers.

* Al Qaeda and the jihadist threat? They're history mostly, just a nuisance. (John Kerry was basically right in 2004.)

* Ditto environmental problems and energy crises: a single technological breakthrough, space-based solar power, will change everything.

* In the 21st century, minerals will become scarce on earth. Mining operations on the moon will be significant.

* The art of war is moving into orbit, and a robust space industry will develop around massive new expenditures by the U.S. and other countries.

* The U.S. will be challenged by some surprising new powers. Hint: you might want to start following news from Warsaw, Mexico City, and Istanbul a little more closely.

And so on. The book reads very accessibly and the argument at each turn is not hard to follow. The book is not at all academic or full of the jargon you might expect. There's a startling insight on every other page. By the end of it, you realize that you're a complete fool if you take any course of global events for granted.

Remember when it looked like the Berlin Wall was a permanent fixture in East Berlin? The only constant in the world is a lack of constancy. (Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?) We are, all of us, in for a lifetime of surprises. Friedman humbly takes a shot at forecasting the likeliest of them in a challenging and easy-to-read book.

You won't lack for conversation at your next lunch date if you spend an hour or so with this book. But read it quickly, because you don't want to be the fourth person in your circle of acquaintances to go around saying that war with Turkey lies in America's future. (Okay, I blew a surprise there, but that's what happens when you're lucky enough to get hold of a review copy, and the book has more than a few of them.)

Four and a half FASCINATING Stars! Highly Engrossing!! Futurist author George Friedman looks back at the last 100 years in a great geo-political analysis of where we have been as England, Germany, Russia, and the USA engage in strategic political swordmanship over the benchmarks of 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, and the fateful date of Sept 11, 2001: presented in a way and with an overview that may have escaped some of us. In many ways this is an expansion of The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century written by George and Meredith Friedman, but this book is much wider in scope and depth.

The author then looks out into the future over the period of 100 years from now, surveying everything from Atlantic Europe, the USA, "the Soviet Empire", the Islamic world, earthquakes, Soviet successor states, the coming "Texas Rebellion", Mexico, the Eurasian "Poacher Paradise", socio-policital trends, population shifts, and far beyond. Reading almost like science fiction, the author paints a disturbing picture of the future of the world and the USA in particular. But make no mistake, this is not your 'run of the mill' conspiracy book but a deep study of past trends and future projections. One may not like what he projects on a macro-level, but one look at where we are today in 2009 should dispel any doubts that things may change radically into a world that none of us believed possible and far from our benefit as a nation and world leader. Buckle up for a Wild Ride into our possible future. Definitely recommended!! Four and a half POSSIBLE Stars. (This review is based on an eBook digital download, 394 pages with 28 geo-political illustrations)

If it were not for the background and the reputation of the author, it would be easy to dismiss this book as surreal and way too imaginative. On the other hand Friedman should be commended for having the courage to look into the far future, beyond current trends and fads, and giving us a taste of international developments likely to happen within the next century.

He does a good job in preparing the reader to expect the unexpected to happen based on past history. What may sound silly now, may in fact be feasible in the future, and not necessarily far future either.

Pages are packed with very interesting insights and not surprisingly, USA is the center of history in the 21st century. Was 20th century not an American century also? Other players come on to the stage though, and as a Turk, I was really puzzled by his assertion of Turkey becoming a key global power player. It is hard to imagine now Turkey becoming much more than a regional superpower within next 50 years. It would require a succesful reformation movement in Islam for a non-Arab Muslim country to be able to lead the Muslim block, not to mention a reduction of oil based wealth creation in key Arab states that would force them to look for alliances beyond USA.

He makes a case for how the shift in demographics, mainly the drastic drop in birth rates, will alter how the history flows. His arguments and methods give us a glimpse of how a professional analyst applies his trade.

I did not agree with some of the technology related predictions and analysis. This seems his weakness and he was way off. Nuclear power will dominate for sure before we beam in microwave power from space. Solar energy is not free, except for solar heating. Creation of a photovoltaic cell consumes more energy than the cell is capable of producing in many years for example, not to mention the energy cost of hauling them into space. There were many such far-fetched ideas and assertions. Friedman should have consulted some more knowledgeable people on these issues.

Finally, though he does warn us that this is simply a what-if game, and an example of possible political developments to come, his WWIII scenario, where USA fights a Turkish-Japanese allience was indeed far-fetched.

His assertions and analysis should be compared with that of Brzezinski in the Grand Chessboard for example, where he also makes some predictions on the future of international politics, and there are glaring differences.

Overall an interesting book to read, well written and well delivered.

This book would deserve 4 stars, had it only been presented as fiction. Unfortunately, it is presented as a serious effort to write prediction by a top strategist and forecaster. Few people could have tried this and be successful selling such a book as Friedman can.

I have been receiving Mr Friedman's forecasts for more than 10 years, and I expected much more from him. The problem is that the book is unidimensional, as Friedman only employs geopolitics as the guidance for his ideas. Obviously geopolitics is a major, maybe the most important factor in shaping the relations of countries with each other, but it is not the only one. The way Mr Friedman uses it, he makes me think of a Risk table game, where what counts is only the number of plastic army pieces you have.

This is not to say that the book is not fun. Friedman's merit is in facing a topic that is tremendously interesting, in a situation where, curiosly, nobody else is writing about it. Friedman has a great deal of knowledge of the current situation, and therefore, can do a great analysis of the state of China, the US, etc. I agree with many of his assessments on the precarious unity of China, the risks that Russia is facing, etc. I even agree that this will be an American century. However, Friedman brings to the table some weird ideas and forgets some very important facts:

- He doesn't deal with cultural and financial facts. The United States is in one of the most complicated crisis, with a huge debt that is totally impossible to pay. Usually debts of this magnitude end up in a war, initiated by the debtor so it will not have to pay, or by the debtors. Eventually, we will have to see a new financial order to replace the dollar as a global means of trade. China and Japan also have a huge weapon in the amount of dollars they have. Friedman does not even TOUCH the subject.

- Russia, in his view, will just lie down and die. Saint Petersburg will be invaded by Latvia (or Lithuania ? It doesn't matter). Friedman just forgets that countries have national character, shaped by hundreds of years. These characteristics are burnt inside the hearts of its citizens and don't change easily. Russians have a fierce pride and patriotism, as shown in Stalingrad, for example. My bet is that Moscow would rather send a nuclear missile in Latvia before giving up Saint Petersburg or any other territory. The author forgets that many times, history is changed by a decisive action, or a bold person. Think Alexander, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Hitler invading Poland, Mao starting his march. Russia could very well launch a nuclear attack on the US before losing Moscow. Putin, for example, is crazy enough to do that.

- Everything is explained by a gift of capital and technology from the US. Why Turkey and Poland will be the great powers in the century? Because the US will give them technology, says Friedman. Again, the author forgets that a tradition in technology, in sciences, is required in order to make these gifts flourish, in order to create more innovation and more good science. Poland is hardly the example of an innovative country. Friedman tries to argue that Turkey has been an empire, but that was before the invention of airplanes, much less of military satellites ! It is not all about geography.

- The reverse happens with Western Europe, which Friedman predicts will fall into a deep sleep. For this to happen we will have to see countries such as France, which gave us the best mathematicians, Germany, where Chemistry was created, and England, which gave us modern Physics, to lie down and slumber. Germany came back in full force after WWII not only because the Marshall Plan, but because the remaining Germans were highly educated, had a strong work ethics and a tradition in sciences and engineering, Friedman just ignores that. The European Union is just a side note in the book, as it represents nothing.

- The strong reality of international organizations, such as the UN, the globalists, the international bankers, the multinationals, the regional economic blocks, is completely ignored. Friedman says that in the end of the century Brazil will try to create an economic block with Argentina. Well, he is one hundred years late, since this block (the Mercosul) has been created in the 1990's ! War today involves great risks and interests. There is just so much to lose, and TV and the Internet can raise popular opposition in one day. We don't have Bismarck with the emperor on the top of a castle deciding wars, while the people plow the fields anymore. Just remember Vietnam.

It is hard not to think that this book was a bout of arrogance from the author. He has been very successful with his company, but I am starting to believe in people who say that this is due more to his links with the CIA than to his talent.

Everyone praises "America's Secret War" for Friedman's in-depth knowledge of both the U.S. military, and 25 years experience in studying Eurasia. However, it is a far leap to predict the next hundred years and expect to be taken seriously by applying strict geopolitical ideology to the world to the absence of any and all other significant factors and historical "twists of fate," as in a rogue nuclear weapon/s?

Either it is of no interest to him, or he has far less area of expertise in Asia itself, but to write off China in one small, vague, chapter is an enormous disservice, completely without any supporting data that by 2020 China will "destabilize." In 2008-9 the entire world banking system "destabilized" to the surprise of many, and yet China's did not, has not; and possesses the largest liquid assets on the planet, of which they have invested heavily in U.S. Treasury bonds. His lack of any mention of the New World's banking was an obvious oversight.

Additionally, his premise that, to summarize, Japan will again expand as it did prior to WWII and will again take over parts of Mainland China is laughable. China has the largest standing military in the world. No, they do not possess much of an navy, but it has more than enough aircraft to do the exact reverse, which is physically invade Japan to put an immediate stop to Japanese aggression. Boots on the ground are quite cheap, and China has lots and lots of boots. And the money to keep them there.

Does Friedman believe Nanking has forgotten? China is an excellent observer of other cultures' mistakes. When the Chinese government converted and moves into a capitalist driven economy, they did not have the problems and horrors Russia had, because they were astute observers.

China does not have a history of aggression toward other countries (if one excludes Tibet), but I live in China, and I have no fear now or in the future that Japan will ever be able to "convince" the Chinese of their need for Chinese materials and labor should be satisfied with a Japanese presence. Not in this century and not in the next.

And, finally, it is as if Africa and India have no import in the next 100 years. He does not even bother to mention them.

I love coming across well-articulated viewpoints that challenge my own. It's almost always a win-win situation when this happens.

If I am convinced of the new point of view on its merits, then my worldview has been enhanced. My stance has moved from a position that is less correct to one that is more correct. If I remain unconvinced, on the other hand, then my original viewpoint has been strengthened... stress-tested and found worthy, as it were. And either way, new layers of nuance and subtlety are always a plus.

My views were certainly challenged - and yours will be too - by the stance in George Friedman's new book, "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century."

The book pulls no punches. There are predictions in here that will surprise your socks off. Just consider some of the timeline bullets from the front cover:

* 2020: China Fragments.

* 2050: Global War Between U.S., Turkey, Poland, and Japan - The New Great Powers.

* 2080: Space-Based Energy Powers Earth.

* 2100: Mexico Challenges U.S.

If your initial reaction is anything similar to mine, it runs along the lines of "What?!? Is this guy smoking banana peels?"

Most assuredly he is not. Friedman is the founder and CEO of Stratfor, an outfit billed as "the world's leading private intelligence and forecasting company." Geopolitics is Friedman's game... and it's a game he takes very seriously.

Expect the Unexpected

Conventional thinkers dismiss wildly unexpected views out of hand. For Friedman, that's the whole point. "Expect the unexpected" is a geopolitical forecaster's mantra. This point is hammered home in the introduction of the book, in which the reader is taken on a series of 20-year jumps through the 20th century. With each jump, the landscape looks radically different.

Friedman's point in highlighting these radical landscape shifts is not that some mystical cycle kicks in like clockwork every two decades. It's merely that, when it comes to geopolitics and major world events, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. The present order of things is no guide as to how things will look two decades out.

China as Backwater?

Friedman's views on China are particularly eye-opening.

"I don't share the view that China is going to be a major world power," he writes. "I don't even believe it will hold together as a unified country... China is important, however, because it appears to be the most likely global challenger in the near term - at least in the minds of others."

You need extremely powerful arguments to back statements like this one, and Friedman has them. He looks at China from a number of angles many others have not considered - and his arguments make sense. China has a number of geographical and cultural hurdles that will prove very tough to overcome.

Many point to China's 30 years of breakneck growth. If Friedman is right in his view that "30 years is not a very long time" and that China will revert back to isolationist trend, the world will look very different ten years on than many of us expected.

Friedman may well be wrong, of course... but he isn't just stirring the pot for the sake of being controversial. His logic is coherent.

Oceans Trump All

Take the emphasis on naval power, for example. One of the reasons Friedman expects the U.S. to dominate is because of America's absolute dominance of the world's oceans.

"The United States Navy controls all of the oceans in the world," Friedman opines. "Whether it's a junk in the south China Sea, a dhow off the African coast, a tanker in the Persian Gulf, or a cabin cruiser in the Caribbean, every ship in the world moves under the eyes of American satellites in space and its movement is guaranteed - or denied - at will by the US Navy."

In the European Age, transatlantic trade was the key to wealth and prosperity. But then, closer to the end of the 20th century, something momentous happened. Transpacific trade - that is to say, trade across the Pacific Ocean, as opposed to the Atlantic - began to rise up.

This shift heavily favors the United States as the only great power with coastal access to both oceans - Atlantic and Pacific. This factors huge in the geopolitical calculus that sits at the heart of Friedman's work.

What's more, Friedman argues, the United States does not have to win wars. Because America has already established global geopolitical dominance, the goal is to disrupt any and all attempts of other regional powers to form. If this means fomenting an expensive conflict that America appears to "lose," then that's fine - because the strategic goal is not to win, but merely to keep competitive alliances from forming.

America as Adolescent

Friedman further compares the United States to an "adolescent" - still young and belligerent, not yet confident in its own ability to project and wield power.

This moody teenager mindset explains a lot when it comes to thinking about US foreign policy: the undercurrents of extreme insecurity interwoven with brash outbursts of confidence... the clumsy willingness to stomp around like a bull in a China shop (no pun intended)... and so on.

It is truly a unique point of view. America in the very early stages of influence on the world stage, rather than the days of twilight? Who would have thought? It's a hallmark of US culture, Friedman points out, to be deeply insecure about certain things - while at the same time harboring that deep streak of brashness.

To his credit, Friedman is the only analyst I've come across who has made a serious effort to consider military power, alongside economic power, in his forecasts.

And Friedman has thought about the economics too. In "The Next 100 Years" he makes the further argument that America is vastly underpopulated yet growing (whereas other competitors are shrinking) and that certain aspects of agricultural production and economic resilience will also make a real long-run difference.

Guaranteed To Make You Think

There are plenty of other crazy-yet-plausible assertions in this book that are guaranteed to make you think. (Poland and Turkey as two of the next "great powers?" Wow! And there are even wilder ideas than that...)

I don't embrace Friedman's ideas without reservation. But "The Next 100 Years" has certainly made me think, and think hard, on some of the more popular forecast notions I've long entertained.

This book has gotten a lot of hype and criticism. A world in which Mexico is a major power? China and India ignored? Climate change magically solved? Europe falling back into warfare? I read the book to see if the criticisms were justified. Unfortunately, they are. I doubt this book predicts much of the future, or even identifies the countries we should look out for.

The book uses statistics selectively and not very convincingly. Sometimes he cites numbers without providing the proper context. For example, he hypes the fact that Mexico has the 15th (now closer to 14th) largest economy in the world as suggesting we should take it seriously. What he doesn't tell you is that this ranking puts Mexico's economy slightly behind Canada and only a bit ahead of Australia's - neither of which are rising world powers. Yet, when it comes to China's economy (which is the 3rd largest and rising still), he demeans it by saying it still is nowhere near Japan's. In fact, there is no indication that Mexico's economy, despite the advantage of being located to the largest market in the world, is poised to grow anything at the rate of China's. Likewise, he stresses the fact that Japan's economy is the second largest in the world, but conveniently forgets to mention that it is stagnating and declining relative to China (especially with the Global Financial Crisis).

The central flaw is Friedman's traditional realist/geopolitics framework of analysis. This is a very simplistic way of looking at the world and assumes that countries are "black boxes" with permanent interests. Thus, Friedman does not believe that individual leaders, political ideologies, or internal dynamics matter. In fact, Friedman explicitly states that leaders don't really make stupid mistakes in foreign policy. One only needs to look at recent history to see how poorly this predicts international relations. According to Friedman's style of analysis, no matter who was elected president, the U.S. would likely have invaded Iraq. Yet, it's hard to see the war in Iraq as anything buy a stupid mistake that would not have happened if Gore had been elected. Friedman says the U.S. invaded Iraq to prevent the rise of a hegemonic Muslim state in the Middle East, but the invasion simply abolished Iran's main enemy and allowed Iran to exert more influence in the region. That seems like a mistake and doesn't fit Friedman's explanation of the U.S. geopolitical rationale for the war. My point isn't to debate the Iraq War, but to show how Friedman's tools of analysis don't work well enough to predict 100 years into the future, much less 5 years.

This means that Friedman ignores other important predictors of geopolitical power - the state's power internally to enforce its laws and policies, the educational and skill level of its people, etc. Strong governments often become strong geopolitical powers, while states that can't even control their own people or are racked by civil wars don't rise to greatness. Obviously a government's capacity to exert internal control can change over time, but it does seem to be something developed early. Likewise, a more educated populace with experience running businesses is more likely to fuel the economic dynamism that fuels growth and hence power. For example, even though countries like Japan and Germany seemed devastated after World War II, (since unification) they had strong governments and a skilled populace. Along these lines, Friedman ignores the fact that Mexico's government can't even control its own borders, drug gangs, still faces internal insurgent groups, and has trouble collecting tax revenue. Yes, it's possible that Mexico could undergo a transformation, but there is not evidence that this is likely. Friedman bases his analysis almost exclusively on the fact that Mexico is located on the border of the U.S., which simply isn't enough to lead to a great power. By contrast, there are signs that business leaders in India and China are forming companies that can compete globally and producing educated workers. While both have problems enforcing laws, neither face rampant drug gangs that openly defy government authority.

This book may get a few things right, but is too limited by the "geopolitical" frame of analysis that ignores dynamic trends, sate capacity, and education. Sadly, this type of "geography is destiny" analysis is becoming more popular. You're better off reading Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World and other books about the near future to understand what we're likely to see over the next 25 years.

Staying true to famed Stratfor's reputation for free from moralizing righteousness view of world events, its CEO George Friedman's book considers a plausible future scenario through a prism of almost certain US superiority in this century and efforts to impose a simple reality that would serve its national interests - no united Eurasian power. Those interests are nothing new to anybody who is familiar with British continental foreign policy of last several centuries, which US has adopted upon taking over the mantle of the dominant world power. A number of other commentators (S. Huntington, Z. Brzezinski) espoused that principle as the prerogative for maintaining long term preeminence. But, unlike the aforementioned ideologically driven works, Friedman's general position toward confrontation between US and contending countries is one of the expected defense of each power's national interests.

The scenario of Russia's collapse, however unlikely it might seem now, is certainly within the realm of something plausible (think of a very powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire at the start of previous century). The uncertainty of actual realization of that scenario does not diminish the value of the book or its insights. The world with one superpower is by default not a stable arrangement in the long run (short of outright world unification - something left for other centuries), thus dynamic powers of the next 30-40 years will have to deal with a direct threat to their resource lifelines posed by US Navy and space dominance. Ensuring frictions are guaranteed. With mostly land power (USSR/Russia) another Cold War is a likely scenario, but with naturally maritime powers (chosen to be Turkey and Japan) a scenario for direct confrontation is already provided by recent history.

In my view the book should not be treated as prophetic. It is an illuminating exercise in application of basic Machiavellian principal of statecraft - keeping your potential competitors from becoming too powerful. US did it superbly during Cold War of yesterday. It will follow the same trodden path in the world of tomorrow, while the assortment of rising powers might be different, just as Germany was even more heterogeneous in 1860ies compared to China and India of today, but became the main challenger of the world order 50 years later. The choice of Poland, Turkey and Japan as rising regional powers is not arbitrary, since those are the countries that would stand to benefit directly from the considered scenario of Russian collapse and chaos in China. To those living in the not too distant future the struggle on all sides will be sugar coated as a struggle for something with the pretense for high moral grounds as it happened abundantly during Cold War (from spread of democracy to spread of social equality). One of the book's themes is that the underlying motivations for all the events are and will be driven by nothing else, but conflicting self preservation interests of all the parties involved.