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

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (Hardcover) by George Friedman
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  • Publisher: Doubleday (January 27, 2009)
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The Next 100 Years

From the Publisher

A fascinating, eye-opening and often shocking look at what lies ahead for the U.S. and the world from one of our most incisive futurists.
 
In his thought-provoking new book, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR—the preeminent private intelligence and forecasting firm—focuses on what he knows best, the future. Positing that civilization is at the dawn of a new era, he offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century all based on his own thorough analysis and research. For example, The U.S.-Jihadist war will be replaced by a new cold war with Russia; China’s role as a world power will diminish; Mexico will become an important force on the geopolitical stage; and new technologies and cultural trends will radically alter the way we live (and fight wars). Riveting reading from first to last, The Next 100 Years is a fascinating exploration of what the future holds for all of us.

For continual, updated analysis and supplemental material, go to www.Stratfor.com

Biography

GEORGE FRIEDMAN is the founder and CEO of STRATFOR, the world’s leading private intelligence and forecasting company. He is frequently called upon as a media expert and is the author of four books, including most recently America’s Secret War, and numerous articles on national security, information warfare, computer security, and the intelligence business. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Publishers Weekly

With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (America's Secret War) offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The author asserts that "the United States' power is so extraordinarily overwhelming" that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and '20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names "battle stars." Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedman's 100-year cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising. The armed border clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science fiction. Whether all of the visions in Friedman's crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. (Feb.)

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The Next 100 Years

Details of Book:

The Next 100 Years

  • Book:

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

  • Author:George Friedman
  • ISBN:038551705X
  • ISBN-13:9780385517058, 978-0385517058
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Publishing Date: -
  • Publisher: Doubleday (January 27, 2009)
  • Number of Pages: - pages
  • Language: English
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Book Reviews of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (Hardcover)
strange reality-based science fiction
I read this strange little book. Since I borrowed it from the library, I could afford to skip the most outrageous parts in the second half about the spaceships prior to the confrontations with Mexico in 2080 :)

The author basically makes the point that US will continue to lead in the next 100 years, mainly because it straddles the Pacific and Atlantic and thus has the best position in the Northern hemisphere, and because the US has the strongest navy and space technology to police global maritime traffic.

Most of the other predictions are based entirely on geography and demographics. Unfortunately, the author dismisses energy, food, water, and industrial raw materials shortages and crises from his calculus. In his view, hydrocarbon fuels will be an issue only well into the second half of this century, but he does not provide any support to this thesis.

If in the next 10 years oil price increases 4-10x (inflation-adjusted), a couple of major earthquakes destroy the non-agricultural economy of California (5th largest economy in the world) and expected water shortages wreak havoc on the US Southwest, then the key premise of this book - about the US century - just goes out the window.

Basically this author leaves nature completely out of the picture and considers only some basic human factors. This is rather shortsighted in my opinion. Also, the Southern hemisphere is completely written off. While it is true that Brazil is not likely to start conquering the world, there are valuable natural resources and relatively underpopulated land in the world's South which could make that half of the globe more prosperous in the event of global resource crises.

That said, it was stimulating reading, and the way he comes up with Poland and Turkey as key powers in the next century is very interesting to read.
Flawed premises but enjoyable read
Like other reviewers, I wish the author had simply begun with the claim this is a work of fiction and not a genuine effort to predict. For its good authorship and many insights, I enjoyed the book on that level.

I agree, furthermore, with many of Friedman's observations. To name a few: the Obama administration's global strategy is not and will not be substantially different from Bush's; state actions are best considered from a realist standpoint rather than a moralistic "good" and "evil" perspective; and the United States will likely remain a (if not the) dominant global power.

But I think the author's analysis of the geopolitical success or failure of states is flawed. My exhibit A is that Friedman predicts that by 2050 the most powerful nations will be Poland, Turkey, Japan, and the U.S. Wow.

Some questions arise:

Where are China and India? Friedman's answer is complex but is notable for what it lacks: economic analysis. He states that China's power will be constrained because it will not develop a viable navy. Navies take, you see, generations to build up, and besides China only fronts on one ocean, whereas the U.S. has two!

He also predicts that a coming downturn in Chinese banking (which I agree is plausible) will be part of a series of forces that fracture the country, allowing Japanese "spheres of influence" to form in coastal China. Somehow, such things render the country relatively impotent internationally. He simply does not deal with the notion that a billion people plus property rights and a liberal (or liberalizing) market will equal immense wealth. Same for India, but he gives that country even shorter shrift.

How then do Turkey and Poland get so strong? The explanation is even more troubling. A large part of it is that they will have wars with a resurgent Russia in the 2020's and 30's. Wars, he tells us, are great for the economy of a nation if it wins them, which Turkey and Poland will do. Furthermore, as Russia collapses into fractured impotence (which he predicts it will), Poland and Turkey are in an excellent position to "poach" resources and populations from Russia. Poland's borders will eventually extend as far east as Minsk.

Again the problem strikes me: there is no economic analysis here. The notion that wars "stimulate" an economy is one Friedman repeats often and is classically flawed economic reasoning.

Beyond that, gathering "resources" doesn't necessarily make a country richer. And fighting expensive wars in order to do so almost certainly won't. The fact that many wars have been fought over resources is in the main attributable to the capture of foreign policy by business interests.

In my view, Friedman takes an excessively Risk-board-game view of geopolitics. The U.S. will remain powerful because it controls oceans (both the major and minor premise of which are much more debatable than Friedman portrays); nations get stronger by conquering territory (no putting of carts before horses there); it's hard to move an army across China (no argument, but so what?); and so on.

The notion that economic policy makes countries wealthy and wealth drives power is almost absent from this book. For this reason, I believe its predictive power is severely limited.
The book generates great discussion topics
This is a thought-provoking book. Friedman develops his forecast or thesis based on history, culture, past behaviors, and geopolitics. I appreciated and learned from the discussion of global geography and politics. The forecasted country leaders for the century (Turkey, Japan, Poland, and US) were a surprised. Turkey is selected based on geography and religious ties to Islam and is projected to grow back to Ottoman Empire boundaries (Middle East, Northern Africa, and parts of old Soviet Union). Japan grows because of projected fragmentation of China and India. Poland grows based on geography (Central Europe) and being a buffer between Russia, Western Europe, and the Middle East. US is selected based on expansion of current economic and military strength and size.

I differ with the author on several issues; for example the following:

"Control of the Pacific intersects with a more specific issue - control of the sea lanes used for energy transportation. The higher the price of oil, and longer non-hydrocarbon energy sources are from being a reality, the greater the likelihood of a confrontation over sea lanes. The imbalance of power in this region is severe. That, coupled with the issue of energy transportation and access to the American markets, gives the Pacific Basin its massive geopolitical fault line"(p. 69).

Assuming the increase of locally produced renewal energy in the timeframe referenced negates or diminishes the energy criticality. The rapid growth of the middle class in China, India, and Pacific Basin in general creates the middle class markets far exceeding that of the US.

A second and separate area of disagreement is the author's country-centric focus with omission of the role of global corporations and `social' networks. I suspect that businesses will become truly global with minimum allegiance to any country. We currently see this with the `best shoring' activities. Corporations will have global constituents - workers, managers, investors, customers, partners, and suppliers. Both corporations and their constituents will have economic power and influence in international affairs. The author also ignores the importance of global `social networks' that span countries, can be country indifferent, and wheel political influence. Religious, environmental, anti-big government sentiment and most other issues could be in this category of `social networks'.

The author presents a convincing argument on how the world population will decline and how populations are or will decline with economic development; that is, with economic development, family size decreases [the significant number of increasing versus decreasing population is an average of 2.1 children per woman]. The author projects significant labor shortages based on this decline without much discussion of automation and productivity. The author also uses the population decline to emphasis the critical problem of funding care for the elderly due to funding shortfalls in social security type programs. [I am not favorable to taxes but did think about taxes being based on labor cost or income versus value-added as the labor content as a percentage of total cost declines; that is, a consumption or value-add tax].

Never does the author mention of the role of the United Nations, or like organization. Is this good or bad?

The author should be complimented for taking the risk of projecting the next 100 years and generating some great discussion points.
Friedman's crystal ball
George offers his crystal ball prediction for the 21st century.

He talked about gas controllable neighbors. Who controls the oil and gas of world supplies? What kind of energy to power our super computers and ICBM? He said (p.120) US, facing a n onslaught of potential immigrants, decided to limit their entry in order to keep the price of labor-wage from plunging. It seems i only fits the manual labor newcomers rather than the HI TECH wizards who will help fund the social security retirees.

Chapter 8 talks about "after WWII, Japan suddenly became one of the most pacifist nations in the world" (P.141). George may not be sure of the change of Article 9 Constitution change and government officials, notably prime ministers annually August 15 visit to Tokyo Yusukuni Shrine to worship the Class A criminals executed in Tokyo Trial in order to resurrect militarism. Does Japan has the moral and courage to apologize and compensate American POWs slave labors after Bataan Death March? On page 142, he said "the Chinese Central Government' which has been waging anti-Japanese campaigns for years . . .showed that George may be ignorant with Japanese aggression against China and Korea since 1894. He is advised to brush up Japanese invasion in Asian countries with atrocity of mass murders, gang rapes, looting, chemical and biological warfare.

He forecast that China diminished influence internationally due to traditional social and economical imbalance. What will happen if China will now stop buying anymore US bonds, treasury bills and other IOUs? Will Napoleon's saying "when China awakes, the world will tremble" be irrelevant?

He predicts 2050: global war between US, Turkey, Poland and Japan - the Great Powers. Is it too simple to conclude that active negotiation and UN intervention to prevent a large scale world war? The world is more complex and different that WW I Europe.

Forecasting the future politically, economically and militarily would not be an exact science. He gives a projection based on Western assumption of a thanksgiving Day attack. Will a military outer space defense shield give a peace of mind? Will an American Thanksgiving Day prayer for peace render his assumption a failure?
Important book
This is truly an important book. The prognostications are intelligent and fascinating. Equally is his way of thinking and predicting. There is much to learn from this excellent book.
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