The Next 100 Years

Yui108

Yui108

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The Next 100 years by George Friedman, I was flipping through it at my local bookstore. It makes predictions to 2100 and claims that the US will remain a superpower the whole century. More oddly, he claims our main rivals will be Turkey, Japan, Poland, and even later Mexico. He thinks China and Russia will collapse. He predicts space warfare, and has little to say about India. What does everyone thinks of his predictions. Personally, I think, with the possible exception of his China skepticism, they are all wildly off base and implausible.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767923057/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=18EDD79V0SB7Q88MA1T6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846
 
I've read a bit of Friedman, and I don't like him.
 
the US will collapse in the next five to ten years, and the UN will get spammed with a bunch of tiny worthless countries and Maryland:smug:
 
I agree that his predictions seem unlikely. However, this isn't Thomas Friedman but rather George Friedman, whom I doubt most people have heard of (including myself).
 
Yui108 said:
The Next 100 years by Thomas Friedman, I was flipping through it at my local bookstore. It makes predictions to 2100 and claims that the US will remain a superpower the whole century. More oddly, he claims our main rivals will be Turkey, Japan, Poland, and even later Mexico. He thinks China and Russia will collapse. He predicts space warfare, and has little to say about India. What does everyone thinks of his predictions. Personally, I think, with the possible exception of his China skepticism, they are all wildly off base and implausible.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767923057/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=18EDD79V0SB7Q88MA1T6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846
Click to expand...

Off base and implausible you say. Why? Is your prediction of US Hegemony in the next hundred years any better?;)
 
Thoughtful Thug said:
Off base and implausible you say. Why? Is your prediction of US Hegemony in the next hundred years any better?;)
Click to expand...

No, I think his predictions regarding Poland, Mexico and, Turkey are silly.
 
I found he rather oddly weighted the trends he observed whilst casually dismissing others. For example, he pretty much takes the "demography is destiny" line saying that Turkey and Poland and Mexico with their younger populations are poised to become much larger powers. He also says "geography is destiny" and does a sort of reductionist realpolitik analysis of countries and their interests and likely alignments.

I think he is probably correct in seeing Russia on a temporary rise hiding a long term downward slide, but that's about it.

Compared with the inordinate preeminance he gives demography and crude WW1-era realpolik, the trends he dismisses are even more problematic. He unconvincingly dismisses climate change as a serious influence over the century (science will fix it) and pretty much ignores or dismisses the EU as an actual entity.
 
I'm betting on Brazil, they have the resources, the infrastructure, the population and are relatively safe and stable.
The EU is still a very new concept so I would not be placing bets yet. There are so many different cultures and lifestyles, so it may eventually reach a limit to its progess, but it is still an impressive organization, so who knows?
Russia has a negative population growth with 1 in 2 deaths related to alcohol. So figure that out yourself.
China from what i've learned will most likely splinter or falter in economic growth eventually.
India is a wild card from what i've picked up.
Finally, I can see the USA staying a superpower and then a great power indefinely, as long as they can control their debt and economic issues.
 
I think Mexico will get out of its funk eventually and pick up and while I don't see Poland and Turkey being rivals, I think he is right and they'll be a bigger deal in the future, probably roughly equivalents of today's Germany and Japan. Of course they'll probably be both tied to an EUish entity so it won't really matter.

China collapsing? I don't see it happening. I see something more along the the lines of a big market crash there and the resulting fallout leading to a final transition to a democratic state, fixing things long term.

My main problem with him is he seems to be thinking in century old terms in terms of measurements of power and prestige.
 
First, we are ALL on an unsustainable course.

Beyond that, if there are any humans left alive by 2100, it will be, because we are living in an entirely different way from that which we are now living. This vision of his seems too terribly much like someone stuck in the 20th Century.
 
Thomas Friedman can't even predict what will happen in 6 months, so it is good to see he wasn't the one who wrote this.
 
I should say, I appreciate his opening point that twenty or thirty years is a very long time to predict over, and that the common sense assumptions we make now are likely to be mostly wrong.

It's just that he sorta demonstrates the futility of making predictions with the rest of his book.
 
JollyRoger said:
Thomas Friedman can't even predict what will happen in 6 months, so it is good to see he wasn't the one who wrote this.
Click to expand...

Thomas Friedman made some shrewd observations about the Middle East which were much admired in some circles. Since then, his nationally-sydicated editorials have wandered farther afield, and he seems to be less omniscient.

In any case, predicting-the-future books are intrinsically interesting, by whatever Friedman.
 
bombshoo said:
China collapsing? I don't see it happening. I see something more along the the lines of a big market crash there and the resulting fallout leading to a final transition to a democratic state, fixing things long term.
Click to expand...

Many today, especially younger folks who didn't live through the Cold War, fail to understand what a Communist Dictatorship is about. The utter ruthlessness, the disregard for human rights, the bloodyhandedness and cruelty. The transition of the old Soviet Union into a (more-or-less) democratic state was brought about by the intimate culture glow of democratic Europe and innate Russian feelings of inferiority. China has little to do (influence) with the West, and has no inferiority complex. A collapse therefor, could be a very bad thing.
 
Yui108 said:
The Next 100 years by Thomas Friedman, I was flipping through it at my local bookstore. It makes predictions to 2100 and claims that the US will remain a superpower the whole century. More oddly, he claims our main rivals will be Turkey, Japan, Poland, and even later Mexico. He thinks China and Russia will collapse. He predicts space warfare, and has little to say about India. What does everyone thinks of his predictions. Personally, I think, with the possible exception of his China skepticism, they are all wildly off base and implausible.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767923057/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=18EDD79V0SB7Q88MA1T6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846
Click to expand...

Based just of what you said, I'd say the predictions have little worth. Turkey, Japan, Poland, Mexico? Any or all of those nations could do well for themselves in the coming century, but I don't see any way that they would be among the leading nations of the world then. China faces massive challenges, but will remain a force to be reckoned with. India will probably become a force to be reckoned with, but also faces formidable challenges to overcome. Indonesian and Brazil could as well. Canada could, I think, be a rival for most of the large European nations in population and economy, rather than a mid size. It should remain wealthier than Poland or Mexico. For Russia I predict stagnation. Not collapse or great growth. So the world will move away from it.

Whether the US remains a power is a political question. As in, do we get a government with some responsibility towards the future?
 
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.
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:lmao: :lol:

Oh my, I really should write a book about this - the Americans will buy anything...

EDIT: I quote from customer reviews:

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.
Click to expand...

I guess admiral Adama's fleet will have arrived on Earth by then...

* 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.
Click to expand...

The guy is even more crazy than I thought.
 
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