The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

I remembered the authors name vaguely; then I realized that I had read his (1st?) book back in 1989 titled "The Coming War with Japan"! Well, so much for the predictive power of Mr. Friedman, now in 2010 that war has not come about for 30 years. But not to worry, the authors made a renewed claim in this book that there will be a US war with Japan in 2050 (okay 80 years down the line isn't convincing either, lol). What is more important, however, is the attitude behind such books, as we may remember 1989 marked the rapid beginning of the end of Communism & the Soviet Union. Think tanks - and the author has clearly made a career out of working for them - were desperate in elitist US circles to find a new enemy to replace communism and the Soviets. As it is simply a fact that the USA has for all practical purposes has operated on a war economy since 1941, and when the 2nd World War was over in 1945, a major recessing was impending in USA in 1948. The power elite realized that it desperately needed a new enemy, otherwise the whole economic structure would crumble back into a recession, bound to become a depression. It should also be recalled that only the 2nd World War brought the USA out of the Great Depression Frank Kofsky's book "Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948" is instructive on how the new Truman administration quickly made the Soviets into the new enemy, while even Stalin was trying to avoid such a (Cold War) confrontation, since the Soviets could ill afford one (having lost 20-27 million dead and suffered huge devastation by the Nazis, who almost defeated them, during WW II). When an intimate friend of Truman (Clark Clifford) was asked in 1978 whether Truman actually believed in the Soviet threat, he literally said that Truman thought it to be a lot of baloney, but it was needed politically. (Clifford had seen Truman as President virtually on a daily basis.) What it all boiled down to was that the US financial and political power elite of post WW II needed an enemy, to on the one hand justify huge defense expenditures, which would, needless to say, make those working for the military industrial complex rich, while politically it would unite Congress and the American people to embrace the idea of a threatening Soviet & communist enemy. All modern societies have known the need for seemingly threatening enemies; they provide not only a indispensible rallying point to distract from any domestic problems & crisis but are also crucially important in giving direction and purpose to a nation. As William Blum so succinctly stated in "Rogue State": "America cherishes her enemies. Without enemies, she is a nation without purpose and direction."
Major surveys done in the USA after Reagan's presidency in early 1989 showed interestingly that the majority of US Americans saw Japan as a bigger threat than the Soviet Union. It is very likely that on the basis of such polls people like Friedman started a campaign to target Japan as the next enemy of the USA. Needless to say, such propaganda didn't produce the desired results of rekindling the old Yellow Peril that provided such an effective enemy image back in the 2nd World War. Instead (international) terrorism became the new enemy image. As a professor of international relations, I was always surprised; back in the 1980s, especially the late 80s, by the huge amount of media coverage that was devoted to terrorism. There were all sorts of alarming reports that terrorism was going to be the next big threat to the USA & the West. Interestingly, one statistic refuted this by saying "one was more likely to be stuck by lightning, than to be killed by a terrorist". This was based on statistical evidence. Nonetheless, by Clinton's 2nd term terrorism was the declared enemy of the USA. Osama Bin Laden had been on a list of the most wanted terrorist back in 1996, $15 million was offered to anyone who could located him even back then.
Sorry, for what may seem like a long digression, but I believe that the ideology that people like Friedman espouse is presented in disguised form as objective, scientific, academic, intellectual, and most of all reasonable, when in reality he is just rehashing old power elitist ideas that always see danger in every conceivable corner of the world. A recent brilliant book "The Merchants of Fear" shows how in the US fear is best selling commodity. Fear is used to sell products, be they direct products from the military industry, such as weapons, government policies, such as "containment" (of evil communism), or "the war on terror", or business services such as products & services of the security sector for the public, while the media known that fear induced reports are more lucrative than factual ones.
The point is that Friedman and his associated think tanks serve the power elite directly by writing books like this one. While it is admittedly eloquently written, the book makes several statements that are completely in line with the agenda of the elites, be they called neo-cons or simply plutocrats who have ruled the USA since its inception. These statements and their corresponding dogma are: (1) War is inevitable and will thus always remain a part of world politics and hence everyday life. [Thus, any notions of a peaceful world is simply naïve and even dangerous, as is directly implied and deduced that nations should better prepare themselves for war and conflict]. Needless to say, this is precisely what the military-industrial complex, its associated branches of the government (military services), Pentagon, and analysts love to hear. (2) Geopolitics is not a thing of the past; rather it is the way of the future in international relations. [As Geopolitics is a rather discredited dogma dating back to the late 19th century, since it let to at least 2 world wars, its no surprise that people like Friedman love to bring it back and claim that its as indispensible to politics as Adam Smith's invisible hand is to economics.] What is opportunistically denied is that geopolitics, even if it were as crucial as claimed, is simply something that the world can no longer afford. Weapons of mass destruction, including (ABC) ones, would in any major war cause such devastation that their use would be counterproductive to say the least. Furthermore, it has to be said that this has been strictly adhered to by the industrialized & post industrialized countries; it's only in the so-called 3rd world that the majority of the wars occurred since WW II. The West (mostly USA, G.B. & France) has fought wars not against its own nations, but against 3rd world nations. It's clear that war between Western industrialized nations would lead to a disaster for their nations and economies, thus they haven't had one for 65 years. That is also, why a future US war with Japan (in 2050) is still very unlikely. (3) The next likely great powers China, Russia, Japan, Turkey, Poland (?), & Mexico are all portrayed as rather aggressive usurpers of geopolitical power, especially since all, except for Poland, will challenge the USA. This makes the USA seem tame and reasonable by comparison. It also sounds like something that could only have come directly out of a neo-con strategy book, as to how the USA should take down every serious contender for hegemony, be it regional or global. It is glaring just how elitist Friedman's predictions are. Since, Fukuyama's thesis of the "end of history" has been invalidated and Huntington's "clash of civilization" is far too crude, as a guideline and can at best endeavor to explain ethnic, cultural, & religious conflicts, the elite needed a new approach for its geopolitical map of the world. Friedman's book is a basic continuation of what US strategy circles have analyzed. (Better geopolitical accounts have been published by Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon's New Map [2004] & Blueprint for Action [2005])
I remembered the authors name vaguely; then I realized that I had read his (1st?) book back in 1989 titled "The Coming War with Japan"! Now the title was not meant to be sensationalist, rather it was seriously believed by Friedman that there would be a near future war between Japan and the USA. The logic behind this was: the old reasons for the USA and Japan to be allies had ended as of 1991, and economic frictions would lead to conflict between the two countries.

This was THE FIRST MAJOR PREDICTIVE MISTAKE, even worse the USA and Japan probably had more reasons to be economic, political and even military allies in the post communist world order. And evidence bears this out: the once very competitive relaionship (esp. during the Reagan years) has given way, for the most part, to more cooperation between USA & Japan. This is all the more so the case, since China's rise as a global economic power house, thus, for security reasons Japan is even more dependent on the USA than during the Cold War. Just recently the two nations has pledged to recommitt themselves to a continuation of their strategic relationship. So much for Friedman's prediction about the US-Japan case.

The NEXT MAJOR MISTAKE IN TERMS OF PREDICTION was that Friedman thought Red China would come apart ("The same forces that destroyed European communism are present in China, suppressed at Tiananmen Square"), and that the resulting "refragmentation of China" would lead to Japanese vs. American intrigue in China, that hasn't happened!

Nonetheless, it is incredibly audacious how the author simply reiterrates these predications in this book exactly 20 years later! His mentality seems to be: Well, I was a BIT OFF THE MARK, because my predictions didn't come true, well at least not yet, and what is 20 years anyway? lol. So now he wants us to believe that the "Coming war with Japan" will happen in 2050. Okay, so that's then 60 years from when he originally made this claim! Lesen Sie weiter... ›

This book was not only dissapointing me from the first page to the last sentence, it also made me wonder why so many people read this book. I guess if you want to talk about this book, you also need to talk about his author, cause a book is always a picture of someones mind.

It is supposed to be a "forecast" for the next 100 years. Id rather call it an oracle and a very disturbing and warped abomination of the american dream.

I know that america has dominated the world over the last 50 years. But why should it all go on? Why is the world spinning and spinning and nothing really happens? Americans tend to think big. At the same time ignoring what is important.

Why do americans seem to love war? Why another world war? Why so many lines about american domination of the seas? So many lines about the great american nuclear missile program?

If the cold war tought us one thing it is that the world has become very fragile. America cannot defeat turkey. And they cannot defeat germany. And they cannot "prevail" over evil in the world as they call it (Afgahnistan, Irak, Iran) because a the defeat of one big power would immidiately start a retalliation strike of its allies. And I thought even americans understood that there is NO technology to prevent earh from being destroyed should russia france or turkey launch their nuclear missiles.

So what I am also missing is crdible solutions for the global change. And Im not only talking about global warming. What about poverty? World water ressources. Why such a big focus on religious questions?

I think it is more than obvious: Mr Friedman is a businessman. He and his private "intelligence" service live from fear. He lives from poverty, misery and war. If the world would be a better place: what about his buisness?

It is Mr Friedmans best right to believe such things. Id rather spend my time learing a new language. Maybe an arabic one?

I have to say as unbelievable this book has been (and Im student of geography and politics and ethnological studies) it has been worth reading! For "old Europe" its important to understand what americans really think behind their facade. And a book that gives you emotions while reading it (even if its frustration and anger) cant be so bad ;-)

My grandfather always said: knowledge is power. Mr Friedman should try to gather knowledge instead of intelligence for once.

George Friedman uses, as he states, geopolitics to project the future. To him, that means that, similar to Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in economics, the individual pursuit of self-interest by nations leads to predictable patterns and outcomes. The geographical facts also play a role, e.g. that North America has direct access to both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.

Applying this concept, Friedman concludes that the USA will dominate the coming decades. Naval power is an important basis for his claim, and the USA are more powerful than even any sensible combination of other countries combined. In combination with demographic trends (the end of the population boom) and technological assumptions on warfare and energy generation, the author sees China and Russia losing importance in the coming years, resulting in complete American dominance. This leads to alliances to protect other nations' interest, leads to a global conflict and results in the quite surprising conlusion that Mexico might be the country that challenges the United States' dominance towards the end of the century.

Forecasting a hundred years will always meet contradiction, as there are always factors which have not been weighed correctly, as critics will claim. This book makes no exception. What it provides, though, is a framework to look at the next hundred years and enable the reader to judge himself, if the climate change is really only of passing importance, or what a potential Islamization of Europe would change in the picture.

A very entertaining read!