100 YEARS IN A NUTSHELL
Get ready for: an American century where the dominance of the super-power United States continues, but not without bumps along the road. The jihadist war, that passionately promoted "clash of civilizations" fizzles out, and, truthfully, it never was a serious threat to America anyway. Both China and Russia will seem menacing, but each will destabilize and perhaps even fragment by mid-century. Atlantic Europe goes stale, and their international influence is long gone. New great powers rise which will include Poland in Eastern Europe, Turkey, Japan, and Mexico.
The population explosion ends, first in the developed world, which finds it desperately needs young workers to keep its life-style and protect its aging population, so the immigration problem reverses itself, and the West begins actively seeking immigrants; even Japan goes overseas to establish factories in a new edition of the pre-World War II Co-Prosperity Sphere. The world will stumble into another global war by mid-century between Turkey allied with Japan, against the United States and Poland; it will be a highly professional and technological war fought mainly in space, without the horrendous casualties of previous wars. Mexico and the United States will be at the point of war by the century's end, mainly over the American Southwest, that is, the old Mexican cession of the mid-19th century.
ASSUMPTIONS
Friedman sees world history in 20-year increments, which makes sense when you consider that is generally the span of a generation. What is shocking is how 20-year snapshots display unimaginable, unexpected changes in what country is up, or down, and how the unintended consequences which flow from solving one problem can produce a totally different world in the space of a few years. Compare British Empire- dominated 1900 to 1920 with its rise of Communism, to 1940 with the march of a revived, fascist Germany, to the vanished European empires of 1960's and the Cold War between the US and Soviet Russia, with 1980's which saw the US defeated by a Soviet satellite, Vietnam in SE Asia, with 2000 where the Soviets had disappeared, the US dominated, and computer technology had transformed society.
Civilizations, says Friedman, have three states: barbarism (anyone who does not live our way is beneath contempt and should adopt our way), civilization (our way is good but other ways are acceptable), and decadence (it's all pointless, nothing is worth fighting for). The United States he considers to be still barbaric and, though he does not say so exactly, the 21st century will be the story of America's overwhelming world dominance while it becomes, however briefly, civilized in its global role. Despite the apparent randomness with which America seems to act, it displays a consistent grand geopolitical strategy based on war. "The United States is, historically, a warlike country.... (its) strategic goals (and) grand strategy originate in fear."
That is, like Rome, it is simply defending itself but ends up dominating the world to do so. America's five geopolitical goals drive its grand strategy:
* The complete domination of North America by the US Army
* The elimination of any threat to the United States by any power in the Western Hemisphere
* Complete control of the maritime approaches to the United States by the Navy in order to preclude any possibility of invasion
* Complete domination of the world's oceans further to secure US physical safety and guarantee control over the international trading system
* The prevention of any other nation from challenging US global naval power
The way these goals inevitably work out, the US must prevent any power or coalition from dominating the Eurasian land mass and building a navy of its own, and the same goes for any regional hegemon with delusions of grandeur that might pop up.
"Rhetoric aside, the United States has no overriding interest in peace in Eurasia. The United States also has no interest in winning a war outright,"
and even an occasional defeat is acceptable so long as the region is destabilized and the Eurasian balance of power is maintained. "So long as the Muslims are fighting each other, the United States has won its war,"(in this case, Iraq/Afghanistan, a war that Friedman says bluntly was conducted with adolescent clumsiness). The United States actually has a huge margin for error, safe as it is in North America between the Atlantic and the Pacific---- and it tends to be careless in how it exercises its power, frequently devastating a country which engages its interest, while being blithely untouched itself.
FAULT LINES
Five areas at this time present what Friedman calls "fault lines" which could produce the next crop of crises. Most important is probably the Pacific Basin. The US Navy utterly dominates all oceans including the Pacific and can block commerce at will, which could devastate the economies of China, Japan, and eastern Asia. Therefore, China and Japan, to protect themselves, will increase their military power in the 21st century.
Next is Eurasia which means mainly, what happens with Russia. Russia, on the great plain of northern Europe, has few natural, defensible borders except for the Caucasus mountains on the south and the central Asian deserts abutting China, and it has always sought geographic depth as a defense. This meant pushing as far as possible to the west into the Baltic States and Poland, to the Black Sea in the Ukraine, toward Iran/Turkey in the Caucasus, and right to the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest---- a condition the Soviet Union achieved after World War II, but which was lost as the Soviet Union broke up. The US, whose grand strategy seeks the fragmentation of Eurasia, has encouraged this retreat toward the indefensible Russian homeland, to Russia's fury. Russia in the 21st century will seek restoration of the old Soviet borders or at least influence, using economic power as well as political or military.
Then there is Europe, which can be considered composed of Atlantic Europe (formerly imperial powers like UK, France, Spain, now rather inert has-beens), Central Europe (mainly Germany, who will be "unpredictable" as time goes on), Scandinavia (less significant), and Eastern Europe (newly dynamic). Russia is the immediate strategic threat to Europe, where old nationalisms do reassert themselves so that Europe now acts more like Latin America than a collection of great powers.
There will still be the Muslim world where the dominant emerging Muslim country will be Turkey, not the over-eager Iran. Its key geographic location (between Europe, Middle East, and Russia), its historical influence from the days of the Ottomans, and its growing, modern economy, will make a potent combination for it to reassert itself as a regional power.
Finally, Mexico will finally get its act together, growing into a world economic power strategically placed, like the US, between the Atlantic and the Pacific in North America. Culturally but not politically its border with the US will move north through the "borderlands," overwhelming the area taken by the United States after the Mexican War in the 19th century, and this may well become a flash point toward the end of the 21st century. Of all the challenges America will face, this is one which the US Navy cannot solve for it through war.
TRENDS
Traditional ways of life, traditional families, traditional methods of business and production---- all will be in flux, straining every society. America will be blamed for the upset, yet American power will be so overwhelming that the rest of the world must either adapt or knuckle under through most of the century. One nation or a coalition of nations will seek advantage against American dominance; Friedman admits he may have selected the wrong ones, or mis-timed some of the events he forecasts, but the general themes will be intact.
For compelling geographic and historical reasons Friedman postulates that Russia will re-collapse, after causing substantial problems. So, too, will China (which he describes interestingly as basically an isolated island sandwiched between the east Asian coast and the central Eurasian desert); although it may well turn into a menacing authoritarian tyranny, it will finally revert to regional warlords and being exploited by Japan and other foreign powers.
America's innovative technologies will give it a decisive dominance in space, making it eventually nearly invulnerable (after a hicough-up or two). Freidman sees the crisis of climate change as genuine, but it probably is going to be solved by a combination of population decline and the development of beaming energy from solar space stations to earth, ending the era of hydrocarbons---- creating a whole new industrial age.
Will such frank predictions influence what actually happens (forewarned is forearmed)? Is he ridiculously off-base (his past predictions have worked out surprisingly well, they say)? Actually, it may not matter. What is important is openly laying out strategic goals and realistically thinking more than one move ahead.
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