Japan and Turkey form an alliance to attack the United States. Poland becomes America’s closest ally. Mexico makes a bid for global supremacy, and a third world war takes place in space. Sounds strange? It could all happen. . .
It could, at least, according to George Friedman, author of a fascinating speculative look at The Next 100 Years, posted at NewStatesman.
In Friedman’s proposed scenario for the 21st century, he assumes and promotes the dominance of a geopolitical world view:
Geopolitics assumes two things: first, that human beings organise themselves into units larger than families and that they have a natural loyalty to the things they were born into, the people and the places; second, that the character of a nation is determined to a great extent by geography, as is the relationship between nations. We use the term “geography” broadly. It includes the physical characteristics of a location, but it goes beyond that to look at the effects of a place on individuals and communities. These are the foundation of geopolitical forecasting.
Opinion and reputation have little to do with national power. Whether the US president is loathed or admired is of some minor immediate import, but the fundamentals of power are overarching. Nor do passing events have much to do with national power, no matter how significant they appear at that moment. The recent financial crisis mattered, but it did not change the basic geometry of international power. The concept of American decline is casually tossed about, but for America to decline, some other power must surpass it. There are no candidates.
Friedman’s argument is a strong one, building on such prestigious earlier work as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, among others. I find it to be a convincing read on the forces shaping world history. However, his outlook for the next 100 years suffers from two significant flaws.
First, he does not account for climate change impacts and related issues such as resource depletion and species losses. And, second, he does not account for transformative emerging technologies (which could prove to be either a boon or a bane).
The factors connected with resources and climate are nicely described in a concise summary from Loz Blain about Four Crucial Resources That May Run Out in Your Lifetime:
We’re living in lucky times. Living standards—in the Western world, at least—are the highest in history. It’s an era of relative peace and plenty that would amaze our ancestors. But it’s not going to continue forever; we’re already stretching many of our natural resources to their limits, and the world’s population will jump from 6.5 billion to around 9 billion over the next 50 years. Get ready for a painful correction—here are four interconnected resources that are headed for a catastrophic squeeze within our lifetime.
Blain identifies looming shortages of oil, food, water, and fish as key challenges for the next half-century and he shows how their declines are interrelated. His sobering conclusion:
This has, of course, been a hugely simplified overview of these four interconnected issues. And there are some potential solutions being developed for each—although each proposed solution seems to come with significant drawbacks and large expenses of its own. The simple fact is that our burgeoning population is already putting the planet’s resources under severe stress, and it’s going to take a number of broad and large-scale breakthroughs to invent our way out of trouble. If we don’t, the next hundred years could look a lot like a reversal of the last hundred.
Any attempt to portray large-scale social and political changes in the 21st century must incorporate the impacts of population growth, peak oil, and global warming, at the very least. Moreover, it’s hard to take seriously a reading of the next nine decades that fails to account for projected developments in biotechnology genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Whether a technological singularity happens or not, rapid progress in these fields—and possibly in others we’re not even aware of yet—is certain to have a significant affect on the future we’ll all inherit.
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