A Look Back At "The Next 100 Years"

In 2009, George Friedman published his book The Next 100 Years which attempted to predict the major sources of conflict, and their participants, during the 21st Century. I first reviewed his book in July 2013, but thought it would be interesting, as we head into 2015, to see how his predictions are stacking up.

First up, is the Muslim world. Friedman viewed the Jihadist uprisings in the Middle-East as a consequence of the end of the Cold War. With the Soviet Union disintegrating, old rivalries and conflicts that had been kept in check by the Soviet Union and United States were suddenly released. Friedman writes:

This era is actually less a coherent movement than a regional spasm, the result of a force field being removed. Ethnic and religious divisions in the Islamic world mean that even if the United States is expelled from the region, no stable political base will emerge. The Islamic world has been divided and unstable for over a thousand years, and hardly looks to become more united anytime soon. At the same time, even an American defeat in the region would not undermine basic American global power. Like the Vietnam War, it would be merely a transitory event.

America's goal in the Middle-East, Friedman notes, is not to stabilize, but to destabilize--to prevent a large, powerful Islamic state from emerging. Thus, the United States, he says, has no real interest in winning a war outright. "As with Vietnam or Korea, the purpose of these conflicts is simply to block a power or destabilize the region, not to impose power." Although there will be many interventions, they will never appear to yield anything nearing a "solution," and, as Friedman states, "will always be done with insufficient force to be decisive." Significantly, though, however easily forgotten these interventions will be for the United States, they are defining moments for the people that are subject to the intervention. Friedman expects that their helplessness will create a growing rage about the United States, but that due to these nations' impotence, they will nevertheless seek accommodation with the United States.

So far, Friedman's predictions concerning the Middle-East are spot-on. No stability has been reached, and with ISIS looking as though it might establish a new state capable of replacing Syria, we find ourselves once again involved in a limited air war and special forces operation that is too small to be decisive, but enough (probably) to keep ISIS from realizing its own goals.

Next up are the cultural wars. Friedman sees the Jihadist dislike of the United States as being part of the larger cultural wars--i.e., a fight for "a traditional understanding of the family." He cites statements made by Bin Ladin to show that traditional family structure was a key reason for Al Qaeda's dislike of the United States, but then expands this to include most traditional religions. Friedman writes:

In the United States, where we speak of the "culture wars," the battlefield is the family and its definition. All societies are being torn between traditionalists and those who are attempting to redefine the family, women, and sexuality.

This conflict is going to intensify in the twenty-first century, but the traditionalists are fighting a defensive and ultimately losing battle. The reason is that over the past hundred years the very fabric of human life--and particularly the life of women--has been transformed, and with it the structure of the family.

He later notes that "[t]he entire pattern of traditional life is collapsing, and no clear alternative patterns are emerging yet." Whether it is cause or consequence, Friedman notes that "[t]he single most important demographic change in the world right now is the dramatic decline everywhere in birthrates." Friedman then goes on to explain why the reasons behind these demographic trends, and why they will produce even more groups such as Al Qaeda.

I've discussed demographic trends in other posts, and there is a great deal of information on the "birth dearth," so I won't go into much detail. Basically, however, there are several trends that are pushing changes to the family: (1) children are no longer an economic boon, but a luxury (which is why Goldman, in his writings, speaks of having children as an act of faith); (2) longer life spans and economic independence has made marriage more transitory and of less importance to women; (3) because of birth control, sex has been decoupled from marriage.

Friedman predicts that the social conservatives will lose the cultural wars, and so far, he is correct.The fact that he predicts that the cultural wars will foment additional groups like Al Qaeda, and Friedman is an influential figure in security analysis, also suggests why the U.S. government is so obsessed with non-existent "right wing" terrorist groups made up of conservatives. My guess is that such groups will never exist unless the government creates them. However, the growing dislike of the United States combined with the impotence of other nations to directly confront the United States may very well lead to a rise in what is generally referred to as 4th Generational Warfare which will be directed against the United States or its interests. In short, expect more terrorist attacks (mostly overseas) and more brushfire wars.

Friedman predicted that China will be a paper tiger.  First, foreign trade concentrates wealth in the coastal industrialized regions. In the past, this resulted in the coastal regions preferring close ties with, or even domination by, the Europeans. Friedman notes that "China is gambling at the beginning of the twenty-first century that ... it will be able to gradually shift resources away from the wealthier coastal regions toward the interior without meeting resistance from the coast and without encountering restlessness in the interior."

Second, China cannot sustain its economic growth. The economic problem facing China is the same as Japan faced in the 1980s. Investment capital has come from bank loans rather than private investment. Close ties between industry and government has driven lending to those who are connected, rather than based on realistic risks and returns. Consequently, money has flowed into bad investments and underperforming industries. Also, like Japan, China's economy is driven by export, which means that it must seek every lower costs and profits. The result is that economic stability requires the constant churning of money rather than creation of wealth--bringing in enough cash to make loan payments. Thus, a significant drop in exports could bring the house of cards tumbling down. And, unlike Japan, China lacks the discipline to allow the market to weed out the bad companies and investments and go through its own version of "the lost decade" of a contracting economy.

The problem for China is political. China is held together by money, not ideology. When there is an economic downturn and the money stops rolling in, not only will the banking system spasm, but the entire fabric of Chinese society will shudder. Loyalty in China is either bought or coerced. Without available money, only coercion remains. ...

Friedman believes that the situation in China today is similar to what it faced in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A businessman in Shanghai has interests in common with Los Angeles, New York, and London. In fact, he makes far more money from these relationships than he does from Beijing. As Beijing tries to clamp down on him, not only will he want to break free of its control, but he will try to draw in foreign powers to protect his and their interests. In the meantime, the much poorer people in the interior of the country will be either trying to move to the coastal cities or pressuring Beijing to tax the coast and give them money. Beijing, caught in the middle, either weakens and loses control or clamps down so hard that it moves back to a Maoist enclosure of the country. The critical question is which outcome is more likely.

Chinese central power has relied on three pillars: the bureaucracy, the military-security complex, and the ideological principles of the Communist Party. The bureaucracy has become wealthy from foreign trade, and unlikely to carry out reforms with any vigor. The third pillar--ideological principles of the Communist Party--are dead, as the many corruption scandals and luxurious lifestyles of party officials has demonstrated.

Friedman predicted that China would have to find something to replace the lost third pillar, and that the natural substitute would be nationalism and xenophobia. "[T]he party will again blame foreigners for China's economic problems," and confront foreign powers militarily. This has played out in spades. In recent years, China has become more bellicose and confrontational with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam over disputes islands. We have seen anti-Japanese protests. And we have seen growing military challenges to the United States Navy.

Finally, Friedman predicted a "rematch" with Russia by 2020. Because Russia has long borders without natural defenses, its grand strategy has traditionally been to create buffer states along its border that would absorb the brunt of an invasion. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it lost most of its buffer states--not only lost them, but saw many join NATO. Thus, Friedman predicted that Russia would seek to protect against further losses of its buffer states and then to recover some of its lost buffers, but would want to do so without being frozen out of the international system as during the Cold War. Nevertheless, because of its pending demographic implosion, Russia must accomplish this sooner rather than later, or it may lack the necessary manpower. Because Russia will seek to reacquire these buffer states, "Russia's future actions will appear to be aggressive but will actually be defensive."

Friedman wrote in this book: "The Russians must dominate Belarus and Ukraine for their basic national security. ... Without Belarus and Ukraine, there is not depth, no land to trade for an enemy's blood.." Thus, tendering NATO membership to Ukraine and pulling Ukraine into the European sphere would be anathema to Russia. "From the Russian point of view, NATO expanding into Ukraine threatens Russian interests in the same way as if the Warsaw Pact had moved into Mexico." Noting that Russian intelligence services had undermined the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Ukrainian politics became gridlocked, Friedman predicted that "[i]t is only a matter of time before Russian influence will overwhelm Kiev." Friedman foresaw that "[t]he reabsorption of Belarus and Ukraine into the Russian sphere of influence is a given in the next five years," and Russia will return to the rough borders it enjoyed between the two world wars. Thus, Friedman believed that the real flashpoint would be in the Balkans, and that Russia's long term goals will be to break up NATO and isolate Eastern Europe, mostly by appealing to the Germans to undermine U.S. actions. The Unites States will respond, Friedman believes, by seeking to strengthen a bloc of old Soviet client states (including Poland) and the Baltics.

As we have seen, something unexpected happened in Ukraine, in which the country went to the brink of civil war, forcing Russia's hand before it was ready. Russia ended up sending in its own military and outright annexed a portion of Ukraine. The result is a divided Ukraine, half of which could still fall within Western influence, and the economic isolation that Russia would have reasonably sought to avoid. This has been exacerbated by the decline in oil prices pushed by the Saudis in order to cripple the fracking industry--a disruptive technology that Friedman could not have foreseen in 2006 and 2007 when he wrote his book.

However, it has otherwise gone as predicted. The U.S. has increased its military presence in Northern Europe and Poland, prepositioning tanks and other materials, for a possible conflict in the Baltics. Germans have expressed greater sympathy with the Russians over the events in Ukraine.

In short, Friedman has so far done a fairly good job of predicting what would occur, although the events in Europe are running behind schedule--no doubt because of the open conflict in the Ukraine and alternative fuel sources for Europe other than Russian gas.

Update (1/23/2015): I just want to publicly thank Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training for the link.