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rfmcdonaldOver at Acts of Minor Treason, Andrew Barton considers George Friedman's latest work of futurology, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. The book, as he notes, has some interesting elements.
The book strikes me as interesting in a sort of negative way, at least in terms of plausibility. Plausibly enough, Friedman argues that as Russia declines as a great power--first relatively, then absolutely--European influence, perhaps especially Polish influence, is likely to grow. His growth projections, however, might be a bit off. At one point, referring to the Soviet occupation of central Europe during the Cold War, he suggests--light-heartedly, I hope--that indeed there might one day be a Polish occupation of Minsk and a Hungarian occupation of Kiev. (Indeed, why not?) He also doesn't seem to grasp multilateralism at all, for instance having a Germany that he describes as decadent and pacifistic launch a preemptive war against Poland without any reference to, well, anything. His complete neglect of the Southern Hemisphere--are Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, all trivial--doesn't speak well of him, and while his suggestion that Turkey may become a regional superpower is quite plausible his suggestion that Japan might end up involving itself militarily in a fragmented China is not.
Anyway. At one point, Friedman has a Japanese-Turkish alliance attack the United States' "Battle Stars," manned military stations in orbit. As Andrew notes, Friedman doesn't seem to have paid attention
What do I think of The Next 100 Years? It does have some thought-provoking ideas, but on the whole I'd have to mark it as implausible in the grand fashion of the American militarist nationalism. Pity; he might have otherwise written a good book.
When I first came across George Friedman's The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century in a bookstore, I flipped through it but didn't buy it because 1) I had to get to work soon and 2) I really didn't feel like shelling out $30 CDN plus applicable taxes. Nevertheless, it did intrigue me quickly and the ideas I was exposed to from briefly flipping through it kept nattering at me, and so on Friday I went and paid the $30 CDN plus applicable taxes.
Forecasting is an inherently tricky business. Also on my shelf is Your Next Fifty Years by Robert W. Prehoda, circa 1979, which among other things forecast a barely-averted Malthusian famine and population collapse in 1994 that ended the Cold War because the United States shared its emergency food supplies with the Soviets. Technological forecasting, which is really what much of the field is concerned with, is particularly hard to nail down.
Geopolitical forecasting is something else again. Geopolitics doesn't play by the same rules as technology - regardless of the tools at hand, the overarching goals, drives, and motivations of its players are the same as they've been throughout history. As the founder and Chief Intelligence Officer of the private intelligence agency Stratfor, Friedman probably has access to a wealth of information from around the world that helped him design a possible 21st century.
The book strikes me as interesting in a sort of negative way, at least in terms of plausibility. Plausibly enough, Friedman argues that as Russia declines as a great power--first relatively, then absolutely--European influence, perhaps especially Polish influence, is likely to grow. His growth projections, however, might be a bit off. At one point, referring to the Soviet occupation of central Europe during the Cold War, he suggests--light-heartedly, I hope--that indeed there might one day be a Polish occupation of Minsk and a Hungarian occupation of Kiev. (Indeed, why not?) He also doesn't seem to grasp multilateralism at all, for instance having a Germany that he describes as decadent and pacifistic launch a preemptive war against Poland without any reference to, well, anything. His complete neglect of the Southern Hemisphere--are Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, all trivial--doesn't speak well of him, and while his suggestion that Turkey may become a regional superpower is quite plausible his suggestion that Japan might end up involving itself militarily in a fragmented China is not.
Anyway. At one point, Friedman has a Japanese-Turkish alliance attack the United States' "Battle Stars," manned military stations in orbit. As Andrew notes, Friedman doesn't seem to have paid attention
What really gets me is that, considering that the Japanese-Turkish coalition is banking on its possession of an intact satellite network to pummel the United States into submission, physically destroying its Battle Stars is fucking stupid - but then, when you get right down to it, the same can be said for orbital warfare as a whole.
Humans are spoiled by habits that a gravity field encourages. If we blow something up, we expect the rubble to stay where it is; no fun to clean up, sure, but also something that can be sidestepped and no longer provides any value to the enemy. Space doesn't work that way. Sure, Japan's destroyed the Battle Stars and blinded the American eyes in the sky, but it won't matter because the debris from the destroyed stations, tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of pieces of debris, is now hurling around Earth at 8 kilometers per second on unpredictable orbits that may intersect with yet more satellites. Many of them would, undoubtedly, constitute the intact Japanese-Turkish network with which they can keep an eye on the States.
This is a perfect recipe for a Kessler Syndrome, something I've written about before, where the volume of debris in Earth orbit makes spaceflight effectively impossible. This is also something people aren't really familiar with yet. After all, garbage doesn't last forever - except in space, where it effectively does.
What do I think of The Next 100 Years? It does have some thought-provoking ideas, but on the whole I'd have to mark it as implausible in the grand fashion of the American militarist nationalism. Pity; he might have otherwise written a good book.
