The Next 100 Years

While I will be putting this on my nonfiction book shelf, this 100% reads like geopolitical fanfiction and I mean that in the most endearing way possible.

It was an interesting exercise reading a prediction of the future written back in 2009... in the year 2024. (Hell, Osama bin Laden was written about in the present tense... because he was still alive!) The author attempts a logical progression of events with the information and state of the world available to him fifteen years ago, but the problem with prognosticating is that the sooner you're wrong about something, the sooner your house of cards comes falling down. That said, hindsight is 20/20 and maybe I'm not being fair because what the hell predictions have I made, but anyone who pays attention to current events will likely notice the same things I do.

For starters, there's a lot of confidence in China being torn apart by internal economic tensions as the rural and poor interior provinces are left behind by the more prosperous coastal megacities. The central state and Party becomes ineffective at governing, and the country as a whole is written off as a second-rate regional power for the rest of the century. While that may yet happen, it doesn't look imminent from where I'm standing in the mid 2020's, and a lot of the author's predictions for the Pacific region as a whole hinge on a Chinese collapse and Japanese opportunism that should've happened by now.

There's also the (turns out correct) assumption that Russia would attempt to re-establish forward presences in Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia in the 2010's, but the author also assumed that Ukraine rolling over with no resistance was a forgone conclusion. Again, an early stumble in prediction dominoes into a series of incorrect assumptions.

Still, I see the logic of his arguments and sequences of events and respect that he even attempted the exercise of guessing what the world would look like by the 2080's. This is very much a "geography is destiny" approach to history, and I do find it hard to argue that the United States will face the same magnitude of problems other regions will, because of it's unique placement geographically speaking. I also found interesting the assumption that technology and warfare will become so specialized that entire societies will no longer need to be mobilized for total war. A distinction between "civilian" and "combatant" will further widen in a way it hadn't during the world wars of the 20th century. This, paired with extremely precise hypersonic weapons will mean that nuclear weapons will no longer be a sufficient deterrent however.

Even if the initial chapters haven't aged well in the decade and a half since this book was written, there's still a lot under the hood here that gives plenty of food for thought.

I pretty much liked the first 180 pages but I couldn't finish it.
Yes, this book's first part based on our past and, more importantly, our present makes a compelling scheme of things.
While some of the predictions failed already as Russia wouldn't wait with its moves but who's able to predict it all?
The chaos of Isis, Russia as a gas station for EU and many other things are obvious even for a rookie like me.

But if you have the courage to read on George's views on our future - damn, I was lost before I even started.
Hidden lunar bases? Battle stars by 2050?
Seeing all the stuff happening, the prediction sounds like a web series - Altered Carbon meets Expanse with lots of political flavors we living with today.

I couldn't turn the page after I have read it will be cheaper for the Japanese to create rockets out of lunar stones with jet engines attached to them.
While it sounds plausible I can't imagine it happening by 2050, looks like we will be busy dying on Earth before that.

Reading this 2009 book in 2018, I’m kind of shocked at how much the author gets right. Of course, he couldn’t predict Tr*mp, but he does predict some of his biggest policy initiatives, like the development of a “Space Force,” building of a border wall with Mexico, and increasing subversive control by Russia. He does omit (addressed in the epilogue) what are likely to be major factors in how the future plays out: The effects of global warming and likelihood of at least one global infectious disease pandemic. Nevertheless, author takes currently-extant geopolitical trends and explains how he expects them to play out in the future, and it’s a fascinating thought experiment. While there is always the potential for unexpected events, this method provides a good, fact-based foundation for making predictions. It’s an interesting look at the trends shaping our modern era, and how they may shape the next several decades.