|
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century |  | Author: George Friedman
Publisher: Doubleday
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.00
as of 11/8/2009 02:15 CST details
You Save: $11.95 (46%)
New (41) Used (11) from $12.50
Seller: zp_books
Rating:  126 reviews
Sales Rank: 1121
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 038551705X
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.49
EAN: 9780385517058
ASIN: 038551705X
Publication Date: January 27, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
âConventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world.â âGeorge Friedman In his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the futureâoffering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.
The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new eraâwith changes in store, including:
⢠The U.S.-Jihadist war will concludeâreplaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.
⢠China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
⢠A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.
⢠Technology will focus on spaceâboth for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
⢠The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.
Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead. For continual, updated analysis and supplemental material, go to www.Stratfor.com
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, January 2009: "Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most. --Jon Foro
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 126
 It's Gonna Be The Future Soon October 22, 2009
Andrew Liptak (Vermont)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
One of the main elements of the science fiction genre is the future. Looking to the future extends far beyond just the world of Science Fiction, but to speculative fiction, religion, the business and military worlds, and indeed, is a question that everyone inevitably asks, can we predict what will happen next? George Friedman's latest book, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century purports to just that. While Friedman makes a number of interesting, and at times, good points, the resulting work is deeply flawed in its reasoning. I've since reviewed this book for io9 - much of the summary for the book can be found here: [...].
There are three major points that I took issue with when it came to this book, which are instrumental to the book's findings: lack of sources, an overemphasis and reliance on history and the assumption that the world will return to similar political connections that characterized the Cold War. However, while this is the case, Friedman imparts a very important lesson through this book, reminding the reader that history and nations work with a sort of cause and effect mentality, where x event causes y reaction over z time. Major events take years to build and grow, and an essential thing for the reader to keep in mind is that the world and political structure can change over the course of twenty to thirty years.
This book has no index, notes or sources anywhere in the book, which is odd, considering the number of places that there should be some sort of citation, such as a UN report citing declines in birthrates, or historical information on the political stance of a country. The result of this is a lengthy opinion piece that gets stranger and stranger as the decades pile up. Unfortunately for the book, this does nothing to help with the book's credibility, despite the author's credentials, and essentially turns it into an extended op-ed. With no scholarly information to back up the author's assertions, the book rests on the idea that the author knows just what he is talking about, and given some of the things that he comes up with, I am more inclined to file this under fiction, rather than non-fiction.
Much of the book's reasoning seem fairly flawed to me. Friedman, right off the bat, suggests that what he terms the US-Jihadist war (This should probably be Western-Jihadist war, in all actuality) is merely a small problem that will go away within a couple of years. I'm not well versed in the intelligence community or up on the current information, but I would imagine that that's as far from the truth as you can get. The conflict that's ongoing in the Middle East is one that has been brewing for years, even decades. Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others close by have long-seated issues with the United States and the Western world, fueled by extremists who believe that our way of life is detrimental to theirs, and have literally been killing themselves to try and stop us. This is not a problem that will vanish without many of those underlying problems being corrected, which I don't see happening. Furthermore, Friedman fails to take into account how things will change with time - the importance of petroleum, for example, which is not a sure thing. What will the effects of climate change legislation have on nations, and how will changes in these resources affect countries. Furthermore, South America, Oceania and Africa are barely mentioned throughout the book.
Friedman hangs his hat on this one assumption - that the global war on fundamentalist terrorists will go away, and that the world will resume tensions that were in existence during the Cold War. He predicts that Russia will consolidate its power and a Russian bloc in Europe. While there are indications that this is happening, I don't believe that it will be anything like what happened before, and that the US will essentially enter another Cold War. Furthermore, down the road, he predicts that the eventual demise of Russia will lead to the rise of Japan, Turkey and Poland, which I find somewhat more unlikely, at least with Poland and Japan.
Much of his reasoning in these instances depends upon historical record and what has gone on before with these countries. He notes that Japan, despite its recent pacifism, will return to warlike routes and eventually challenge the United States. Turkey will do the same. I find Turkey's case slightly more reasonable, because of its diplomatic ties, stability and economy. In addition to these two countries, he also cites German and Russian tendencies to war. This to me is a particularly dangerous assumption, because countries and cultures are redeemable, as seen with Japan. Countries will not go to war or suddenly become aggressive simply because they have done so in the past. Japan has become incredibly tame, with a culture and multiple generations of people to support that. Germany similarly. Warfare, as Clausewitz notes, is an extension of political policy, and with a culture that is largely against war and conflict supporting a political structure, a highly militant Japan rising again seems unlikely. Friedman's assertions that by the middle of the century, with lunar bases and 'Battle Stars' operated by the United States, are on the face ridiculous. (The cost alone of creating the International Space Station, which houses 6 scientists is in the trillions - the prices for stations that house people in the hundreds is magnitudes higher. Even then, with a mindset of defense against other nations, this still doesn't fly.) But, even then, the idea that the Japanese will bomb these US facilities in a Pearl Harbor-esque attack on Thanksgiving evening is just nothing sort of laughable. History certainly has its place, but it cannot be used reliably to predict the future with an instance such as this. Analyze trends and motivations, yes, but using a country's prior methods of warfare, in this manner, is pure fiction.
This is unfortunate, because the book is presented as fact and not necessarily as an exercise in history or how to think about how these events might work in the future. The result is a ridiculous and absurd argument for a return to older political thinking from people who were immersed in that world for so long.
Originally posted to my website.
 Comment October 17, 2009
Paweå Szczepaniak
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very good book, but subjective - written from American stand point. Surely it is a forecast for future times but some of the events may happen not because they are prone to happen but because this book will infuence and persuade ruling American elites that the future is heading in this particular direction. It is like reading horoscopes - people know that this is a kind of a game but subcounciously believe that things will happen to them like it is predicted. The infulence can be strong and people may start acting to fullfil those predictions.
The book is valuable since it is trying deal with the whole world's links of interests - economic and and national from the past, current and future point of view.Surely it is worth to read!
 Fiction not non-fiction October 12, 2009
MN reader (Minneapolis)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Intriguing concepts and detailed analysis yet the conclusions where far too dogmatic and inflexible. Dismissing China and India while asserting that Turkey, Japan and Poland are going to be great powers is quite a stretch. Also, the Star Wars part is way out there. I liked the book at first because it makes you think about geopolitics but struggled to finish it. Many of the main premises were repeated again and again.
 THE NEXT 100 YEARS October 12, 2009
Steven D. Taylor (great falls, montana)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
George Friedman's book is a great read. He assimilates Historical information with current Geographical, economical and political strengths and weaknesses to give a general overview of what will likely take place in the near future. For those who wish a look at past, current, and future world power flows, different from the hyperbole and gossip of our media news reporting, this is a book for you.
Interesting food for thought, but not very logical October 5, 2009
K G R (Arlington, VA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Friedman's book is a prediction of what will happen during the remainder of the 21st century. While containing much thought-provoking material, I find that most of it it was too silly or ill-informed to be taken very seriously.
First, like most military-focused strategists/analysts, his lack of knowledge in relevant fields such as business, religion, and overall in science is visible throughout the book. Friedman admits at the end of the book that he knowingly left out any reference to global warming as he feels that humanity will solve the problem before it has any serious impact. The melting of the polar ice cap, rising oceans, and changing agricultural growing seasons have all already begun. To say that a Northeast or Northwest shipping route would have no implications on geopolitics or future military strategy is absurd.
Additionally, he seems to discount the war with Islamic fundamentalists as being a fait accompli because their dream of constructing a global Islamic superstate (a caliphate) has been made impossible. I don't see how anyone who has watched the news at all for the past few years can see the war(s) as having accomplished the stated goals. Additionally, in the likely event of a Western withdrawal from the Islamic world, I don't see how the impact of the fundamentalists on geopolitics can be ignored (as Friedman does). Future terrorist attacks, destabilized middle eastern governments, and failed states simply do not factor into the author's predictions for the next 100 years. Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan all are given shockingly short shrift.
Friedman talks at length about a future Polish superstate, with Central European allies, that will emerge in the near future. In light of the recent decision not to base US missile defense systems in the region, and that the region is experiencing the same demographic problems as Russia that he discusses, I'm very confused as to how/why this will emerge. The future of the European Union is not addressed either.
Friedman also seems to ignore or is oblivious to the global financial crisis. The US and its account deficits and trade imbalances are not discussed. The possibility of creditor nations refusing to buy US debt, the collapse in value of the US dollar, or the failure of US State governments is ignored. While not traditional military foci, the consequences of these actions on the US and its military posture should not have been ignored, as Friedman did. He seems to assume that military spending can remain at today's rates (or higher), in spite of the annually increasing social welfare costs.
I could go on and on about Friedman's callous oversights and other whimsical ideas (Japan building a secret base on the moon to launch rock missiles at US space stations within a few decades?!)
I much preferred Jacques Attali's books on the future. While far less specific, they are much better on focusing on grand trends, not getting into bizarrely specific statements, and hi predictions for the latter part of the 21st century are far more optimistic and realistic.
I recommend this book if you are interested in roleplaying, military strategy exercises and the like, but not if you are seriously interested in a prediction of global events during the rest of this century.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 126
|
|
|
|
Return to Math.com | |
