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|  | Author: George Friedman
Publisher: Doubleday
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  129 reviews
Sales Rank: 1121
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
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
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Showing reviews 26-30 of 129
 I Love The Futurists...they never cease to amuse July 6, 2009
David S. Wellhauser (Republic of Korea)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Hmmm...this is a difficult book to write about for a number of reasons.
The most difficult is the complexity of dealing with any topic beyond the window of 5 years. This is the problem with futurism in general. Predicting one year out is difficult but beyond 5 years you are descending into fantasy...a brief review of the futurist texts over the past 40 yrs. proves this point. Though these get a few things right most of what they have to say we now only laugh at.
What makes this book interesting is that it uses the hook of geopolitics (the study of the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation). This is a subject I find very interesting because it is re-emerging as a legitimate area of study after years of being held in disrepute...or, at least, being considered a tad sketchy by many academics, intellectuals, and populist pundits. Geography is important and demography is very important.
However, Mr. Friedman starts losing me around 2040 and definitely loses me in his discussion of World War III (around abouts 2050)...he is essentially retelling WWII with a few geographic and technological shifts. And I do have some trouble about discounting China. I too suspect that China 'may' be a paper dragon but to sideline it in the way he has is very suspicious. I also believe his suggestion of how Mexican-Americans will think of themselves and behave at the end of the 21st century (especially since he leaves this issue unresolved) is more than a little naive.
What do I think of this book as a whole? Complicated. On the one hand, I do like, or at least appreciate, what he says, mostly, until the end of the 2030s but after that his ideas become almost laughable.
His acceptance and dismissal of Global Warming is very disconcerting and damages his thesis deeply. But his unwillingness to engage with environmental disasters that will have an enormous impact on geopolitics is also troubling. Disasters that 'could' occur over the next century are water shortages (inevitable), earthquakes along the Western U.S. coast (very probable) the unexploded volcanoe under yellowstone national park (which could erupt taking most of North and Meso America with it), the evolution of diseases and the coming pandemics are just a few of the things that could throw his neat, rationally neat at least, thesis into hazard.
But, as an act of imaginative future historiography it is compelling and readable. It is something we should all be thinking about...if only as a side project. Afterall, the future is where all of our children and grandchildren will have to live and we should all be concerned about the world they will find themselves in once we have turned to dust.
So, in the end, I would recommend this book...but with the caveats you will have met above.
Not a boring book, but one that could have used better writing, a more comprehensive and analytical imagination, and a richer palette of variables. Still, all in all, a good attempt.
P.S.
The biggest problem with this book is that it sports a blurb by the hysterical, zenophobic Lou Dobbs...one of the strangest pundits out there today and a thoroughly degraded human being.
 provacative extension of history into the future July 5, 2009
Douglas Metcalf (Asia)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Compelling extension of geopolitical history into the future with trends that most people have ignored.
 Worth reading July 4, 2009
James L. Fuqua (Hendersonville, TN United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really tried to like this book, and I still recommend that you read it or listen to it on your mp3 player as I did while I walked. Read the epilogue first. It discloses why the author thinks as he does.
The author sees a future where nations continue to plot and grab land from neighbors as has been human behavior since before recorded history. He just puts it in a more technical setting. He envisions the future as a high stakes chess game with land and resources as the prizes and power as the method of getting them.
Sometimes history should not and does not repeat itself. If humanity is incapable of learning from two world wars, an extended cold war and hundreds of minor wars in the last century his guess is as good as any as to how the wars will be fought and who will fight them in this century.
As you read the book if you take the time to pick the book apart into premises and syllogisms, you can come up with half a dozen or more equally likely scenarios at each level. As the levels build on each other layer by layer you will almost certainly have a different view of the future than the author.
A five star rating system is inadequate to judge a book such as this one. If I were to judge the this book or the author on imagination, it would be five stars. If I were to judge on accuracy of my assessment of the author's prediction of the future it would be one star. Audacity would be back at five stars. It is important for people to think about and discusses the issues raised in this book. Even a flawed effort to think about the future has value.
I won't suppose that I have a clearer crystal ball than the author, but it would have been nice to see more attention to potential changes in human behavior. The education level of most developed countries will have profoundly increased in this century compared to the last. Perhaps better educated humans will behave differently from our relatively uneducated predecessors. These factors were not discussed.
People can communicate and travel more freely today than they did in the past. That may interrupt the historical trends of nationalism and tribalism. English is becoming a common second language among educated people and thus facilitates communications among millions of people who do not share a first language. In the future people are likely to identify more closely with people of another nationality with similar educational backgrounds to theirs than with their countrymen of profoundly different education and behavior. These factors were also not discussed.
In sensible countries the population is dropping. The population pressure to grab land that caused Germany and Japan to be aggressive will abate. People are beginning to realize that growth can be cancerous. The author predicts continued conflicts even with these trends that could make conflict less unnecessary for survival.
Young people now are more interested in their personal happiness than becoming cannon fodder. How will that factor into the future? Only in parts of Islam do people bear such dogmatic certainty that they will go to heaven that they are willing to voluntarily die young in large quantities. Even in those countries willing cannon fodder is in short supply. None of this was discussed. Power and how geography gives power advantages was discussed. Again the human element was ignored.
I still recommend that you read this book. We spend far too little time studying the future we are building for our children and grandchildren. If reading this book prods you to think about the future and do some part to prevent the misguided future foreseen by this author the book will have been beneficial.
Overall I rated this book as four star more for effort than substance. One vivid imagination can spur another. Perhaps this book will spur you to think of the future. Without thinking about the future you cannot shape it. The future is too important to just let happen without a struggle to shape it for the better. Do your part. Continue to read and make the future world a better place for your children than the one in which you happened to be born. Where the old ways of behaving caused trouble change them.
The Future of War July 2, 2009
Jerry Sanchez (New York)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book presents some interesting propositions regarding the future of geopolitics. Who knows how much of it will come to pass, but the notion of a world war between the U.S., Japan, Turkey and Poland around the year 2050 seems a bit far fetched today in 2009. But as the author points out, the world we live in today seemed unlikely in 1950. For better or worse, Friedman sees the United States as the dominant world player in the century to come (despite many recent books and articles to the contrary). His argument is compelling, but he dismisses China as a future world power a bit too easily in my opinion. India is almost never mentioned, Russia, he believes, will tear itself apart and Brazil will continue to be a regional and second tier country. Other countries were hardly, if ever, mentioned at all, notably, Australia, South Korea, South Africa (and the entire continent of Africa), Iran, Venezuela, Canada, Israel, Pakistan and Taiwan.
Other issues presented in the book makes for interesting reading, including the rise of Mexico and its challenge of the United States 80 years from now and the future of space-based energy sources. In the end, however, this book is most valuable in gaining an understanding of what the future of warfare may look like. As we will see, the future will look much different than this book, but kudos to Friedman for giving forecasting a good shot. If any of the events described in this book occur many years from now, it would be an impressive feat of forecasting.
On a side note, if you're looking for a book that discusses the future of technology, medicine, traditional values or mankind, this is not the book for you as the issues are solely geopolitical in nature.
 Selective use of theory and statistics June 30, 2009
D. J. Nardi (Washington, DC)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book has gotten a lot of hype and criticism. A world in which Mexico is a major power? China and India ignored? Climate change magically solved? Europe falling back into warfare? I read the book to see if the criticisms were justified. Unfortunately, they are. I doubt this book predicts much of the future, or even identifies the countries we should look out for.
The book uses statistics selectively and not very convincingly. Sometimes he cites numbers without providing the proper context. For example, he hypes the fact that Mexico has the 15th (now closer to 14th) largest economy in the world as suggesting we should take it seriously. What he doesn't tell you is that this ranking puts Mexico's economy slightly behind Canada and only a bit ahead of Australia's - neither of which are rising world powers. Yet, when it comes to China's economy (which is the 3rd largest and rising still), he demeans it by saying it still is nowhere near Japan's. In fact, there is no indication that Mexico's economy, despite the advantage of being located to the largest market in the world, is poised to grow anything at the rate of China's. Likewise, he stresses the fact that Japan's economy is the second largest in the world, but conveniently forgets to mention that it is stagnating and declining relative to China (especially with the Global Financial Crisis).
The central flaw is Friedman's traditional realist/geopolitics framework of analysis. This is a very simplistic way of looking at the world and assumes that countries are "black boxes" with permanent interests. Thus, Friedman does not believe that individual leaders, political ideologies, or internal dynamics matter. In fact, Friedman explicitly states that leaders don't really make stupid mistakes in foreign policy. One only needs to look at recent history to see how poorly this predicts international relations. According to Friedman's style of analysis, no matter who was elected president, the U.S. would likely have invaded Iraq. Yet, it's hard to see the war in Iraq as anything buy a stupid mistake that would not have happened if Gore had been elected. Friedman says the U.S. invaded Iraq to prevent the rise of a hegemonic Muslim state in the Middle East, but the invasion simply abolished Iran's main enemy and allowed Iran to exert more influence in the region. That seems like a mistake and doesn't fit Friedman's explanation of the U.S. geopolitical rationale for the war. My point isn't to debate the Iraq War, but to show how Friedman's tools of analysis don't work well enough to predict 100 years into the future, much less 5 years.
This means that Friedman ignores other important predictors of geopolitical power - the state's power internally to enforce its laws and policies, the educational and skill level of its people, etc. Strong governments often become strong geopolitical powers, while states that can't even control their own people or are racked by civil wars don't rise to greatness. Obviously a government's capacity to exert internal control can change over time, but it does seem to be something developed early. Likewise, a more educated populace with experience running businesses is more likely to fuel the economic dynamism that fuels growth and hence power. For example, even though countries like Japan and Germany seemed devastated after World War II, (since unification) they had strong governments and a skilled populace. Along these lines, Friedman ignores the fact that Mexico's government can't even control its own borders, drug gangs, still faces internal insurgent groups, and has trouble collecting tax revenue. Yes, it's possible that Mexico could undergo a transformation, but there is not evidence that this is likely. Friedman bases his analysis almost exclusively on the fact that Mexico is located on the border of the U.S., which simply isn't enough to lead to a great power. By contrast, there are signs that business leaders in India and China are forming companies that can compete globally and producing educated workers. While both have problems enforcing laws, neither face rampant drug gangs that openly defy government authority.
This book may get a few things right, but is too limited by the "geopolitical" frame of analysis that ignores dynamic trends, sate capacity, and education. Sadly, this type of "geography is destiny" analysis is becoming more popular. You're better off reading Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World and other books about the near future to understand what we're likely to see over the next 25 years.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 129
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