Who among us hasn’t wanted to know the future? Who we’ll become, what discoveries await us… As children, probably almost everyone dreams of that. But over the years, that desire seems to fade into the background—at least, it did for me. The longer I live, the less I want to know what lies ahead. That knowledge often feels too frightening. I want to believe that everything will be okay, that my children and grandchildren won’t face the horrors previous generations endured, not to mention all the disasters that are constantly being fed to us from every direction.
Unfortunately, reality doesn’t care about what we want. And even now, we see things we never imagined we would.
It was at just such a moment that I came across a mention of George Friedman’s book The Next 100 Years, where he predicts how our civilization might live through the 21st century.
Here’s what the Russian publisher Eksmo writes about George Friedman on their website:
George Friedman is a political scientist from the United States, founder and head of the private intelligence company STRATFOR. The company specializes in gathering and analyzing data in the fields of geopolitics, national security, and economics. As the organization’s lead expert, Friedman works alongside a professional team of analysts to collect macroeconomic and political information from a wide range of sources and develop geopolitical strategies. His books are also devoted to these topics.
In other words, the author doesn’t make predictions out of thin air—he bases them on a deep understanding of geopolitical realities and the patterns that shape the development of civilizations. This is his professional field of expertise.
The book was published in 2008, and only 14 years have passed since then—hardly anything in terms of geopolitical change. Still, it was fascinating to see how the author constructs his reasoning, what data and conclusions he bases it on, and how accurate his predictions have turned out to be so far.
One of his key ideas is that even in just 20 years, events can unfold that would have seemed completely absurd two decades earlier. It’s hard to argue with that, looking at both historical examples and our present day. Few, if any, would have believed in 2002 that Russia would launch a full-scale war against Ukraine 20 years later.
That’s why Friedman argues that real history rarely follows common sense. The causes of major shifts lie much deeper, though they can be traced. It’s the laws of geopolitics that dictate the direction of development. He even outlines 50-year cycles that he claims have consistently shaped the trajectory of the United States throughout its history.
These geopolitical forces are the foundation of his attempt to “predict” the life of our civilization, based on the system he’s developed. If we try to summarize George Friedman’s predictions briefly, they look something like this (warning: spoilers ahead!):
- By around 2015, Friedman predicted that Russia would begin reasserting control over former Soviet republics in an attempt to rebuild the Soviet-Russian empire. However, this would ultimately end in failure, leading to the fragmentation of Russia, with many of its regions eventually becoming parts of other countries.
- By around 2020, China would start facing severe issues with its economic model—similar to what other Asian nations experienced in the 1970s—as well as with the centralized structure of its government. These tensions would result in growing friction between coastal and inland regions.
- As Russia disappears from the geopolitical map and Old Europe weakens, Turkey and Poland are set to rise dramatically. Turkey will attempt to restore its former imperial power and assert dominance over the Muslim world. Poland will emerge as the leading power in Eastern Europe, gradually absorbing satellite states, including Belarus, Ukraine, and other regions. It will effectively become the primary European force.
- The U.S. will no longer face immigration issues, as immigrants will become a valuable resource due to global population decline. America will remain in an advantageous position, as wars do not take place on its soil. It will actively support both Turkey and Poland to ensure no single unified power rises in the Old World to challenge American dominance.
- Facing internal fragmentation in China and resource needs, Japan will quietly begin expanding its influence in the Pacific, absorbing Korea and valuable coastal parts of a weakened China, further exacerbating the Chinese split.
- By the mid-century mark, both Japan and Turkey will begin to realize that the U.S., now wielding immense global influence, poses a threat to their sovereignty. Secretly, they will start preparing to oppose the American giant.
- The U.S. will be caught off guard by this shift and by Japan’s surprise strike on its space infrastructure, marking the beginning of a new world war. Initially, it will seem like the U.S. has lost. But it will quickly recover, ramping up its technological and military capabilities, leading to an economic boom. At the same time, the U.S. will back Poland in its war against Turkey. Eventually, the Japanese-Turkish alliance will be forced to surrender.
- A golden era will begin, with the U.S. more dominant than ever, controlling space and enjoying unprecedented global power. Other nations, meanwhile, will feel betrayed or sidelined.
- But by the end of the century, another challenge will emerge—one the U.S. will again fail to anticipate. This time, the threat will come from a massively empowered Mexico, whose economic growth will make it the only serious contender to U.S. dominance on the American continent.
Well, the perspective Friedman offers is definitely intriguing—especially in how he breaks down the reasons behind these global shifts. However, there is one major caveat.
Even in his short-term forecast spanning just 14 years, much of what he predicted hasn’t come to pass, and we can already see that clearly. Yes, Russia did indeed attack one of its neighbors—Ukraine—but not in 2015 as he suggested. China is certainly facing economic challenges, but there’s no sign it’s on the brink of collapse (which was predicted for around 2020). And Poland? So far, the idea that it would absorb Ukraine or Belarus seems to exist only in the minds of certain Belarusian and Russian politicians and propagandists.
And if there’s already such a significant discrepancy over a 14-year period, how can we fully trust projections that stretch even further into the future?
Another issue with this book is that Friedman’s outlook feels overly one-sided and strongly U.S.-centric. America is portrayed as the smartest and strongest nation, so naturally, everyone else will fall in line. And even in the two wars the U.S. is supposedly going to “lose” according to his scenario, it somehow bounces back almost immediately—because it’s smarter, stronger, and just better.
Plus, nearly everything in Friedman’s vision revolves around power struggles and access to resources. Which, yes, are important—but they’re not the only forces shaping our world.
For instance, Friedman pays very little attention to the impact of technology, renewable energy, or similar breakthroughs. He does briefly mention that there will be some technological progress, and that during the war between the U.S., Turkey, and Japan, a major leap forward will result in cheap energy becoming widely available. Fine. But is it really the only thing that triggers innovation? What if this leap happens earlier, independently of military conflict? While it’s true that some modern advancements were originally funded by defense programs—like the internet—many of the recent tech revolutions weren’t born on the battlefield.
And then there’s the glaring absence of events like COVID-19, which reshaped the global landscape and accelerated the development of entire industries. It’s as if pandemics don’t exist in Friedman’s geopolitical model, and never will again. Yet we’ve all lived through years of lockdowns, remote work, and healthcare crises.
Being American, and clearly writing from a “strong America” perspective, Friedman also seems to have a much weaker grasp of countries further removed from U.S. interests. For example, I just can’t believe in a scenario where Poland invades the Baltics, Ukraine, or Belarus. It’s far more likely that Poland will continue building economic alliances and fostering democratic partnerships in the region. Sure, Friedman argues that rationality rarely defines history—but in his world, every nation apparently dreams of conquest, held back only by a lack of power. That feels overly simplistic to me. And while the U.S. in his model doesn’t want to wage war, it somehow keeps ending up in them—just not on its own soil. Convenient.
So, overall, my impression of the book is fairly lukewarm. It’s an interesting perspective, but Friedman frequently bends facts to suit his theory. The further the timeline moves forward, the more speculative—and frankly, cinematic—his predictions become. His scenario for a mid-21st century world war reads more like a screenplay than serious analysis, complete with dates and precise battle strategies. You could hand it straight to Hollywood.
Friedman has written other books since then, including The Next Decade, covering the second decade of the 21st century. But I’m not sure I’d expect anything significantly different or more grounded. Because the truth is, nobody can really predict the real future.
My rating: 2.5/5
