In 100 years, A brutal Muslim federation will exist from northern Europe, down across northern Africa, and continue along south Asia all the way to the far reaches of Indonesia. Nato is dead and the Pope lives in the US.
The Soviet Union will be reconstituted in the face of the Muslim threat as well as the Sino power in the East.
China will be the dominant power of Asia and Africa.
The US, having lost the stomach for war, and dissapointed with events in Europe, revert to the Monroe doctrine and defends its interests by controling Western hemispheric commerce over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
There’s enough ice to support a rise of 250+ feet (80 metres in the link). Of course, that’s if all the ice everywhere melted. Not that that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Heh according to that link, in 100 years it will have risen by 100-200 milimeters. So given its most liberal estimate, that’s ten inches max in 100 years.
According to the book, “The Next Hundred Years” Turkey, Germany, and Japan will fight a war between the US and Poland. We’d win but the biggest threat is the rise of Mexico and the fact that the cultural borders doo not match up with the political borders. A couple of generations after a labor shortage causes an influx immigrants there are then issues
I count at least 15 new countries in Europe since the early 90s. The future Europe will not be single EU superstate. It will be more of the same fragmentation. More and smaller countries. Ukraine is likely to split up further. Spain may split up in a number of smaller states. UK may split up further. Denmark is likely to split up in three separate states. Belgium may split up in two. Northern Italy may want to separate. Turkey may split up. There is a ton of different people in Europe with their own culture and language that have no nation of their own, and want one. These new states will be extremely reluctant to turn over their new independence to another state like the EU. EU will extend in breath but only very slowly in depth. This future Europe will be more the Europe of the Middle Ages than Europe of the great nation states.
Perhaps some regions may also group together. Parts of Ukraine may fall back to Russia. Belorussia may reunite with Russia. Parts of Moldova may reunite with Romania. Kosovo may be split between Serbia and Albania. South Ossetia may reunite with Russia.
Whilst I agree that further fragmentation of existing countries is very likely, I completely disagree with your point that any new countries won’t want to join the EU, that would be ridiculous as they’d be cutting off their noses. Taking the UK as an example there’s been talk of Scotland becoming independent but it’s pretty much taken as read that the day it will be engineered to the day it seccedes from the UK it will accede to the EU.
There’s too much to be gained from being part of the EU to not be part of it, particularly the safety net of mutual defence (i.e. not constantly backstabbing and invading each other) that it confers. That’s why Europe now isn’t the Europe of the middle ages, or indeed the 19th or early 20th centuries.
No I agree they will join the EU (expansion in extend). However I think the new countries will be very reluctant to engage in a process to strengthen the EU institutions (expansion in depth). That is what we see now with many of the new eastern European countries in the EU.
If you have ever been to a stripclub in NYC, you can see clearly that the fall of the Iron Curtain has opened a vast, formerly untapped resource in the form of hot Russian and Eastern European women.
Continuing along the lines of the “mega-region” urban model, I think international borders will become increasingly irrelevant as large megacities and multinational corporations rise in significance and countries become de-facto states in larger economic trade blocs like NAFTA or the EU.
The exception will be along borders between distinct cultural regions.
Many, if not most of them are former Soviet states that used to be their own countries.
I wonder how many actual new countries have been created where borders have been redrawn since WWII.
I wanted to be the first to mention “The Next Hundred Years” by George Friedman. I think many of these predictions in this thread are relying on current trends too much. I think the aging population and declining population in developed countries will have a bigger impact than Islamic extremism by mid century. Friedman argues that the country that controls both the Pacific and Atlantic will control the century. Right now, the only country that can do that is the US, but he predicts the rise of Mexico and by the end of the century these two will battle for control of North America. Also, China will collapse because its economic growth is unsustainable.
I for one was not talking about Islamic extremism, but Islamic demographics. In most parts of the world, Sunni Muslims at least are outbreeding their neighbors. In places such as Russia and Israel for instance.
Heh, why would Mexico rise? Mexico is pretty much a failed narco-state. And also why would the rise of Mexico bring about conflict with the US?
It sounds like Friedman isn’t predicting based on current trends but past ones. He sees more great game nation-state nonsense. I see no reason why an emergent Mexico would be a threat to the US in any way. We’d be natural allies.
There is already a Union of South American Nations, expressly modeled on the European Union. Still in the planning stages, but, considering the cultural similarity of all the Latin Catholic countries in the Western Hemisphere, it is not unreasonable to expect further integration in the next 100 years – provided such political stumbling blocks as the mutual hostility of Venezuela and Colombia can be resolved, and the Bolivarian Alliance does not survive as a separate, competing entity. It is also reasonable to expect the USAN to expand to include Central America, Mexico and much of the Caribbean, absorbing or marginalizing the existing Central American Integration System and Caribbean Community.
Where are the wars of conquest? Where are the genocides? Where are the post-nuclear Forbidden Zones? Do we really think human nature has changed so much?