The Next 100 Years

s u m m i n g u p 
The fragmentation of China in the 2010s and the breakup of Russia in the 
2020s will create a vast vacuum from the Pacific to the Carpathians. All 
around the periphery there will be opportunities for nibbles, bites, and then 
entire mouthfuls by minor countries. Finland will take back Karelia, Roma­
nia will take back Moldova, India will help Tibet break free, and Taiwan will 
extend its power across the Taiwan Strait while Europeans and Americans 
create regional spheres of influence in China as well. There will be many op­
portunities for poaching. 
But three nations will have both the power and the need to do some­
thing dramatic. Japan will expand its power to include both maritime Rus­
sia and areas of China. Turkey will expand its power not only into the 
Caucasus but also throughout the areas to its northwest and south. Poland, 
leading a coalition of Eastern European powers, will push eastward and 
deep into Belarus and Ukraine. 
The United States will look at all of this benignly for the first decade or 
so, much as it viewed the world in the 1990s. Poland, Turkey, and Japan will 
be U.S. allies. Increasing their strength will in turn strengthen the United 
States. And if moralism is needed, it could be argued that these countries ac­
tually will be helping bring prosperity to their neighbors. 
By the mid-2030s, however, as all three continue to increase their power, 
the United States will begin to feel uneasy. By the 2040s, it will be down­
right hostile. The fifth geopolitical principle for the United States is to op­
pose any power controlling all of Eurasia. Suddenly there will be three 
regional hegemons emerging simultaneously, and two of them (Japan and 
Turkey) will be significant maritime powers—one in the northwest Pacific 
and one in the eastern Mediterranean. Both will also have developed signifi­
cant capabilities in space, and we will see in the next chapter how that be­
comes relevant by mid- century. The bottom line is as follows: In the 2040s, 
the United States will do what it does when it becomes uneasy. It will begin 
to act. 

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