The Next 100 Years

JAPAN
JAPAN
PHILIPPINES
PHILIPPINES
SAUDI
SAUDI
ARABIA
ARABIA
TURKEY
TURKEY
POLAND
POLAND
CHINA
RUSSIA
JAPAN
PHILIPPINES
KAZAKHSTAN
IRAN
INDIA
SAUDI
ARABIA
SUDAN
LIBYA
TURKEY
POLAND
Poacher’s Paradise
Frie_9780385517058_3p_all_r1.qxp:Layout 1 10/31/08 4:30 PM Page 137
PDF

---

138
t h e n e x t 1 0 0 y e a r s
cluding the Baltic states, Hungary, and Romania, together will regard this as 
an opportunity not only to return to older borders but also to protect them­
selves against any future Russian state. A powerful secondary benefit for 
these countries is this: by increasing their strength, they will be further pro­
tecting themselves against their traditional Western enemy, Germany. These 
Eastern European countries will be looking at this as an opportunity for re­
defining the balance of power in the region. India, for all its size, will not be 
in this game. Geographically isolated by the Himalayas, India will not be 
able to take serious advantage of the situation. 
The American view of this activity in the 2020s will be supportive. East­
ern Europe, Turkey, and Japan will be allies of the United States. Turkey and 
Japan will have been its allies for seventy- five years by that point, Eastern 
Europe for thirty years. During the confrontation with Russia, each will, 
more or less, and for its own reasons, work with the United States, which 
will regard them, as it did other allies, as extensions of the American will. 
The events of the 2020s will have much broader implications beyond 
Russia and China, however. The first will be the changing status of Asia in 
relation to the Pacific, and therefore in relation to the United States. The 
second will be the state of the Muslim world following the U.S.–jihadist 
war. The third will be the internal order of Europe in an age of Franco-
German decline and Eastern European emergence. The fragmentation of 
NATO is a given once the Germans and the French opt out of defending the 
Baltic countries. NATO is based entirely on collective defense, the idea that 
an attack on one member is an attack on all members. Embedded in this 
idea is the understanding that NATO is prepared, in advance, to go to the 
defense of any member country that is at risk. Since the Baltic states will be 
at risk, a force will need to be forward deployed there as well as in Poland. 
The unwillingness of some of the members to participate in collective de­
fense means that action will need to be taken outside the context of NATO. 
NATO, therefore, will cease to exist in any meaningful form. 
All of these issues will be on the table in the 2010s as the confrontation 
with Russia develops. They will be suspended—or at the very least not be 
high on the global agenda—during the conflict. But eventually these ques­
tions are going to reemerge. Once the Russian threat has passed, each of 
these regions must come to terms with its own geopolitics. 

---

139
a n e w w o r l d e m e r g e s