The Next 100 Years

C H A P T E R 1 3
2 0 8 0
T h e U n i t e d S t at e s , M e x i c o , a n d t h e
S t r u g g l e f o r t h e G l o b a l H e a r t l a n d 
F
rom the beginning of this book, I’ve talked about North America be­
ing the center of gravity of the international system. Until now I’ve 
basically equated North America with the United States, simply be­
cause U.S. power in North America is so overwhelming that no one is in a 
position to challenge it. The great global war of the twenty- first century will 
make clear that no Eurasian power is going to emerge to challenge the 
United States for quite a while. In addition, a crucial geopolitical principle 
will be tested, and modernized: whoever controls the Atlantic and Pacific 
oceans will control global trade—and whoever controls space will control 
the world’s oceans. The United States will emerge in unchallenged control 
of space, and therefore in control of the world’s oceans. 
Reality, however, is more complex than appearances. The United States 
will have an underlying weakness in the second half of the twenty- first cen­
tury, one that it will not have confronted for two hundred years. The first 
geopolitical imperative of the United States—the one that all others rest 
upon—is that the United States dominate North America. Since the
Mexican- American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that 

---

224
t h e n e x t 1 0 0 y e a r s
concluded it in 1848, the United States has been in practical control of the 
continent. It has simply seemed to be a foregone conclusion. 
By the end of the twenty- first century, this will no longer be the case. 
The question of Mexico’s power relative to the United States will be raised 
again in the most complex and difficult way imaginable. Mexico, after two 
hundred years, will be in a position to challenge the territorial integrity of 
the United States, and the entire balance of power of North America. If this 
sounds far-fetched, go back to my introductory chapter and think about the 
way the world changes in just twenty years, remembering that we are talking 
about nearly a century here. 
The Mexican challenge will be rooted in the economic crisis of the 
2020s, which will be solved by the immigration laws that will be passed in 
the early 2030s. These laws will aggressively encourage immigration to the 
United States in order to solve America’s labor shortages. There will be a 
massive influx of immigrants from all countries, and this will obviously in­
clude Mexico. The other immigrant groups will behave much as previous 
immigrants did. But the Mexicans will behave differently for a single reason, 
having nothing to do with culture or character, but having to do with geog­
raphy. And that, coupled with the growing strength of Mexico as a nation, 
will shift the North American balance of power. 
Historically, other immigrant groups have had what we might call a 
lumpy distribution in the United States. They have lived in ethnic enclaves, 
and while they might have dominated in those neighborhoods and influ­
enced surrounding politics, no one group simply overwhelmed any region 
or state since the late nineteenth century. As the second generation reached 
adulthood, they became culturally assimilated and distributed themselves 
around the country as they pursued economic opportunities. The life of the 
ethnic enclave was simply not as attractive as the opportunities available in 
the wider society. In the United States, minority populations were never an 
indigestible mass—with the major exceptions of the one ethnic group that 
did not come here voluntarily (African Americans) and those who were here 
when Europeans arrived (American Indians). The rest all came, clustered 
and dispersed, and added new cultural layers to the general society. 
This has always been the strength of the United States. In much of Eu­
rope, for example, Muslims have retained religious and national identities 

---

2 0 8 0
225 
distinct from the general population, and the general population has given 
them little encouragement to blend. The strength of their own culture has 
therefore been overwhelming. In the United States, Islamic immigrants, like 
other immigrant groups, were transformed over generations into a popula­
tion that bought into basic American principles while retaining religiosity 
almost as a cultural link to the past. This both bound the immigrants to the 
United States and created a chasm between the first generation and later 
ones (as well as between the American Muslim community and Muslims 
elsewhere in the world). This has been a well- worn path for immigrants to 
the United States. 
Immigrants from Mexico will behave differently starting in the 2030s. 
They will distribute themselves around the country, as they have in the past, 
and many will enter the mainstream of American society. But unlike other 
immigrant groups, Mexicans are not separated from their homelands by 
oceans and many thousands of miles. They can move across the border a few 
miles into the United States but still maintain their social and economic 
links to their homeland. Proximity to the homeland creates a very different 
dynamic. Rather than a diaspora, at least part of Mexican migration is sim­
ply a movement into a borderland between two nations, like Alsace- Lorraine 
between France and Germany—a place where two cultures intermingle 
even when the border is stable. 
Consider the map on page 226, drawn from U.S. census bureau data, of 
Hispanic population concentration in the United States in 2000. 
In 2000, looking at Hispanic residents as percentages of counties in the 
United States, we can already see the concentration. Along the border from 
the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico there is an obvious concentration of peo­
ple of Mexican origin. The counties range from about one- fifth Mexican 
(we will use that term to apply here to ethnicity, not citizenship) to over 
two- thirds Mexican. In Texas, this concentration goes deep into the state, as 
it does in California. But the border counties tend to be the most heavily 
Mexican, as would be expected. 
I’ve superimposed the outline of the territory that used to be part of 
Mexico and became part of the United States: Texas and the Mexican Ces­
sion. Notice how the Mexican community in 2000 is concentrated in 
these formerly Mexican territories. There are pockets of Mexicans outside 

---

this area, of course, but they are just that, pockets, behaving more like
other ethnic groups. In the borderland, Mexicans are not isolated from
their homeland. In many ways they represent an extension of their home-
land into the United States. The United States occupied Mexican terri-
tory in the nineteenth century, and the region maintained some of the
characteristics of occupied territory. As populations shift, the border is in-
creasingly seen as arbitrary or illegitimate, and migration from the poorer
to the richer country takes place, but not the reverse. The cultural border
of Mexico shifts northward even though the political border remains
static.
That’s the picture in 2000. By 2060, after thirty years of policies encour-
aging immigration, the map we saw in 2000 will have evolved so that areas
that had been around 50 percent Mexican will become almost completely
Mexican and areas that had been about 25 percent Mexican will move to
226
t h e n e x t 1 0 0 y e a r s