George Friedman is a hack, now he's doing the same dance only this time it's China. If you want something accurate try "A New Cold War: Global Strategy". Basically he's a doomsayer who uses that as a marketing trick. If Friedman had been prescient back then he would have talked about China instead or, much better, about Singapore. Everyone ignores Singapore. Singapore prefers it that way.
I like books and predictions like this because it gives an insight on what governments and people feared in the past. I wonder what the people in the future will make fun of us for predicting now
The north Korea part actually makes a lot of sense, if you go by the author's assumption that China won't be too important. With the Soviet sphere of influence collapsing, North Korea was left alone and abanoned, just like in our timeline, even to the point of starvation. It would make sense for a Japan seeking to expand it's influence, to step in and try to spread it's sphere of influence to the struggling North Korea. Of course this never happened cause Japan really doesn't want to leave it's island anymore and also China is a bit stronger than the author expected and probably wouldn't like the troops of a major power right next to Bejing.
Yeah I think the author was assuming North Korea would cease to be a Stalinist state or at least try to find new friends, with the end of the Cold War instead of what actually happened where the government policy became even more autarkic and insular with the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic aid associated with it
@@mustavogaia2655 Of course but the book assumes that China is a declining power, barely away from collapse. I doubt they could influence other countries in such a state. Of course this was crazy far away from the truth
I remember a book called "The War in 2020" (Can't remember the author though) about a WW3 between a US and USSR led NATO versus Japan. In 2020. That aged well.
yah author Ralph Peters read that one back in the early 90s. basically Japan, Iran, various Arab countries in the Middle East and Apartheid South Africa vs. USA/USSR fighting in Central Asia. Israel is destroyed by nukes. USA using osprey tilt rotor planes mounted with advanced mass driver cannons. I found it enjoyable read in the past though now its silly.
I actually hate the term “alternate” future as a way for a creator to excuse to disregard current politics and international relations and instead due what they want. Typically recreating long deceased empires or pan-cultural mergers.
@@Marylandbrony Well Alternate History (AltHist) is a genre of fiction. While Alternate Future is a sub-genre of AltHist. While it be a cop out to people that actually want to predict the future and it would degrade the actual fiction authors of the genre.
@The Urban Bourbon Bloke So powerful, turns out that Tolkien was 40-50 years ahead of European mappers when they theorized that the Dogger Bank once was a former landmass.
There's probably the main issue with this bad predictions: they just assume the exact same trends the world is seeing in the present will continue in the future, and on steroids. This applies not just to this kind of long-term futurism book: °the economy grew 5% average in the last few years, so it will continue to grow, never mind the fact that the factors that allow that to happen have changed; this candidate is leading the polls comfortably with more than 8 months to election day, so he'll obviously win, never mind he has a massive rejection rate and a long history of scandals opponents will explore, etc°.
There is also the issue that a lot of predictions are taken out of context. Case in point, people often assume that a prediction is meant to come true while often, it is actually just meant to say "if the economy WERE to grow for 5% more for a few decades, A/B are likely to happen UNLESS we do this and that". In other words, a lot of "bad predictions" are correct; they just were taken seriously so now looking bad, we don't actually see what they were meant to warn about because we took actions to actively prevent them from coming true.
One big difference between the Japan of the 90's and China today is that for Japan vs US, it seemed mainly to be an economic rivalry with a bit of military thrown in, while with China there are multiple factors at play - it's as much (arguably even more) of a political, military, and social rivalry as it it is an economic one.
during the 1980s, many US journalists and academics claimed that Japan was not democratic. In a way, Japan was and is a political machine that buys votes to win elections, and the bureaucracy is incredibly powerful, so, could be right
@@Samuel-wm1xr sounds like a certain supposedly most democratic country on earth how did those people not recognise the hipocrisy of calling out japan for not being democratic lol
If my country wasn't allowed to have an offensive army, and the country I was supposed to be going to war with is the country who IS my offensive army, I would be very confused.
Turns out a huge part of the "economic growth" was a massive speculative asset bubble, and when it burst in the '90s it took the entire economy with it. Somewhat similar to what happened in the US in 2008
It's why I look at all the books out there predicting China surpassing the US by 2050 sceptically. China seems to have a lot of the same structural weaknesses and flaws as Japan did in the late 80s...except their demographics and internal cohesion are waaaaaay worse than Japan's.
@@skepticalmagos_101 No, it's just the flawed modern capitalism a lot of the world subscribes to without actually even as much as reading just one of Adam Smith's books...
The Author of these books seemed pretty good at analyzing his present-day scenario and making up plausible futures for the short term, but he was _waay_ to much into the whole "History repeats itself" thing. You see this especially in the other 100-year prediction, but a bit in here as well; like, US and Japan cold war was possible, but to claim war in only 30 years... He probably predicted there might be conflict in the far future, and moved the date to be in people's lifetimes in order to market better.
I mean, the author doesn’t really seem to get the idea of globalization, which is why a lot of his “history repeats itself” stuff makes no sense now. Like, yes, there are certain patterns that emerge in history, but these things don’t take place in a vacuum; innovations change the needs of countries, which in turn change how and why they act. The authors seem to assume global actors have been static in the past sixty years.
Friedman, like many geopolitical analysts, was a fraud who catered to rubes with political fantasy to sell books. If he was any good at analysing present day scenario he would instantly realise that Japan had no chance of being a superpower.
Because America is still and always will be country for refugees, immigrants, and freedom. Say what you want these things are facts that draw thousands of people to the USA
Just swap China for Japan. Japan was basically what China is today in the late 80s. Japan’s economy was robust, powerful and was increasing in size in astronomical levels. People backed then, as stupid as it sounds today, that Japan would overtake the U.S.’ economically. The U.S. was aware of Japan’s growing economic influence. As a result, the U.S. and other Western countries gathered together, known as the Plaza Accord and struck an agreement to economically suppress Japan, which lowered the exchange rate between the dollar against the Japanese Yen - this was to make American products a lot cheaper on an international level; causing consumers to purchase more American products. This devastated Japan’s economy.
8:25 this made me think of "Homefront", an early 2010s videogame where somehow North Korea manages to unify both Koreas, dominate Japan and much of South East Asia.
@@AlbertAdamsLincoln Yes they had iirc, and it was kinda botched in how they at the last minute swapped antagonists to North Korea from China. Same for the terrible remake of red dawn
@@AlbertAdamsLincoln I the time I also believed it to be an extent a part of how increasingly positive people in the US and elsewhere were viewing China after the Great Recession and the peak of the war on terror, showed off a possible alternate model for government. But thankfully I was proven wrong as China is as unpopular as ever.
@@Marylandbrony China is not just unpopular, thanks to controversial takes that many people have been charmed/coerced to believe the CCP. It is duplicitously popular, chaining it's allies, swayed in misplaced devotion, unto it's altar of sacrifices for worshipping success.
I can see how people thought Japan would try reasserting themselves. Japan, being an island nation without the resources to support its needs, has one of two options: dominate the West Pacific or be a close ally of the country that does. However, they don’t seem to forget the less the Japanese learned from WW2: never fight the US in a war of attrition of resources, so they chose to never fight a war like that again.
By this logic we can also imagine that, sooner or later, Japan will switch alliances, abandoning America for China. This, of course, if America's power keeps fading and that of China keeps growing.
@@alessandrodelogu7931 I think the problem is that China's terms tend to be so clearly unacceptable nowadays that it alienates many of the countries in the region. For example, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would give China control over Japanese trade. Furthermore, China exerts control in other ways, sending agents overseas, using collected data to deny services and target people, propping up unscrupulous dictators, trying to promote anti-Japanese racism, et cetera et cetera. Sure, you can say the United States does a lot of these things too, but China appears more visible and, in this region, aggressive and harmful, plus the US is the devil that they actually know. A switch to China is bound to shake up things in all sectors of life, and not necessarily for the better.
@@kokofan50 You are talking as if the US was still the same industrial behemoth that it was in 1940. But that is not the case. Nowadays Japan produces more steel and builds more ships than the US. If the pacific war happens today, Japan would kick the US' butt.
@@maxmustermann9305 building ships and building war ships are different things. Building and incorporating the sensors is complex. There’s a reason most of their warships are Burck class destroyers
Meh, I think the author was over reaching here. I don't think Japan and the U.S. would ever go to war unless some weird internal power shift happened in both nations. Also, as you noted, Japan relies on (and really always has relied on) foreign trade to fuel their economy, and the U.S. is a big trader with Japan as far as I'm aware. It's just an unbeneficial war for everyone involved.
@@kokukal6260 Until they received an oil embargo from the US, forcing Japan to conquer oil from the East Indies to fuel their military and country. Basically, the US caused war with Japan by its efforts to bring peace in China.
I really find it hard to even imagine Japan challenging/becoming a rival of America after WW2. Even back then, Japan was being propped up by America and was on generally good terms. It's about as likely as a 4th fascist Reich, which to say impossible
I agree with you, the Japanese were never likely to return to becoming Imperial Japan again just because of their growing economy. They had good relations with the U.S despite the Japan bashing in the U.S media plus the Japanese are devoted to peace and are a thriving democracy. Besides, the Soviet Union may not have been a threat by then but Communist China still was and was likely to be a rival to the U.S with the Soviet Union collapsing. Therefore, the Japanese still needed U.S support and protection to contain Communist China.
LOL. The late '80s, early '90s had people *CERTAIN* that Japan were going to be the new bad guys. See Michael Crichton's "Rising Sun", Tom Clancy's "Debt of Honor", and a lot more. And somehow, almost nobody predicted China.
Yea, I am surprised, China literally has the biggest manpower (population) in the world, which means they have a very large labor force which they can use to generate huge economic growth, although, I think China may not surpass USA ahem ahem Evergrande, although, China unlike Japan has some resources so it isnt too import reliant
@@phunkracy To be fair, humans naturally have an Us vs Them mentality, and it's relatively easy to exploit, saying that "Americans love to have bad guys" doesn't really make much sense, Everyone likes to have bad guys they can put to blame for their problem, Be it the government, a group or race, or individuals.
Lol China in the 80's is literally India in the 20's.A somewhat backwater with an impoverished population that's friendly to US out of convenience Predicting China will be a major anti US power in the future back then makes as much sense as predicting India will be the next China today.Its just silly
The latter half of the 90s completely stagnated Japan, but this wasn't easy to predict so yeah, the fear of a Japanese economic superpower was pretty much alive at the time.
@@XMysticHerox Taking into account that if Japan continued its economic growth trend, it would surpass the US by the beginning of the 2000s, the part of being a rival superpower (economically) isn't that unrealistic, that's what people though, you could say the Plaza Accords and the subsequent stock market crash in the country saved the US from an allied competitor, it was far from being a secondary allied power, it was a primary one, still is. Now, when it comes to the military part (willing to go to war), I find it unreasonable be it at the time or not, but it is good to remember that Japan went expansionist after becoming a growing powerhouse in the Pacific, even though more than 50 years had already passed, the consequences of Japanese imperialism still persist to this day, so the fear would be even greater with Japan being the most economically powerful country, wouldn't say "idiotic", rather misguided. But hey, the majority of people think war in Ukraine is imminent, so I would give the people of the past a break here and there.
@@Daniel-rh7kh Even if Japan surpassed the US the idea they´d turn hostile to the point of open conflict in 30 years shows complete ignorance in geopolitics and history. Things just don´t happen that quickly. Not without revolution which doesn´t really happen in prospering nations. Also thinking growth trends just continue as they do is at least as idiotic as believing a close ally can turn into deeply hostile nation in 30 years. Typical for futurists of course. 9/10 are idiots and the whole infinite growth thing is absurdly common among them. Just like all the futurists panicking about overpopulation. And because a nation was expansionist 50 years ago it still is? I don´t think I have to explain how stupid that argument is. Perhaps idiotic isn´t right. It´s mainly arrogance. Futurists tend to be incredibly full of themselves in believing they can accurately predict things decades in the future and they always make ridiculous claims like this. If they at least presented them as mere hypotheticals but often they seem utterly convinced things will happen exactly as they predict them.
@@XMysticHerox The growth rate trend wouldn't continue forever (obviously) but as I said, the fear was still there, all the other points you made are also valid, that's why people at the time when it comes to this topic should be called misguided, maybe even ignorant, but not "idiotic". You never know the future, much less all the implications of x situation, fear is a powerful feeling, the Ukrainian situation is a good example, I bet no war will arise from it, but I certainly won't throw any prejudice towards the people that though the opposite, no one has a crystal ball.
Yeah, a US-Europe war could be argued based off of the same premise. Both the US and Europe compete over oil supplies in the Middle East, and US interference in the region had had consequences detrimental to Europe. The same can be said for US policy in Eastern Europe, with many in Europe, who would actually be affected by it, taking a less hawkish stance. Or even in Latin America. And I'm not mentioning ideological differences between the two regions. Therefore my point stands. The US goes to war with Europe in 2040 (prediction would be made in around 2013 or something)
@@duitk yes the US is near self sufficient, but Europe is not, it's dependent on Russia and the Middle East. This divergence in interests very well could be at the core of a future US/EU war.
An interesting anecdote about US public opinion on Japan in the 1990s is a scene in LA92 a documentary about the Rodney King Riots. In it a protestor complains about how business men are selling the country out to the Japanese
there was a large number of novels and books in the 90s and 2000 predicting of war conflict with Japan. Japan was touted as the main economic and military rival of the USA in the 90s and 2000s, China was just a mehhh,
Looking at the growth rate of Japan pre-bubble and Plaza accord is understandable. Japan GDP growth in 70s and 80s is insane even higher than China now.
2000s is pushing it. Japan’s bubble had already popped and it’s economy and population were on a downward slide. Japan has never been the military rival of anyone (post WW2 of course). The JSDF is barely a military, it’s closer to a coast guard, disaster response force and defenders of the Japanese airspace who just so happen to have pretty advanced military tech.
Gotta love how it's just natural to US Americans to see a rising economic power as a call to war. Definitely helping the world become a better, safer place like this. Great work!
check out his book from 1996 called "The Future of War" where he predicts that warfare will be based on computers, main battle tanks will become irrelevant, nukes will be irrelevant, focus of US defense will shift to space and that drones will be used in war.
Ah yes, immediately refuted it's total shift to aerial battles in a pro-American military book (forgot the title, it's about analyzing American military successes and failures in battlefields and campaigns from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, and a little glimpse of what media back then would devolve into, published at the time of the Battle of Ramadi during the 2004 US Elections) that I used to read in 2015.
It was already pretty much established when he wrote the book. In 80s and 90s hacker and virtual reality movies were all the rage. Recon drones were already flying thousands of hours in Israel, the very same models that fly today actually in dozens of countries. And Reagan's Star Wars firmly put space as another front of military confrontation. But tanks still rule (and will rule) the battlefield.
There were notions among military authors back then in the 90s that 21st century wars (prior to the nightmare that was 9-11) would be fought only in aircraft dogfights and bombing runs, and that conventional ground forces are reduced to mobile foot scouts, thanks to the show of air domination of the Coalition & NATO forces Persian Gulf War and the Yugoslavian War, downplaying the present effects of asymmetrical and paramilitary actions already happening across the world beyond the Cold War. That's from what was read back then. Also, beyond space warfare, what would be the final dead end frontier of military technology by the end of the 21st century?
It’s funny how people as early as the 1950’s insisted that tanks would become obsolete and yet they’re still considered an essential military component.
@@carlbates9110 I'm not sure about that... The US for example, has no plans for replacement of the Abrams tanks. The successor was going to be the MCS which a light tank rather than the main battle tank. Later they tried to NGCV which is also not the main battle tank. In short all of the new models are basically much smaller than the Abrams. So the writer is basically right?...
The fact that the book doesn't go straight to "nukes will fly" makes this sound an awful lot like the plot of an Ace Combat game, just missing a massive Japanese airborne aircraft carrier
Really interesting that those absurd books or topics back in the day is a reflection of what they were facing at that time. In the next 20 years, who knew that we might laugh at what we are serious about it now.
The relationship between Japan and America was quite bad in the 70's and 80's despite allies. Because Japan was becoming quite powerful economically, America started to criticize Japan called "Japan bashing". For example, Japanese were often the villains in Hollywood movies, and there were anti-Japanese movements all over America. Japanese cars like Toyota were being destroyed all over America.
Well then I can actually say thank god for video games, anime, and manga. Anyone born post 1980 either loves Japan, or at worse views them as a quirky annoyance. The prospect of Gen Z Americans fighting Japan sounds as crazy as America going to war against Ireland.
That's quite rude on America's part, since Japan never (or mostly don't) treat America in a same way. A lot of pop culture from the US were heavily carried over Japan, although as stereotypical as they seemed Japan hardly ever regard that as something negative like many other countries would.
You're making a complete over-exaggeration. The average person didn't care enough to even begin to hate Japan. Over exaggerated by media analysts that get common people riled up, kind of like today when it comes to issues of claimed "domestic widespread racism." Actually no, it's worse today.
I think this is the main lesson: Those are the people pontificating about every other issue. I think Dan Carlin suggested that every pundit to be presented with their "batting average", he meant to show how many good/bad prediction the pundit came out in the last seasons.
The rise of China actually could have very well been predicted. China is very different from Japan- she depends less on outsiders, has the largest workforce in the entire Earth and is actually interested in seriously challenging the US, and was experiencing a period of massive economic growth. Under Deng Xiaoping China went from a third-world backwater to a modernised country. China, unlike Japan,has also been historically ideologically opposed to the USA,and that did not change with economic liberalisation. Keep in mind Deng Xiaoping is the same Chairman who rolled out the tanks in Tiananmen Square.
You actually totally missed the point of these books. It's not a prediction. The aim is to shape the way things are thought through and acted upon. The policy desired to prevent the thing is the real reason for the "prediction": they don't believe the thing predicted will happen.
well the difference between japan and China these days is that China has been militarilly confronting the USA and its allies in the Pacific. Japan nothing, no military confrontations just a economic rivalry.
Dont forget japan is a island while china is connected to the mainland A american blockaid of japan would grind the japanese ecconomy to a halt Meanwhile a american blockaid of china would result in them outsourced from russia or central asia. Although that would be a long supply line easy to cut there would at least be a supply line.
I think the US and China are well past where the US and Japan were in the early 90's. Maybe a comparison could be drawn between US and Japan in the 90's and US and China a decade ago.
@@Newbmann and the Chinese have hundreds of nukes and a number can hit the US mainland. Japan dont have any nuke weapons though have a lot of nuke powerplants.
A while ago I found an atlas from around 1970. Japan was predicted to overcome the USSR by 1980 (which it did) and the USA by 2000 to become the first economic power in the world.
I use this book as a meme when people say don't trust everything you hear on the internet. Don't trust everything you hear in a book. For context, the guy has never been to Japan, and also never bothered to research Japanese politics. Big shock, Japan has always loved the US, and anyone who did any research would understand that they were very anti-war during the 90s. Actual politics > geopolitical theory. Always. So China's gonna overtake the US in 5-30 years, huh?
also another book War in 2020 by Ralph Peters of war between USA vs. a alliance between Japan and an apartheid South Africa, published in 1991 in central Asia.
Most ppl today have forgotten the terror the Japanese economy ignited in the West and America specifically in the 80's and 90's. And they were never anything but our close ally since WW II. My favorite fear was over Japanese foreign ownership of the USA, even though British and Dutch held more but for some reason that wasn't viewed as threatening.
Interestingly, the radio show "Guns and Butter" airing on Pacifica Radio and maybe still existing on their archives, was predicting first a war on terror and then on China back in the 1990's. I used to listen back then and they were very accurate in what they saw coming.
It’s so weird that I need to say this but thanks for having an honest, non clickbait title! You could have so easily titled it “ is war with Japan inevitable?? With a red circle around a tank or something. As a history buff, it means a lot to not put out misleading content
"Coming war with Japan." If it weren't for the US, Japan wouldn't have a military lol. Their population are extremely pacifistic and their government largely has to make undemocratic, unpopular compromises with other nations to have as big a military as it does, which isn't that big given it's location and size.
Are you planning to do any collaborations with what if/ alternate Historians like monsierZ or alternate history hub? Covering such topics together would be real fun
@@LuisAldamiz Not really. China at the time was a poor backwater. Deng's reforms were just starting to take effect, and the country resembled Nigeria more than a true threat. Also, China had been an informal ally against the Soviet Union, and thus was still pretty friendly to the US. Tiananmen Square was relatively recent, and no one was quite sure if the country would devolve into something like North Korea (a poor, isolated hermit dictatorships) or implode like the USSR was gearing up to do. China could have easily stayed dirt poor, again like Nigeria, or blew up into a vicious civil war.
@@dasbubba841 People in the 20th century didn't know, but now it's easy to see why they were wrong. China being poor is an anomaly in historical terms, much likely of a prediction for the country to rebound back to the top.
Heck even Tom Clancy joined Japan bashing with his novel Debt of honor 1994 where there is a USA-Japan war , Japan buys ex Soviet ICBMs and has a nuke program, along with the Japanese conquering the Marianas. and sinking a major part of the US pacific fleet. US response is fast, beating the Japanese back, the war is very short and not really bloody. Japanese surrender fast. ends with a Japanese 747 kamikaze attack on the US congress building.
Not as silly as that Book written by the author of Jurassic Park where he predicts "the economic domination of the US by the perfidious Japanese" in 1993 literally in the middle of the Lost decade
I'm reminded of Charles A. Reich's The Greening of America. Published in 1970. Which was about how Baby Boomers were going to privilege spiritual values over material acquisition. He later said, "It's amazing how wrong you can be."
I remember buying this book in 1993, and really don't remember any strong feelings about it. My mother, who spent WW II in Japan, thought it was just a silly idea. The only good thing I can add is that it was taller than the average paperback, so it did sit on the bookshelf nicely.
The Nikkei bubble ended remarkably exactly together with the end of Cold War I by end 1989, and since then Nikkei lost slowly marking the end of the 4-year bubble economy since 1985. I was in Japan myself in 1990/91 as student. But if You had no stock shares or if You were not closer to the financial sector, You may not even notice any downturn (those who were affected were hit hard, though). I saw the first explicit downturn news about Japan in summer 1992. Many authors of books I have from that era were well into the mid 90s still in the same wake of Friedman/LeBard, like Karel van Wolveren, Daniel Burstein and Günter Ederer. Each of these authors would depict some interesting details of Japan, but fail to see some others (like van Wolferen focusing on MITI, but not on the BoJ). So, it is always very difficult to depict an accurate picture of the actual situation, let alone to predict several decades. So instead of a war with Japan, there came three Lost Decades and Abenomics. The way how Japan depopulates right now is getting visible in everyday life today.
Have you heard of a book called The War in 2020? In it Japan is a superpower using proxies to contain the United States and dismantle the USSR. And for some reason China just doesn’t become involved in international affairs. It was published a year before the USSR collapsed.
Watching this, I’m starting to understand how Tom Clancy might have come up with Debt of Honor in the mid-90s, which was laughably out of date within just a few years.
In Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor", there was a cabal of Japanese industrialists that sought to wage war against the US. This is the same book that had terrorists crashing a plane into the congress building, years before 9/11.
The problem with Clancy is that he wrote so many scenarios that the law of averages pretty much demands at least a few to turn out true. But as a writer I always found Clancy and his understanding of the world stuck in the Cold War. His understanding of anything outside of that was amateurish.
Well, it makes sense that they would market this to the people who’s parents fought in WW2 and stirring up fear about the Japanese invading nearly 50 years after the war. It seems like it was classic fear mongering that the authors (or at least the publishers) thought would make a quick buck.
I still don't understand how Turkey, a country in the far east part of mediterranean sea, is going to help Japan, a country in the west part of pasific, can someone who readed the book explain this to me?
I had that book 15 years ago and as far I remember Japan was ally with Turkey like they were ally with Germany in ww2. They were way up there and everybody were doing it's own business. Only think I remember is Japan was better with satellites so they were giving intelligence to Turkey. And Turkey was advancing in eastern europe until they went head to head with Poland like in 17th century. And he predicted Russia will collapse before 2010 and China before 2020.
Looks like somebody hadn't recognised the era of free trade we now live in, and how that avoids the need for empires and creates a strong incentive against war.
@@peterg76yt True, to some extent. On the other hand, tariffs were often high (particularly during times of economic woe) and the cost-effectiveness of shipping was limited by the lack of standard-size containers.
@@Mattdewit When countries go to war because of trade, it's almost invariably because of trade barriers which they want to remove. This explains colonial wars, like those with Indian states, and it explains the Opium wars. Part of the reason that Germany invaded the USSR was to secure its oil in case there was an embargo. Japan's conquest of the Dutch East Indies was to secure their oil given an American embargo. Though peaceful, Scotland's and Hawai'i's annexations were consented to partly because of trade barriers. But as trade barriers decreased, empires became less profitable and disappeared. The EU is a textbook example of how free trade prevents war. Western Europe has rarely experienced this length of peace between its neighbours. The original idea was to remove trade barriers on coal and steel, making countries' economies interdependent so that war would be costly. But beyond that, the near-total removal of the border in Ireland has decreased the stakes of Northern Ireland's fate enough to virtually end the terrorism there.
“In the shadow of the rising sun” is in a similar vein, same era. It’s weird to look back on it after everything that hit Japan in the 90s - Kobe, Aum, the bubble - but in the 80s it really did seem like Japan would be the new British Empire.
Well the economic surpass thing was apparently pretty prevalent since even Tom Clancy wrote a book about it...Essentially Plaza Accords makes Japan take Hawaii before they got rekted by USA.
@@andro7862 ahh yes, the quote came from the guy who ruined Latin America and has a "genius idea" to make friends with the CCP which is a very bad idea to begin with
I guess I can see how in the '91, with Japan as the worlds 2nd biggest economy and growing rapidly, you could imagine a war with Japan being inevitable.
Honestly speaking,if not for the looming Chinese(and previously Soviet) threat US-Japanese relationship would've broken down decades ago and a col war could've happened over influence in Southeast and South Asia
The Friedmans were wrong in predicting China would fall apart like the Soviet Union did. Today, Japan and the USA will be even more allied in the face of a hegemonic China. Moreover, Japan's apparent economic might ignored future demographic problems that we now see today.
@@shellshockedgerman3947 India is probably more friendlier towards Japan than probably even ROK and NATO, There is no way India will be a rival to Japan
@@newstartyt3700 have you heard of the quote "There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests" India is only friends with Japan because Japan invests in India and they have a common rival, and if the rival is defeated and India doesn't need Japanese investments they will probably be foes since the USA will be india's new rival
Use the code Tigerstar at curiositystream.com/Tigerstar to get 1 year of Curiosity Stream for only $14.99!
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George Friedman is a hack, now he's doing the same dance only this time it's China. If you want something accurate try
"A New Cold War: Global Strategy".
Basically he's a doomsayer who uses that as a marketing trick.
If Friedman had been prescient back then he would have talked about China instead or, much better, about Singapore.
Everyone ignores Singapore. Singapore prefers it that way.
nice NFT ya got there, i'll just screenshot it
"they had no ill will toward japan"
as far as i know Friedman definitely hated japan.
I guess Anime saved all of us from this.
...
JK
I like books and predictions like this because it gives an insight on what governments and people feared in the past. I wonder what the people in the future will make fun of us for predicting now
Probably joe biden and chien virus
And war with ukrain. Think about this
How can you write this bad
@@byzen23 Pick on someone your size (small)
@@charlieboy-dh1ns that’s what he did
The north Korea part actually makes a lot of sense, if you go by the author's assumption that China won't be too important.
With the Soviet sphere of influence collapsing, North Korea was left alone and abanoned, just like in our timeline, even to the point of starvation.
It would make sense for a Japan seeking to expand it's influence, to step in and try to spread it's sphere of influence to the struggling North Korea.
Of course this never happened cause Japan really doesn't want to leave it's island anymore and also China is a bit stronger than the author expected and probably wouldn't like the troops of a major power right next to Bejing.
Yeah I think the author was assuming North Korea would cease to be a Stalinist state or at least try to find new friends, with the end of the Cold War instead of what actually happened where the government policy became even more autarkic and insular with the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic aid associated with it
ok, but kind of odd as per Chinese participation in the Korean War. If I am not wrong hundred of thousands of Chinese soldiers fought there.
@@mustavogaia2655 Yes, North korea mostly exists due to China's aid.
@@mustavogaia2655 Of course but the book assumes that China is a declining power, barely away from collapse. I doubt they could influence other countries in such a state. Of course this was crazy far away from the truth
@@Jan-rq8mo Ok, maybe I am biased by seeing how much trouble Venezuela can still cause to Colombia today.
I remember a book called "The War in 2020" (Can't remember the author though) about a WW3 between a US and USSR led NATO versus Japan. In 2020. That aged well.
I remember that as well
Was an interesting book
Seeing '80s ussr drag into the 21st century was
Depressing
I actually thought this video would be about that one (didn't know the one it actually is about)
yah author Ralph Peters read that one back in the early 90s. basically Japan, Iran, various Arab countries in the Middle East and Apartheid South Africa vs. USA/USSR fighting in Central Asia. Israel is destroyed by nukes. USA using osprey tilt rotor planes mounted with advanced mass driver cannons. I found it enjoyable read in the past though now its silly.
@@johnwalsh4857 Don't forget the Runciman disease pandemic.
"US, USSR & Japan" i think they adapted this into a game, the title is Red Alert 3 🤣
People shouldn't predict the actual future but create a fictional alternate future. Then it's always accurate.
A wrong prediction kinda automatically becomes an alternate future
I actually hate the term “alternate” future as a way for a creator to excuse to disregard current politics and international relations and instead due what they want. Typically recreating long deceased empires or pan-cultural mergers.
@@Marylandbrony
Well Alternate History (AltHist) is a genre of fiction. While Alternate Future is a sub-genre of AltHist.
While it be a cop out to people that actually want to predict the future and it would degrade the actual fiction authors of the genre.
@The Urban Bourbon Bloke So powerful, turns out that Tolkien was 40-50 years ahead of European mappers when they theorized that the Dogger Bank once was a former landmass.
Where's the fun in making fictional worlds when you can try to predict reality?
There's probably the main issue with this bad predictions: they just assume the exact same trends the world is seeing in the present will continue in the future, and on steroids. This applies not just to this kind of long-term futurism book: °the economy grew 5% average in the last few years, so it will continue to grow, never mind the fact that the factors that allow that to happen have changed; this candidate is leading the polls comfortably with more than 8 months to election day, so he'll obviously win, never mind he has a massive rejection rate and a long history of scandals opponents will explore, etc°.
Induction sucks
There is also the issue that a lot of predictions are taken out of context. Case in point, people often assume that a prediction is meant to come true while often, it is actually just meant to say "if the economy WERE to grow for 5% more for a few decades, A/B are likely to happen UNLESS we do this and that".
In other words, a lot of "bad predictions" are correct; they just were taken seriously so now looking bad, we don't actually see what they were meant to warn about because we took actions to actively prevent them from coming true.
One big difference between the Japan of the 90's and China today is that for Japan vs US, it seemed mainly to be an economic rivalry with a bit of military thrown in, while with China there are multiple factors at play - it's as much (arguably even more) of a political, military, and social rivalry as it it is an economic one.
The really, really big difference is that Japan was and still is functionally under military occupation by the United States.
@@Chris-pi3ze and with constitution that essentially prevents this situation from ever changing
@@Chris-pi3ze How?
during the 1980s, many US journalists and academics claimed that Japan was not democratic. In a way, Japan was and is a political machine that buys votes to win elections, and the bureaucracy is incredibly powerful, so, could be right
@@Samuel-wm1xr sounds like a certain supposedly most democratic country on earth
how did those people not recognise the hipocrisy of calling out japan for not being democratic lol
"Number 1 Best Seller In Japan"
Lmao the Japanese really saw this book and went "Wait really? We got to war again? I gotta know how!"
Wouldn't you if someone in another country published a book. "The coming war with [your country]."
Must be fake advertising
@@aquila4460 some people would sure, but Best Seller?
Maybe there are some tips about how winning or not losing
It was worth a try at least lol
If my country wasn't allowed to have an offensive army, and the country I was supposed to be going to war with is the country who IS my offensive army, I would be very confused.
Turns out a huge part of the "economic growth" was a massive speculative asset bubble, and when it burst in the '90s it took the entire economy with it. Somewhat similar to what happened in the US in 2008
Funny how that keeps happening
@@lukeh2556 Well it's greed and herd mentality.
It's why I look at all the books out there predicting China surpassing the US by 2050 sceptically. China seems to have a lot of the same structural weaknesses and flaws as Japan did in the late 80s...except their demographics and internal cohesion are waaaaaay worse than Japan's.
@@Kagemusha08 Also, China has such economic influence that if or rather when it crashes, it would take down the whole world with it.
@@skepticalmagos_101 No, it's just the flawed modern capitalism a lot of the world subscribes to without actually even as much as reading just one of Adam Smith's books...
The Author of these books seemed pretty good at analyzing his present-day scenario and making up plausible futures for the short term, but he was _waay_ to much into the whole "History repeats itself" thing. You see this especially in the other 100-year prediction, but a bit in here as well; like, US and Japan cold war was possible, but to claim war in only 30 years... He probably predicted there might be conflict in the far future, and moved the date to be in people's lifetimes in order to market better.
I mean, the author doesn’t really seem to get the idea of globalization, which is why a lot of his “history repeats itself” stuff makes no sense now. Like, yes, there are certain patterns that emerge in history, but these things don’t take place in a vacuum; innovations change the needs of countries, which in turn change how and why they act. The authors seem to assume global actors have been static in the past sixty years.
Japan would need more people for that. There birth rates are super low at present
@@TraciPeteyforlife they would also need the will of the people as most of the population opposes anything militaristic
Friedman, like many geopolitical analysts, was a fraud who catered to rubes with political fantasy to sell books. If he was any good at analysing present day scenario he would instantly realise that Japan had no chance of being a superpower.
Because America is still and always will be country for refugees, immigrants, and freedom. Say what you want these things are facts that draw thousands of people to the USA
Honestly, a major conflict between the US and Japan would have just been the icing on the cake for 2020.
Too busy almost starting a war with iran during january
@@GarkKahn It's called multitasking.
Just swap China for Japan. Japan was basically what China is today in the late 80s. Japan’s economy was robust, powerful and was increasing in size in astronomical levels. People backed then, as stupid as it sounds today, that Japan would overtake the U.S.’ economically.
The U.S. was aware of Japan’s growing economic influence. As a result, the U.S. and other Western countries gathered together, known as the Plaza Accord and struck an agreement to economically suppress Japan, which lowered the exchange rate between the dollar against the Japanese Yen - this was to make American products a lot cheaper on an international level; causing consumers to purchase more American products.
This devastated Japan’s economy.
Smh, I wrote this comment before I watched the video.
@@dionadair8195 two front war time!
Its kinda funny that this book was published the same year as the Japanese economic crash of 1991.
8:25 this made me think of "Homefront", an early 2010s videogame where somehow North Korea manages to unify both Koreas, dominate Japan and much of South East Asia.
It used to be China originally, must self-censored hah
@@AlbertAdamsLincoln Yes they had iirc, and it was kinda botched in how they at the last minute swapped antagonists to North Korea from China. Same for the terrible remake of red dawn
Yeah
It was the prologue for what happened in our times
The "stop antagonizing china" i mean
@@AlbertAdamsLincoln I the time I also believed it to be an extent a part of how increasingly positive people in the US and elsewhere were viewing China after the Great Recession and the peak of the war on terror, showed off a possible alternate model for government. But thankfully I was proven wrong as China is as unpopular as ever.
@@Marylandbrony China is not just unpopular, thanks to controversial takes that many people have been charmed/coerced to believe the CCP.
It is duplicitously popular, chaining it's allies, swayed in misplaced devotion, unto it's altar of sacrifices for worshipping success.
I can see how people thought Japan would try reasserting themselves. Japan, being an island nation without the resources to support its needs, has one of two options: dominate the West Pacific or be a close ally of the country that does. However, they don’t seem to forget the less the Japanese learned from WW2: never fight the US in a war of attrition of resources, so they chose to never fight a war like that again.
By this logic we can also imagine that, sooner or later, Japan will switch alliances, abandoning America for China. This, of course, if America's power keeps fading and that of China keeps growing.
@@alessandrodelogu7931 if the US vanished, China somehow punched through the first island chain, and China gave up its animosity towards Japan.
@@alessandrodelogu7931 I think the problem is that China's terms tend to be so clearly unacceptable nowadays that it alienates many of the countries in the region. For example, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would give China control over Japanese trade. Furthermore, China exerts control in other ways, sending agents overseas, using collected data to deny services and target people, propping up unscrupulous dictators, trying to promote anti-Japanese racism, et cetera et cetera.
Sure, you can say the United States does a lot of these things too, but China appears more visible and, in this region, aggressive and harmful, plus the US is the devil that they actually know. A switch to China is bound to shake up things in all sectors of life, and not necessarily for the better.
@@kokofan50 You are talking as if the US was still the same industrial behemoth that it was in 1940. But that is not the case. Nowadays Japan produces more steel and builds more ships than the US. If the pacific war happens today, Japan would kick the US' butt.
@@maxmustermann9305 building ships and building war ships are different things. Building and incorporating the sensors is complex. There’s a reason most of their warships are Burck class destroyers
Meh, I think the author was over reaching here. I don't think Japan and the U.S. would ever go to war unless some weird internal power shift happened in both nations. Also, as you noted, Japan relies on (and really always has relied on) foreign trade to fuel their economy, and the U.S. is a big trader with Japan as far as I'm aware. It's just an unbeneficial war for everyone involved.
Well, Japan also relied on the US for natural resources during the 1930s...
It can't helped. Japanese soil is poor of natural resources. They need to import it from somwhere else.
@@kokukal6260 Until they received an oil embargo from the US, forcing Japan to conquer oil from the East Indies to fuel their military and country. Basically, the US caused war with Japan by its efforts to bring peace in China.
@@Jupiter__001_ And get out of the Great Depression
I really find it hard to even imagine Japan challenging/becoming a rival of America after WW2. Even back then, Japan was being propped up by America and was on generally good terms.
It's about as likely as a 4th fascist Reich, which to say impossible
The way you worded it as 4th "fascist" reich seemed like you are expecting people to counter it with "EU is the 4th reich"
@@Pyrrhee5236 did he say American? No.
In the 1980s it seemed more plausible.
I agree with you, the Japanese were never likely to return to becoming Imperial Japan again just because of their growing economy. They had good relations with the U.S despite the Japan bashing in the U.S media plus the Japanese are devoted to peace and are a thriving democracy.
Besides, the Soviet Union may not have been a threat by then but Communist China still was and was likely to be a rival to the U.S with the Soviet Union collapsing. Therefore, the Japanese still needed U.S support and protection to contain Communist China.
We were never being "propped up" by america
LOL. The late '80s, early '90s had people *CERTAIN* that Japan were going to be the new bad guys. See Michael Crichton's "Rising Sun", Tom Clancy's "Debt of Honor", and a lot more.
And somehow, almost nobody predicted China.
Yea, I am surprised, China literally has the biggest manpower (population) in the world, which means they have a very large labor force which they can use to generate huge economic growth, although, I think China may not surpass USA ahem ahem Evergrande, although, China unlike Japan has some resources so it isnt too import reliant
Because Americans love to have a bad guy, no matter how little sense it makes for 'the guy' to be bad.
China at the time was still a backwater and rather US friendly.
@@phunkracy To be fair, humans naturally have an Us vs Them mentality, and it's relatively easy to exploit, saying that "Americans love to have bad guys" doesn't really make much sense, Everyone likes to have bad guys they can put to blame for their problem, Be it the government, a group or race, or individuals.
Lol China in the 80's is literally India in the 20's.A somewhat backwater with an impoverished population that's friendly to US out of convenience
Predicting China will be a major anti US power in the future back then makes as much sense as predicting India will be the next China today.Its just silly
Up next, The Coming War with Lichtenstein.
More after The Coming Conflict with the Vatican.
As seen in the documentary "The Mouse That Roared".
The latter half of the 90s completely stagnated Japan, but this wasn't easy to predict so yeah, the fear of a Japanese economic superpower was pretty much alive at the time.
Still idiotic to believe that Japan would go from an allied secondary power to a rival world power willing to go to war within 30 years.
@@XMysticHerox Taking into account that if Japan continued its economic growth trend, it would surpass the US by the beginning of the 2000s, the part of being a rival superpower (economically) isn't that unrealistic, that's what people though, you could say the Plaza Accords and the subsequent stock market crash in the country saved the US from an allied competitor, it was far from being a secondary allied power, it was a primary one, still is.
Now, when it comes to the military part (willing to go to war), I find it unreasonable be it at the time or not, but it is good to remember that Japan went expansionist after becoming a growing powerhouse in the Pacific, even though more than 50 years had already passed, the consequences of Japanese imperialism still persist to this day, so the fear would be even greater with Japan being the most economically powerful country, wouldn't say "idiotic", rather misguided.
But hey, the majority of people think war in Ukraine is imminent, so I would give the people of the past a break here and there.
@@Daniel-rh7kh Even if Japan surpassed the US the idea they´d turn hostile to the point of open conflict in 30 years shows complete ignorance in geopolitics and history. Things just don´t happen that quickly. Not without revolution which doesn´t really happen in prospering nations.
Also thinking growth trends just continue as they do is at least as idiotic as believing a close ally can turn into deeply hostile nation in 30 years. Typical for futurists of course. 9/10 are idiots and the whole infinite growth thing is absurdly common among them. Just like all the futurists panicking about overpopulation.
And because a nation was expansionist 50 years ago it still is? I don´t think I have to explain how stupid that argument is.
Perhaps idiotic isn´t right. It´s mainly arrogance. Futurists tend to be incredibly full of themselves in believing they can accurately predict things decades in the future and they always make ridiculous claims like this. If they at least presented them as mere hypotheticals but often they seem utterly convinced things will happen exactly as they predict them.
@@XMysticHerox japan has been a world power since after ww1. Youre confusing world power for superpower
@@XMysticHerox The growth rate trend wouldn't continue forever (obviously) but as I said, the fear was still there, all the other points you made are also valid, that's why people at the time when it comes to this topic should be called misguided, maybe even ignorant, but not "idiotic".
You never know the future, much less all the implications of x situation, fear is a powerful feeling, the Ukrainian situation is a good example, I bet no war will arise from it, but I certainly won't throw any prejudice towards the people that though the opposite, no one has a crystal ball.
American writers predicting the future be like: what is a "Europe"?
Pretty sure it's a moon, or is that Europa?
Yeah, a US-Europe war could be argued based off of the same premise. Both the US and Europe compete over oil supplies in the Middle East, and US interference in the region had had consequences detrimental to Europe. The same can be said for US policy in Eastern Europe, with many in Europe, who would actually be affected by it, taking a less hawkish stance. Or even in Latin America. And I'm not mentioning ideological differences between the two regions.
Therefore my point stands. The US goes to war with Europe in 2040 (prediction would be made in around 2013 or something)
@@jevinliu4658 the US is almost self sufficient in oil, and what they buy they buy from Canada and Mexico. So no they won't have to compare for oil.
A rock band with one single hit
@@duitk yes the US is near self sufficient, but Europe is not, it's dependent on Russia and the Middle East. This divergence in interests very well could be at the core of a future US/EU war.
An interesting anecdote about US public opinion on Japan in the 1990s is a scene in LA92 a documentary about the Rodney King Riots. In it a protestor complains about how business men are selling the country out to the Japanese
Me before watching: Wow this book sounds pretty dumb
Me after watching: Wow this book was pretty dumb
there was a large number of novels and books in the 90s and 2000 predicting of war conflict with Japan. Japan was touted as the main economic and military rival of the USA in the 90s and 2000s, China was just a mehhh,
Looking at the growth rate of Japan pre-bubble and Plaza accord is understandable. Japan GDP growth in 70s and 80s is insane even higher than China now.
Pizza accord?
2000s is pushing it. Japan’s bubble had already popped and it’s economy and population were on a downward slide.
Japan has never been the military rival of anyone (post WW2 of course). The JSDF is barely a military, it’s closer to a coast guard, disaster response force and defenders of the Japanese airspace who just so happen to have pretty advanced military tech.
@@cyclix5314 they meant Plaza Accord lol
Gotta love how it's just natural to US Americans to see a rising economic power as a call to war. Definitely helping the world become a better, safer place like this. Great work!
check out his book from 1996 called "The Future of War" where he predicts that warfare will be based on computers, main battle tanks will become irrelevant, nukes will be irrelevant, focus of US defense will shift to space and that drones will be used in war.
Ah yes, immediately refuted it's total shift to aerial battles in a pro-American military book (forgot the title, it's about analyzing American military successes and failures in battlefields and campaigns from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, and a little glimpse of what media back then would devolve into, published at the time of the Battle of Ramadi during the 2004 US Elections) that I used to read in 2015.
It was already pretty much established when he wrote the book. In 80s and 90s hacker and virtual reality movies were all the rage. Recon drones were already flying thousands of hours in Israel, the very same models that fly today actually in dozens of countries. And Reagan's Star Wars firmly put space as another front of military confrontation. But tanks still rule (and will rule) the battlefield.
There were notions among military authors back then in the 90s that 21st century wars (prior to the nightmare that was 9-11) would be fought only in aircraft dogfights and bombing runs, and that conventional ground forces are reduced to mobile foot scouts, thanks to the show of air domination of the Coalition & NATO forces Persian Gulf War and the Yugoslavian War, downplaying the present effects of asymmetrical and paramilitary actions already happening across the world beyond the Cold War. That's from what was read back then.
Also, beyond space warfare, what would be the final dead end frontier of military technology by the end of the 21st century?
It’s funny how people as early as the 1950’s insisted that tanks would become obsolete and yet they’re still considered an essential military component.
@@carlbates9110 I'm not sure about that... The US for example, has no plans for replacement of the Abrams tanks. The successor was going to be the MCS which a light tank rather than the main battle tank. Later they tried to NGCV which is also not the main battle tank. In short all of the new models are basically much smaller than the Abrams.
So the writer is basically right?...
A good followup would be a videou about "2034: A Novel of the Next World War" - Admiral Jim Stavridis
The fact that the book doesn't go straight to "nukes will fly" makes this sound an awful lot like the plot of an Ace Combat game, just missing a massive Japanese airborne aircraft carrier
Really interesting that those absurd books or topics back in the day is a reflection of what they were facing at that time. In the next 20 years, who knew that we might laugh at what we are serious about it now.
The relationship between Japan and America was quite bad in the 70's and 80's despite allies. Because Japan was becoming quite powerful economically, America started to criticize Japan called "Japan bashing". For example, Japanese were often the villains in Hollywood movies, and there were anti-Japanese movements all over America. Japanese cars like Toyota were being destroyed all over America.
Well then I can actually say thank god for video games, anime, and manga. Anyone born post 1980 either loves Japan, or at worse views them as a quirky annoyance. The prospect of Gen Z Americans fighting Japan sounds as crazy as America going to war against Ireland.
Well that explains their attitude towards China then, but then again it’s not like the CCP are innocent either
That's quite rude on America's part, since Japan never (or mostly don't) treat America in a same way. A lot of pop culture from the US were heavily carried over Japan, although as stereotypical as they seemed Japan hardly ever regard that as something negative like many other countries would.
You're making a complete over-exaggeration. The average person didn't care enough to even begin to hate Japan. Over exaggerated by media analysts that get common people riled up, kind of like today when it comes to issues of claimed "domestic widespread racism." Actually no, it's worse today.
@@ukaznipsigururuk8685 don't adopt a skewed view of reality.
Book: The rising sun will once again shine it's rays to pacific by 2020.
IRL: Economic crash in 1991 and Anime...
10/10 would predict again.
Well, anime is already something in 1970-1980
the rising sun of weebery
@@geniei91 Blessed.
@@geniei91 Japan's secret weapon to bad it got countered by the Americans Netflix adaptation.
@@starless267 mashallah it do be like that
This same guy is by the way still getting invited to multiple conventions as a speaker and being treated seriously
I think this is the main lesson: Those are the people pontificating about every other issue. I think Dan Carlin suggested that every pundit to be presented with their "batting average", he meant to show how many good/bad prediction the pundit came out in the last seasons.
*Learn this lesson, folks: the far future is unpredictable.*
The rise of China actually could have very well been predicted. China is very different from Japan- she depends less on outsiders, has the largest workforce in the entire Earth and is actually interested in seriously challenging the US, and was experiencing a period of massive economic growth. Under Deng Xiaoping China went from a third-world backwater to a modernised country. China, unlike Japan,has also been historically ideologically opposed to the USA,and that did not change with economic liberalisation. Keep in mind Deng Xiaoping is the same Chairman who rolled out the tanks in Tiananmen Square.
in the grim darkness of the far future...
No it isn't: the world gets destroyed somehow in the future and everybody dies, and we will probably be already dead when this happens
You actually totally missed the point of these books. It's not a prediction. The aim is to shape the way things are thought through and acted upon. The policy desired to prevent the thing is the real reason for the "prediction": they don't believe the thing predicted will happen.
George Friedman: there's gunna b a war wif Japan!!1!
Tom Clancy: *write that down, write that down!*
“ The No.1 best seller in Japan” that cracked me. He sure knew how to sell books in Japan.
The fact that the map shows Tibet and Manchuria separated from China, really shows how much Friedman was looking to ww2 for making up his own scenario
So many movies from the 80's and early 90's had references to Japan taking over (mostly economy)...
“Back to the Future part II”did it
well the difference between japan and China these days is that China has been militarilly confronting the USA and its allies in the Pacific. Japan nothing, no military confrontations just a economic rivalry.
Also there are US military bases on Japan
Dont forget japan is a island while china is connected to the mainland
A american blockaid of japan would grind the japanese ecconomy to a halt
Meanwhile a american blockaid of china would result in them outsourced from russia or central asia.
Although that would be a long supply line easy to cut there would at least be a supply line.
I think the US and China are well past where the US and Japan were in the early 90's. Maybe a comparison could be drawn between US and Japan in the 90's and US and China a decade ago.
@@Newbmann and the Chinese have hundreds of nukes and a number can hit the US mainland. Japan dont have any nuke weapons though have a lot of nuke powerplants.
A while ago I found an atlas from around 1970. Japan was predicted to overcome the USSR by 1980 (which it did) and the USA by 2000 to become the first economic power in the world.
population would grow
I use this book as a meme when people say don't trust everything you hear on the internet. Don't trust everything you hear in a book.
For context, the guy has never been to Japan, and also never bothered to research Japanese politics. Big shock, Japan has always loved the US, and anyone who did any research would understand that they were very anti-war during the 90s. Actual politics > geopolitical theory. Always.
So China's gonna overtake the US in 5-30 years, huh?
Not if India puts both in the pocket. Superpower 2020 but a little late
also another book War in 2020 by Ralph Peters of war between USA vs. a alliance between Japan and an apartheid South Africa, published in 1991 in central Asia.
Most ppl today have forgotten the terror the Japanese economy ignited in the West and America specifically in the 80's and 90's. And they were never anything but our close ally since WW II. My favorite fear was over Japanese foreign ownership of the USA, even though British and Dutch held more but for some reason that wasn't viewed as threatening.
Interestingly, the radio show "Guns and Butter" airing on Pacifica Radio and maybe still existing on their archives, was predicting first a war on terror and then on China back in the 1990's. I used to listen back then and they were very accurate in what they saw coming.
It’s so weird that I need to say this but thanks for having an honest, non clickbait title! You could have so easily titled it “ is war with Japan inevitable?? With a red circle around a tank or something. As a history buff, it means a lot to not put out misleading content
I recall finding this book in my high school library circa 2006, it seemed pretty absurd even then.
"Coming war with Japan."
If it weren't for the US, Japan wouldn't have a military lol. Their population are extremely pacifistic and their government largely has to make undemocratic, unpopular compromises with other nations to have as big a military as it does, which isn't that big given it's location and size.
Are you planning to do any collaborations with what if/ alternate Historians like monsierZ or alternate history hub? Covering such topics together would be real fun
I love how the book actually got a lot of things right. It just fits better to chinas position than to the japanese
@@LuisAldamiz Post-war 20th century American mentality, I suppose. China had not been a major power in living memory by that point.
@@LuisAldamiz Not really. China at the time was a poor backwater. Deng's reforms were just starting to take effect, and the country resembled Nigeria more than a true threat. Also, China had been an informal ally against the Soviet Union, and thus was still pretty friendly to the US.
Tiananmen Square was relatively recent, and no one was quite sure if the country would devolve into something like North Korea (a poor, isolated hermit dictatorships) or implode like the USSR was gearing up to do. China could have easily stayed dirt poor, again like Nigeria, or blew up into a vicious civil war.
@@dasbubba841 People in the 20th century didn't know, but now it's easy to see why they were wrong. China being poor is an anomaly in historical terms, much likely of a prediction for the country to rebound back to the top.
Heck even Tom Clancy joined Japan bashing with his novel Debt of honor 1994 where there is a USA-Japan war , Japan buys ex Soviet ICBMs and has a nuke program, along with the Japanese conquering the Marianas. and sinking a major part of the US pacific fleet. US response is fast, beating the Japanese back, the war is very short and not really bloody. Japanese surrender fast. ends with a Japanese 747 kamikaze attack on the US congress building.
"...japanese 747 kamikaze attack on the US congress building."
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, lol.
@@josh2482 yah I knows...hahah
@@josh2482 but back then we thought it was actually possible due to all the anti japanese bashing propoganda going on.
8:11 He probably assumed that N. Korea would collapse with the rest of the Communist bloc and Japan would swoop in and take over.
Both this book and the 100 year prediction really feels like someone wants to replay WWII with future tech.
To go back even further in time, check Albert Robida’s “the Twentieth Century.”
Not as silly as that Book written by the author of Jurassic Park where he predicts "the economic domination of the US by the perfidious Japanese" in 1993 literally in the middle of the Lost decade
Do a video on Friedman's latest book The Storm Before the Calm, it's a very interesting look at U.S. politics.
I'm reminded of Charles A. Reich's The Greening of America. Published in 1970. Which was about how Baby Boomers were going to privilege spiritual values over material acquisition. He later said, "It's amazing how wrong you can be."
Japan: *Starts doing well economically*
America: Wait.... That's illegal
Really interesting video! Thanks for sharing how a writer from the 90s saw the future, even if they were laughably wrong.
See guys? Back in the 80's it was Japan now it is China. US never liked competition.
I remember buying this book in 1993, and really don't remember any strong feelings about it. My mother, who spent WW II in Japan, thought it was just a silly idea. The only good thing I can add is that it was taller than the average paperback, so it did sit on the bookshelf nicely.
I read that “Next 100 Years” book when I was 11, was so spooked. They actually did call Poland right sorta so far
Would make an interesting alternate history
Read the first croatian science fiction novel, On the Pacific in 2255, written by Milan Sufflay
Please make more videos like this. I like the videos where you talk and cover history. Thanks
The Nikkei bubble ended remarkably exactly together with the end of Cold War I by end 1989, and since then Nikkei lost slowly marking the end of the 4-year bubble economy since 1985. I was in Japan myself in 1990/91 as student. But if You had no stock shares or if You were not closer to the financial sector, You may not even notice any downturn (those who were affected were hit hard, though). I saw the first explicit downturn news about Japan in summer 1992. Many authors of books I have from that era were well into the mid 90s still in the same wake of Friedman/LeBard, like Karel van Wolveren, Daniel Burstein and Günter Ederer. Each of these authors would depict some interesting details of Japan, but fail to see some others (like van Wolferen focusing on MITI, but not on the BoJ). So, it is always very difficult to depict an accurate picture of the actual situation, let alone to predict several decades. So instead of a war with Japan, there came three Lost Decades and Abenomics. The way how Japan depopulates right now is getting visible in everyday life today.
Have you heard of a book called The War in 2020? In it Japan is a superpower using proxies to contain the United States and dismantle the USSR. And for some reason China just doesn’t become involved in international affairs. It was published a year before the USSR collapsed.
Reminds me of those schizophrenic apocalypse prediction books I used to read as a kid.
I'd like more context
Watching this, I’m starting to understand how Tom Clancy might have come up with Debt of Honor in the mid-90s, which was laughably out of date within just a few years.
In Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor", there was a cabal of Japanese industrialists that sought to wage war against the US. This is the same book that had terrorists crashing a plane into the congress building, years before 9/11.
The problem with Clancy is that he wrote so many scenarios that the law of averages pretty much demands at least a few to turn out true. But as a writer I always found Clancy and his understanding of the world stuck in the Cold War. His understanding of anything outside of that was amateurish.
Japan is a country that actually has US troops and military assets stationed in it.
RIP Vincent Chin who was murdered during this period of anti-japanese sentiment
May Amaterasu comfort his spirit
my god I remember this book, I read a book inspired by this, World War 2020.
Well, it makes sense that they would market this to the people who’s parents fought in WW2 and stirring up fear about the Japanese invading nearly 50 years after the war. It seems like it was classic fear mongering that the authors (or at least the publishers) thought would make a quick buck.
Walter Deming and some others were huge in the Japanese Economic Miracle
I still don't understand how Turkey, a country in the far east part of mediterranean sea, is going to help Japan, a country in the west part of pasific, can someone who readed the book explain this to me?
I had that book 15 years ago and as far I remember Japan was ally with Turkey like they were ally with Germany in ww2. They were way up there and everybody were doing it's own business. Only think I remember is Japan was better with satellites so they were giving intelligence to Turkey. And Turkey was advancing in eastern europe until they went head to head with Poland like in 17th century. And he predicted Russia will collapse before 2010 and China before 2020.
I had this book at one point. Was even looking for it a few years back for a reread.
Looks like somebody hadn't recognised the era of free trade we now live in, and how that avoids the need for empires and creates a strong incentive against war.
Not that free if you think about it, lots of countries are using embargo as a weapon to deal with their economic rival.
1914 was a very globalized world too.
@@peterg76yt True, to some extent. On the other hand, tariffs were often high (particularly during times of economic woe) and the cost-effectiveness of shipping was limited by the lack of standard-size containers.
WW 1 was claimed to be the war to end all wars so dont get your hopes up. Trade is also an important reason for countries to go to war.
@@Mattdewit When countries go to war because of trade, it's almost invariably because of trade barriers which they want to remove. This explains colonial wars, like those with Indian states, and it explains the Opium wars. Part of the reason that Germany invaded the USSR was to secure its oil in case there was an embargo. Japan's conquest of the Dutch East Indies was to secure their oil given an American embargo. Though peaceful, Scotland's and Hawai'i's annexations were consented to partly because of trade barriers. But as trade barriers decreased, empires became less profitable and disappeared.
The EU is a textbook example of how free trade prevents war. Western Europe has rarely experienced this length of peace between its neighbours. The original idea was to remove trade barriers on coal and steel, making countries' economies interdependent so that war would be costly. But beyond that, the near-total removal of the border in Ireland has decreased the stakes of Northern Ireland's fate enough to virtually end the terrorism there.
"Amine is a lie"
-master oogway
Amines are organic molecules where nitrogen is bonded to 3 different atoms.
Odd when Oogwei's descendants started making quality Made in China anime
“In the shadow of the rising sun” is in a similar vein, same era. It’s weird to look back on it after everything that hit Japan in the 90s - Kobe, Aum, the bubble - but in the 80s it really did seem like Japan would be the new British Empire.
I remember reading that book when I was in college.
This book predicted Akira???
What was the author thinking? Japan’s one of our closest allies.
Well the economic surpass thing was apparently pretty prevalent since even Tom Clancy wrote a book about it...Essentially Plaza Accords makes Japan take Hawaii before they got rekted by USA.
Nations don't have permanent allies - only permanent interests.
innit.
@@andro7862 ahh yes, the quote came from the guy who ruined Latin America and has a "genius idea" to make friends with the CCP which is a very bad idea to begin with
@@sweetballs4742 unfortunately that quote is completely true
I guess I can see how in the '91, with Japan as the worlds 2nd biggest economy and growing rapidly, you could imagine a war with Japan being inevitable.
For some reason I thought I was listening to whatifalthist until I heard background music
10:35 what I feel everytime I play Eu4 and the game nagged me to pick a rival
Japan is building the Type 10 tank, entered service 2012. They stil operate the Type 90.
A teenager would be able to make better predictions. Just by putting this book up on your channel makes me question why?
Those damn time travelers always ruining our plans
Honestly speaking,if not for the looming Chinese(and previously Soviet) threat US-Japanese relationship would've broken down decades ago and a col war could've happened over influence in Southeast and South Asia
Wow... this author is obsessed with the U.S. going to war with Japan for some reason.
Well George Friedman is technically right. Japan invaded the USA by giving us anime
My man really said Japan would take over the world economy 5 minutes before the lost decade happened
Yes the war with Japan will be about them copyright claiming all anime RUclips review videos
Have a copy on my shelf. Great video
Embarrassing that this was published in '91. What a complete misunderstanding this guy had of the international balance of power politics.
The Friedmans were wrong in predicting China would fall apart like the Soviet Union did. Today, Japan and the USA will be even more allied in the face of a hegemonic China. Moreover, Japan's apparent economic might ignored future demographic problems that we now see today.
Until Japan invents real cat girls, there is no reason to invade.
The way you mentioned the Asset Price Bubble was WAY oversimplified, which basically influenced how the demographics of a shrinking population started
Thank whoever time traveler who read this book and caused the invention of anime.
This ought to be a fun one
2:48 Replace "Japan" with "China" and we're in 2022 all of a sudden.
The JSDF _is_ expanding and Japan has had small numbers of main battle tanks since the 60s. Would they take a stance against the US? lol no.
Japan has no reason to. There biggest rivals/future threats in the region is China, the Koreas, Russia, and maybe Indonesia and India.
@@shellshockedgerman3947 India is probably more friendlier towards Japan than probably even ROK and NATO, There is no way India will be a rival to Japan
@@newstartyt3700 have you heard of the quote "There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests"
India is only friends with Japan because Japan invests in India and they have a common rival, and if the rival is defeated and India doesn't need Japanese investments they will probably be foes since the USA will be india's new rival
@@newstartyt3700 Both are overpopulated countries desperate for foreign resources.