Trying to predict the future is a difficult task as George Friedman makes clear in

his book, The Next 100 Years. His brief summary of the 20th

unpredictable the future can be. He says, “Imagine that you were alive in the summer of

1900, living in London, then the capital of the world.” The future seemed fixed

“peaceful, prosperous Europe would rule the world.”

By 1920, this assumption would seem like a distant memory. “Europe had been

torn apart by an agonizing war. The continent was in tatters. The Austro-Hungarian,

Russian, German, and Ottoman empires were gone and millions had died in a war that

lasted for years.” Although there was lots of uncertainty, one thing was certain “the peace

treaty that had been imposed on Germany guaranteed that it would not soon reemerge.”

Twenty years later in 1940, Germany had not only reemerged but conquered

France and dominated Europe. The Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany, and it

looked like Germany would dominate Europe and most of the world.

By 1960, Europe was very different. Germany had been crushed and Berlin was

split down the middle by the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States had

emerged as a superpower as it attempted to face down communism in both the Soviet

Union and in China.

Twenty years later, the world was different again. “The United States has been

defeated in a seven-year war—not by the Soviet Union, but by communist North

Vietnam.” It was not only expelled from Vietnam but from Iran (and its oil fields seemed

to fall into the hands of the Soviet Union). “To contain the Soviet Union, the United

States had formed an alliance with Maoist China.”

By 2000, the Soviet Union had completely collapsed. China was communist in

name but has become capitalist in practice. NATO had advanced into Eastern Europe and

even into the former Soviet Union. Add to that how September 11, 2001 changed the

world again.

All of this is a reminder that the future is always changing.

century reminds us how