Re: More future history questions

I've pretty much given up on "future history", and this summary of Mr.
Friedman's book reminds me why I did: The sheer backward-looking
laziness of much of it, the determination of the authors to ignore
cultural factors in cultures other than their own, and the apparent
influence of today's publishing/commercial considerations on predictions
of the future.

> So Russia's collapse leaves some wiggle room on its borders. He writes
off China as not having enough cohesion and India as hemmed in by
geography and instead proposes

China is not cohesive? Friedman must use some massive double-standards
here, considering the strange bedfellows he does not hesitate to imagine
elsewhere. About the last parts of China that might be less than fully
united into the nation are the eastern, industrialised parts (which
include Beijing incidentally) he predicts will somehow ally with
*Japan*. I thought we were past the old "Japanese and Chinese are
basically the same so they'll have no problems getting together under
Japanese leadership" viewpoint (it worked *so* well in the past...), but
no.

I translate this whole thing into: "My publisher didn't want me to write
another 'Rise Of China' book, so I had to come up with some excuse to
leave it out".

> Japan gets power by first economically allying with productive coastal
regions of China and them militarily going after the Pacific rim areas
of Russia.

Does Mr. Friedman realise that much of the Pacific rim area of Russia
used to be Chinese? And that although the Chinese government has
pragmatically settled its hash with Russia over the Amur/Heilong Jiang
river region, a lot of Chinese people still regard it as such? They have
to put up with Russia having grabbed it in the 19th century, but Japan
now? Just throwing that out there...

> 2) Turkey as a regional economic power pushes up into the Caucasus as
Russia collapse and acts as the peaceful hand in the fragmenting Arab
nations/Muslim world

Culture-ignoring conflation of Muslim and Arab? Incidentally, China is
not cohesive, but the notoriously fissiparous Middle East is united
under Turkey? And Turkey's own ethnic/cultural divisions don't count?
Lazy thinking.

> The Japanese then make a "secret" first strike by launching rocks
(with rocket motors attached) from secret part of their moon base

While an ageing population neuters Western Europe, it somehow turns
Japan into an economic dynamo (see my comments above about Japan
"allying with productive coastal China" bit) the and military aggressor?
In a *very* obvious recycling of the attack on Pearl Harbour. Lazy.

There seem to be some wildly optimistic assumptions about how quickly
new technologies can be rolled out into production. A glance at the
problems Nazi Germany had in converting cutting-edge research into
useful weapon-systems on the ground in mid-war might have been
worthwhile. Or a look at how long it took to roll-out centimetric radar
effectively after the invention of the cavity-magnatron in 1940 despite
its crucial importance in winning the Battle Of The Atlantic (hardly a
side-show, after all).