China Codgers, and the Next Wave (Sic.) of U.S. Dominance
Some musings from George Friedman of Stratfor today got me thinking about demographics and the future of the U.S. What people forget is that while the U.S. is aging, it is still a relatively young country in demographic terms. It is younger than almost all of Europe, as well as Japan, of course, but not (currently) China. That is a tremendous advantage, and one that is likely to tilt further in the U.S.'s favor, as the following figure shows.
With the preceding in mind, the following is from a Bloomberg précis of Friedman's new book, The Next 100 Years:
“The United States -- far from being on the verge of decline -- has actually just begun its ascent,” Friedman writes in this geopolitical thriller.
Already in 2009, Friedman says, the jihadists behind the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, are a receding threat, their goal of an Islamic empire straddling Europe and Asia shattered by divisions in the Muslim world.
China will be the next challenger to go, torn apart by the inevitable economic slowdown and rekindled tensions between the coastal provinces and the countryside, Friedman predicts. Russia will hang on longer, rebuilding a Soviet bloc-lite by 2015, only to lose the second Cold War in much the same way it lost the first, and more quickly.
Two facts will drive the century according to this forecast: America’s dominance of the world’s oceans and its comparatively low population density. Dismissing the Great Man school of history, Friedman pays little attention to the triumphs and blunders of political leaders. He instead argues that each country’s grand strategy is “deeply embedded” in its DNA.
There are some brilliant apercus to be found in these pages. The U.S. “tends to first underestimate and then overestimate enemies,” we read. Russia is rearming because “rich and weak is a bad position for nations to be in.”
These are, of course, wild-ass guesses, and I'm cheerfully skeptical that it all works out so neatly in the U.S.'s favor. But there is no denying Friedman is an entertaining geopolitical analyst. And, from an entirely selfish perspective, he did manage to make me go check U.S./China UN demographic data on the two countries aging rates, which I have appended in the following graph. It compares the proportions of the two countries' populations age 65 and older in 2010, and in 2050. The pace at which China will go from a young society to an elderly one is remarkable.
