Space Power and the Future World Order: George Friedman, American Hegemony, and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century

INTRODUCTION This essay is based on George Friedman’s work in his book The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. Friedman opens one of his studies in Chapter 12 with a claim that leaves no room for bargaining: the outcome of the mid-century war will affirm, incontrovertibly, America’s position as the most dominant international power in the world, and North America’s position as the center of gravity of the international system. He is not speculating. He is establishing the starting point from which his entire analysis of the 2060s is built. Before speaking of energy, economics, or technology, Friedman erects this axiom of victory as an unshakable foundation. From there he moves. That victory, according to Friedman, produces a strategic achievement that goes far beyond ordinary military triumph: America succeeds in consolidating command of space, and from that command of space, control over the international sea lanes. These two things are not mentioned together by accident. For Friedman, control of the sea and control of space are expressions of one and the same logic in two different eras — whoever masters the domain in which the projection of global power is most effectively carried out determines the rules for everyone else. Nineteenth-century Britain ruled the seas. Twenty-first-century America rules the orbit. The consequence in both cases is identical: all other nations are forced to play within a system whose basic rules are written by the hegemon. Yet victory in war does not automatically convert itself into a stable order. Friedman understands this, which is why he immediately turns to the most important instrument of the 2060s: the treaty. That peace treaty, according to Friedman, formally grants America the exclusive right to militarize space. Other powers may use space for non-military purposes, but only under American supervision. This is