The Book That Predicted War With Japan by 2020

In 1991, George Friedman and Meredith LeBard wrote a book claiming war with Japan was inevitable by 2020. Obviously that never happened.

[cookie]

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

[Jan-rqmo]

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.

[loganmartin]

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.

[modmaker]

People shouldn't predict the actual future but create a fictional alternate future. Then it's always accurate.

[NoMoreCrumbs]

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

[jared_bowden]

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.

[dionadair]

Honestly, a major conflict between the US and Japan would have just been the icing on the cake for 2020.

[jared_bowden]

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.

[llLorenzoll]

"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!"

[TheCowardRobertFord]

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°.

[andrewthejew]

Its kinda funny that this book was published the same year as the Japanese economic crash of 1991.

[marcello]

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.

[kokofan]

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.

[WayOutGaming]

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.

[theknight]

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.

[AnonymousFreakYT]

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.

[Chriscaf]

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

[Daniel-rhkh]

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.

[TrenchReynolds]

Up next, The Coming War with Lichtenstein.

[cameronsmith]

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