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Prediction is difficult, except retrospectively.
But what would be my prediction for the dominant world nation in 30 years?
(Assuming the same nations, and excluding the possibility of new colonies, e.g. European nations taken-over and run by other groups.)
On present trends and assuming there is no 'Great Awakening' of Christianity in the West (for which we are hopeful, but not optimistic)...
Turkey.
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Here are the assumptions I am working from.
1. The nation would be one with a young and growing population of reasonable size.
(This rules out the West and East Asia and Russia - all the most internally-complex societies; which means that the dominant society in a generation's time would be a society that is currently of mid-range complexity.)
2. It would be Islamic, and ride the rising tide of Islamic demography.
(Because, before 25 years have elapsed, one in four people in the world will be Muslim. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth This rules out most places. )
3. It must want to be the dominant nation, and be psychologically-capable of becoming the dominant nation.
(This rules out quite a few other places; and is of course a further factor in eliminating The West.)
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Turkey seems to fit the bill better than any other - as (I think) the only nation left-standing after applying my assumptions.
It has a biggish population, a large military, is increasingly devoutly Muslim, and apparently wants to be a world power. Again. Because of course Turkey has many centuries of Empire behind it - so Turkey's recent state of relative weakness is the historical anomaly not its dominance. And there is likely to be psychological readiness for the particular demands of being a world power.
So on current trends I would envisage Turkey as (again) becoming perhaps the most dominant world power in about a generation's time. Although not with a global reach, nor domination everywhere; because no-place will have a global reach by then - but perhaps more powerful than any other contender.
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16 comments:
I beg to differ. Please see the data at
http://bit.ly/ytiQq7
(I haven't found a way to change the language but blue is United Kingdom and green is Turkey).
As you see, Turkey is in a swift demographic decline. It is slightly above replacement levels (2.11 in 2009) but in constant decline.
In general, all Islamic countries have suffered a dramatic reduction of birthrates. Iran and Algeria are below replacement levels.
I'm with Spengler
http://www.amazon.com/How-Civilizations-Die-Islam-Dying/dp/159698273X
Islam is suffering a shock with modernity. Yes, the West is decadent, but Islam will have it worse, because their birthrates are not that superior and has one tenth of the Europe's productivity.
Islam has not been immune to the birth pill.
Another interesting book about this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Shall-Religious-Inherit-Earth-Twenty-First/dp/1846681448
Imnobody
@Imnobody - yes but surely Pew is right (UN figures are similar) and Spengler is wrong?
I know Eric Kaufmann's work, indeed it is what got me interested in demography. He shows that the more devout the Muslim population, the higher the fertility - 'Westernized' Muslims are removing themselves from the gene pool.
See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
Turkey's media age is 28!
(Compared with mid/ late forties in the West and East Asia). Many of the countries with the lowest median age - less than 20! - are Muslim.
It is 'crazy talk' to imagine that there is a collapse of Muslim fertility!
BTW - (and this is directed at a commenter whose comment I did *not* publish) the 'game' in this 'thought experiment' posting is to *argue* the point - challenge my premises, come up with another candidate etc.
If you 'sputter and point' incredulously, you are not playing the game!
The median age link was broken - it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_countries_by_median_age
Turkey's media age is 28!
(Compared with mid/ late forties in the West and East Asia). Many of the countries with the lowest median age - less than 20! - are Muslim.
But, Bruce, fertility trends are evaluated on the grounds of birthrates not on the grounds of median ages.
Median ages are the consequence of PAST birthrates (people who are alive now were born in the past) but you have to assess trends based on the current birthrate, not on past birthrates.
In 1960, Brazil's birthrate was more than 6 and now it is below 2 by woman. Brazil's median age is 29.3. So what? If birthrates keep on staying low, Brazil is going to follow the steps of the West about demographic suicide, regardless what median age is now.
(No doubt that the West is earlier to demographic suicide. But the fact that West birthrate has collapsed does not mean that Brazil's birthrate is not collapsing)
The same with Muslim countries. I have three of them in this graph:
http://bit.ly/xXdS9c
It is 'crazy talk' to imagine that there is a collapse of Muslim fertility!
It is crazy talk to see those curves and not to call it "collapse". You can't argue against numbers and the fact that 6.12 is much greater than 2.11 [Turkey's numbers].
I once had the same ideas as you regarding Muslim demography, but, then I knew the data.
Imnobody
Pakistan has a population more than twice as large as Turkey's (6th largest in world at 170M to 70M), a significantly higher TFR (one of the highest of non-African countries, 3.3 to 2.2), and nuclear weapons ...
That's a *really* cool chart that Imnobody pointed us to. You can add any country you want to the chart. I added Afghanistan, and was amazed to see that their birthrate was 8 ca. 1996, and then began a precipitous decline in ca. 1999. It is now at about 6.25, and headed down very fast.
Every country I looked at was either already at 2, or heading there REALLY FAST. Curiously, I couldn't find Britain anywhere in the picklist.
This is really sobering. It appears that the Pill has for the first time made it possible for reproduction to be limited to just those women who want to have babies. What this portends, as someone said over at Proph's Collapse the other day, is a great die-off in the near term, probably a huge collapse in the human population, with the remainder being composed of those people who are really into kids.
I.e., very bad patch over the next century, followed by a strong reversion to traditional societies - the ones that like kids.
I predict that the United States will still be the dominant power in 30 years time. This seems to be Charles Murray's opinion as well:
"The economic dynamics that have produced the class society I deplore have fostered the blossoming of America’s human capital. These dynamics will increase, not diminish, our competitiveness on the world stage in the years ahead. Nor do I forecast decline in America’s military and diplomatic supremacy"
The four most important variables for power are intelligence, population size, momentum, and economy-type (which is more or less irrelevant since the death of the USSR).
Turkey doesn't have the cognitive chops, so it's between the US and China. And the US has ample momentum.
Also something tells me Europeans have other less obvious advantages. So my dark horse candidate is Russia, even though Japan is probably a safer bet.
U.S --> China --> Russia --> Japan
@JM - "intelligence, population size, momentum, and economy-type "
But all of these become irrelevant is a nation wants to destroy itself. Any such nation will be granted its wish.
Looking at fertility and median age it seems clear that the US native population wants to destroy itself and so does China and Japan.
Russia is interesting. Clearly it was hell-bent on suicide for decades, and huge swathes of the population are literally committing suicide (especially with alcohol); but now seems to be on a cusp of possible repentance and renewal, related to Putin as leader, the Orthodox Church revival, and entailing the explicit rejection of 'democracy'.
It is fascinating to see how vehemently (and dishonestly) the Western elites opposes this - they want Russia to stay on its course to oblivion, just like the West.
So, although Russia has sunk mch lower, it seems at the moment to have more of a chance than the West of re-growing from a smallish base. However, although there remains a chance, it seems unlikely.
If it is indeed correct that there is an international suppression of fertility as Imnobody indicates from the particular stats (I am not yet convinced) then it looks as if Mankind has given up hope and 'turned its face to the wall'.
In Christian terms, mankind has turned, perhaps, from the sin of Pride to the sin of Despair.
I'm very poor with math, but it seems on first impression to me that, if you had a low median age and a fertility rate of only 2, then in the long run you might be looking at population decline, but in the short run--say, 30 years--a population increase. Or at least an increase in the adult part of the population. No?
Turkey is an interesting case. From what I read in the papers, the demographic profile of Turkey is shifting as well: "Fertility levels of Turks and Kurds are significantly different. At current fertility rates, Turkish-speaking women will give birth to an average of 1.88 children during their reproductive years. The corresponding figure is 4.07 children for Kurdish women. Kurdish women will have almost 2 children more than Turkish women." [http://vvanwilgenburg.blogspot.com/2009/03/stratfor-kurds-no-demographic-challenge.html - just as an example] Futher, I recall reading that before 2020 more than half of Turkey's soldiers will be ethnic Kurds. That is to say, if or when Turkey becomes dominant it might be a very different Turkey.
@Chris - I think so - and I think that there is potential for a population increase - for example in response to the increasing religious devoutness which is sweeping Turkey. When the median age is in the middle-late forties, then there is no such potential - significant growth takes considerably longer.
@Al - there are astonishingly large and rapid demographic changes in the world population - I'm astonished more people are not interested in this. But then there is a tremendous propaganda *not* to be interested.
I find it hard to imagine the world we have. Even leaving aside the huge differences in average personality and intelligence, to have the world dominated by countries with median age of mid forties and increasing - while other countries have median age of twenty or even mid teens...
Nations now are like chalk and cheese, perhaps more fundamentally and biologically different than countries have ever been - since there have never been such extremes of median age.
It is as if not just the West but the human species is exhausted, and has given-up. This is not too surprising, in the case of the West - and all the rest of the world is dependent on the West for wealth transfers and all kinds of infrastructure including keeping the children alive.
Yet demographics shows us that this international order is clearly unsustainable and is visibly unraveling before our eyes, week by week, and the only response is denial of the reality.
Looking at fertility and median age it seems clear that the US native population wants to destroy itself and so does China and Japan
Insofar as a declining/aging population is associated with modernism and materialism this is a correlate of economic strength, not weakness, and becomes a burden to relative dominance only when the population size dips below the threshold of international competitiveness. However population will decline at similar rates in all competitive nations.
A nation requires no spiritual authenticity to be powerful, it only requires numbers and wealth. And it only has to have more people and wealth than its competitors.
@JM - I believe that nations have declined in capability - and that we are in the unprecedented situation where numbers and wealth are all but irrelevant - since there is no will to use them.
My prime example is Somalian piracy. But the string of failed wars is another.
The point is that defeat is actively willed and abetted by the elites - that is the meaning of political correctness.
I would go so far as to say that (if present trends continue) Western societies could be taken over by almost anyone (except white native males) who wants to take them over.
Dr Charlton,
I'm astonished more people are not interested in this.
I used to be very interested in the topic myself. At one point, however, I realised that I'm too easily seduced into intellectual pride and tried not to think about it too much since the topic being a macro level phenomenon hardly translates into the challenges I face in everyday life -- which is not to say that its consequences aren't observable. I also have to admit that the phenomenon is just too complex, on many levels, for my intellect.
That said, I would like to point out that I greatly enjoyed the insights of Gunnar Heinssohn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn) who, both a sociologist and economist, provides rather convincing narratives which explain major historical events. Being German by birth myself, I do not know how well known his writings are outside the country. Besides, he's quite a media figure and tends to show up in the country's chat shows. Interestingly, he's able to get away with his theories and is listened to attentively, possibly due to his background as a darling of the left.
I find it hard to imagine the world we have. [...]
Oh, yes. To quote Heinssohn from memory: every European soldier who dies implies the end of a whole genealogy tree, statistically speaking. This holds for every police officer etc, of course, as well. These are indeed interesting times. [Well, soliders might statistically come from families with higher than average fertility but let's leave this point aside.]
Luckily, the Turkish language is an easy one.
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