Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The year is 2050: Russia and China have fragmented, leaving Japan and Turkey to bestride the Eurasian landmass and take up arms against the world’s lone remaining superpower.

The U.S. triumphs in the First Space War, the centerpiece of “The Next 100 Years,” George Friedman’s prankish preview of the bare-knuckled realpolitik that he says will dominate the 21st century.

Friedman, the Austin, Texas-based controversialist who runs the Stratfor Inc. strategic-advisory firm, has little time for the appeal to universal values that Barack Obama is set to make from the steps of the U.S. Capitol during his inauguration today.

The main constants in Friedman’s cold-blooded analysis of nation-state behavior are geography and demography, which underpin his against-the-grain forecast that the U.S., the victor of the last century, will remain the world’s center of gravity in this one.

“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.

America the Dominant

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.” Friedman’s page-turning prose only flags in his sci-fi digressions on future technologies, military and civilian alike.

Friedman takes delight in war-gaming the high-tech mid- century conflict, starting with a sneak Japanese attack on American space-based command centers on Thanksgiving Day -- an orbital Pearl Harbor. As after the original day of infamy, the wounded giant totters, then rallies and, leveraging its superior industrial base, overwhelms the enemy with modern weaponry.

“The United States always overreacts,” Friedman tells us.

‘Benign Chaos’

Where does this leave Europe? Well, hardly anywhere. Mired in “benign chaos,” the European Union fades from view, accompanied by its belief in interdependence, shared sovereignty, a rules-based international system and values-driven foreign policies without the military might to back them up.

Instead, Germany ends up at war with Poland and Britain, in a World War II redux beyond the darkest imaginings of the present-day reader. Friedman’s retort is that few world-changing events -- think of the Great War of 1914-18 or the dissolution of the Soviet bloc starting in 1989 -- were imagined in the years before they struck.

Even less imaginable is how Friedman’s new American century ends: with a geopolitical train wreck that calls into question the manifest destiny of the U.S. to reign supreme over its own continent. By 2090, Friedman writes, increasing immigration in response to the population bust of the 2030s leads to majority- Mexican communities in the vast stretches of the American southwest that were wrested from Mexico in 1848.

An ethnically mixed “borderland” comes into being, contested by the U.S. and the economically ascendant Mexico much as Germany and France sparred for centuries over Alsace and Lorraine. A Mexican political party, a secessionist movement, disloyal National Guard units, the resettling of illegal immigrants and acts of terrorism all figure in the ultimate battle for control of the North American continent.

Who wins? “That is a question that will have to wait until the 22nd century,” Friedman concludes.

“The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century” is from Doubleday (253 pages, $25.95).

(James G. Neuger writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 19, 2009 19:00 EST