Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Most long-term forecasts are wrong if they're about non-trivial subjects.

But once in a while, you can stumble across a reasonably correct prediction, as I recently did.

Predicting is difficult for a number of reasons, some more obvious than others. It boils down to the fact that the human world is a complicated place.

When asked to forecast or predict, most folks tend to extrapolate trends that are currently in place. (Economists have the saying, "the trend is your friend"' -- but that mostly applies to short-run forecasting.) Yet adults have lived long enough to see some trends end, so they make such extrapolations with a sense of unease if they have the sophistication to do so.

Bold predictions involve both a change in trend and its timing, so they are risky propositions; that's why the term "bold" is used.

I mentioned that I found a pretty good prediction. It happened last weekend while I was sorting through my stash of old magazines, making keep-toss decisions. I came across Part 2, "The Next 50 Years," of the "Golden Anniversary Issue" of Saturday Review World from 1974. The cover headline was "2024 A.D.: A probe into the future by ..." followed by a list of names of notables who contributed their predictions.

( Saturday Review -- originally, The Saturday Review of Literature -- expired 20 years ago. In its prime, and certainly when I was in high school, it was a respected magazine for upper-middle brow readers. By the time the 50th anniversary issue came out it was well on the skids, having tacked the word "World" to Saturday Review. I was never more than an occasional reader. I suppose I bought the issue partly because I was in the forecasting racket and partly because I'm a sucker for anniversary issues of magazines.)

The prediction -- actually a set of predictions -- was made by Milovan Djilas, famously a Yugoslav dissident in the days of Tito, on page 25 in a piece titled "A World Atlas for 2024" which contained contributions by Djilas and three others.

Djilas wrote

For the world as a whole, the most significant change in the next 50 years will be the disintegration of the Soviet empire...

[T]he crucial factors will be the domestic ferment and the pressure from China, and in this connection we cannot rule out either war between China and the U.S.S.R. or uprisings in Eastern Europe.

China will annex Outer Mongolia and will occupy the territories east of Lake Baikal and the River Lena. The territories east of the Caspian Sea (Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghiz, and Tadzhikistan) will secede into separate national states under Chinese influence. The Baltic states and the Ukraine will secede from European Russia and will form independent states. The Caucasian nations (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) will probably secede and form, at least initially, an independent federation. Belorussia will remain in federation with Russia...

With the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Eastern European countries now under Soviet hegemony will become independent and will join the European community. Germany will be united, without a civil war...

Korea will also be reunited, as will Vietnam and Laos, probably before the end of the century. Similarly, Taiwan will be reunited with China, and the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands with Japan.

Despite my sympathy for India, I am not convinced that it can remain united in the long run.

He goes on to speculate that Pakistan (the western part, present-day Pakistan) might experience a Beluchi separation. Spain's Basque and Catalan regions will obtain autonomous rights. Yugoslavia will evolve into a "confederation of four states: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia, with Serbia itself being a federative state" presumably including Bosnia, Montenegro, etc. "It is possible that those four states may later separate and become fully independent..."

Further predictions are that Portuguese colonies in Africa will become independent, that Somalia will be united, and that whites will be driven from Rhodesia. In the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula will become a single political unit that will include Jordan. "Syria and Iraq will be united." Egypt and Sudan will federate. Algeria will take over all of northwestern Africa including part of Libya, which will be split with Egypt. According to the map accompanying the piece, Israel and Lebanon will continue to survive.

Okay, Djilas didn't get it 100% right as of July 2006 -- but remember 18 years remain before a complete assessment can be made. As things stand, his batting average is remarkably high. And I think his assertion that China will take over eastern Siberia remains a real possibility if Russia continues to de-populate.

No dates were included other than "before the end of the century" statements, but Djilas and the others were only asked to present the scene as it would be in 2024.

Finally, to put his predictions in perspective, the other articles I scanned assumed that the Soviet Union would still exist in 2024.

Later,

Donald

Wowee!

That's one heck of a set of predictions.

Is Mr. Djilas still with us? Has he (did he) made any other predictions that are on record?

I'm not much of a fan of Nostrodamus, but Mr. Djilas would seem to deserve some additional research.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on July 31, 2006 5:19 PM

I'd say the Saturday Review people got most of their predictions *wrong* And some of the ones they got right were pretty easy ones at the time.

Let's consider them:

"China will annex Outer Mongolia and will occupy the territories east of Lake Baikal and the River Lena."

Both wrong. Mongolia is as independent as ever and China's made no move to occupy any of Siberia. And keep in mind that China's facing a population crunch of its own in the not-too-distant future, so even if Russian depopulation continues China isn't likely to see much need to occupy Siberia.

"The territories east of the Caspian Sea (Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghiz, and Tadzhikistan) will secede into separate national states under Chinese influence"

Half right. They're independent, but not under Chinese influence to any significant extent.

"The Baltic states and the Ukraine will secede from European Russia and will form independent states."

They got this one right.

"The Caucasian nations (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) will probably secede and form, at least initially, an independent federation."

Another half-correct example. The countries did secede but did not form a federation, indeed, they don't get along too well.

"Belorussia will remain in federation with Russia..."

Wrong.

"With the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Eastern European countries now under Soviet hegemony will become independent and will join the European community. Germany will be united, without a civil war..."

They got these ones right.

"Korea will also be reunited, as will Vietnam and Laos, probably before the end of the century. Similarly, Taiwan will be reunited with China, and the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands with Japan."

Let's see ... Korea is anything but united; the unification of Vietnam was not hard to predict in 1974 (and wasn't Laos always united?); Taiwan and China still go their separate ways; Russia still controls Sakhalin and the Kurils. I don't see any changes on the horizon.

"Despite my sympathy for India, I am not convinced that it can remain united in the long run."

With the exception of the separatist movement in Kashmir, India is as united (and stable as such) as ever.

"He goes on to speculate that Pakistan (the western part, present-day Pakistan) might experience a Beluchi separation. Spain's Basque and Catalan regions will obtain autonomous rights."

Pakistan has a lot of problems but Baluchi separation doesn't appear to be among them. As for the Spanish regions, I guess it depends on whether they're considered automonous.

"Yugoslavia will evolve into a "confederation of four states: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia, with Serbia itself being a federative state" presumably including Bosnia, Montenegro, etc. "It is possible that those four states may later separate and become fully independent...""

They were right in predicting that Yugoslavia would break up, but quite wrong in the details.

"Further predictions are that Portuguese colonies in Africa will become independent, that Somalia will be united, and that whites will be driven from Rhodesia."

Portugese colonialism was on its last legs when the article was written. Somalia is less united than ever. While most whites have left Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, it's not so clear that they're actually been driven out.

"In the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula will become a single political unit that will include Jordan. "Syria and Iraq will be united." Egypt and Sudan will federate. Algeria will take over all of northwestern Africa including part of Libya, which will be split with Egypt. According to the map accompanying the piece, Israel and Lebanon will continue to survive."

None of these have happened yet, but given the way things change in the Middle East we probably should reserve judgment for now.

Posted by: Peter on July 31, 2006 5:37 PM

He got the big one right: The Soviet Union fell apart. As an erstwhile senior man in a communist government, he knew better than most how totally cynical the once messianic communist enterprise had become.

The rest is pretty good. He seems to basically nationalism as reasserting itself and political boundaries following, with a lag. The logic of that model got him a lot of right answers, and it is a long way yet to 2024.

Posted by: Lexington Green on July 31, 2006 6:16 PM

Djilas was one of the sharpest, bravest, most interesting characters of the whole 20th century. His books definitely reward reading today. Those predictions are astoundingly good, because people are so uniformly horrible at picking out even one "big" future change in advance. As Donald points out, it's easy to predict current trends continuing, but it's very difficult to nail a major trend break, as he did. Remember that in the 70s, before Afghanistan, the conventional wisdom was that the Soviet Union was every bit as stable as the U.S.

Posted by: MQ on July 31, 2006 10:54 PM

In 1984, I went to Prague with a group organized by Harvard art history professor Konrad Oberhuber (he later became curator of the Albertina in Vienna). He predicted that by the end of the 1980s every communist government in Europe would fall.

This was notable for two reasons: Americans were not saying that then (people like Jeanne Kirkpatrick were making political hay by saying just the opposite); in the summer of 1989, they suddenly started falling like dominoes.

Bad news for the I Hate The Sixties crowd: the basis for Konrad's prediction was a theory he's developed about cycles in history. Laugh if you want, but it worked. And his biggest prediction was that the 1960s were foreshadowing the 21st century.

Posted by: john on August 1, 2006 12:19 AM

Djilas was the guy who came up with New Class Theory, the notion that a bureaucratic elite would come to control socialist countries; that this elite would be entirely self-interested; that political control would be their new form of "property"; and that they would squabble over political control just as the bourgeoisie had squabbled over factories, only worse. Another good batch of predictions, IMO. He also grew disillusioned with the character of Stalin, whom he met on three occasions in his duties as vice president of Yugoslavia.

Needless to say he wound up in jail. Percipience of this sort wasn't highly valued under communism.

His new class essays are in a book called, straightforwardly enough, The New Class. His visits with Stalin are detailed in Conversations With Stalin. Bite-sized chunks of his writings and speeches can be read here. A PDF about his influence on neo-conservatism is here.

Posted by: Brian on August 1, 2006 5:21 AM

Thank you for throwing out the Djilas name out there. I read a chilling first hand account by him about meeting Stalin (called "Conversations with Stalin"). The scary part about Stalin, he said about Stalin, was that he was so charming and funny and wrapped his cruelty in his sense of humor.

I have an old copy of his WW II memoir, Wartime, which I'd never read. Now I want to read it!

Posted by: Robert Nagle on August 1, 2006 8:56 AM

Just adding on a bit to Brian's excellent info, Mr. Djilas>, a true beliver in the communism of the book as opposed to communism of the practice, was jailed on a few occassions. Being a Montenegrin, his intensity of commitment (regardless of the effect that commitment had on his own safety is) is especially appreciated nowadays as Montenegro strives to set up its seperate legal existence to (many times over) former Yugoslavia. His intelligence, honesty, and fortitude would seem to make him an ideal hero for the Montenegro independence movement. If one could think of an ideal Communist, one who truly strived for a commonality of people and unity of purpose, you'd have to look no further than Milovan Djilas. Obviously, ideal and practice were two diverging paths in Tito's Yugoslavia. Djilas was the kid writing about "The Emperor's New Clothes", not very popular reading material at the time.

Posted by: DarkoV on August 1, 2006 9:44 AM

BTW, that saying you attribute to economists is actually an old trader's saying. The complete saying goes: "The trend is your friend, till the end, when it bends..."

Posted by: jimbo on August 1, 2006 9:52 AM

The prediction that the USSR would not endure was not confined to Mr. Djilas and certain Art History professors, although it was certainly not the majority view. Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote a book in the early 1970's called "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?" predicting the collapse of the Communist Movement. As I recall, Ronald Reagan also predicted that the USSR "would be swept into the ash-heap of history" and although that may have been a rhetorical flourish, it proved pretty accurate. On the other hand, economist John Kenneth Galbraith pronounced the Soviet Union "strong and enduring" about a year before the collapse, as did the CIA. Yet another instance of the "professionals" being wrong. Why is it we listen to these people?

Cycles, real or perceptual, are certainly interesting. I have a theory about cycles in horse races. It works, except when it doesn't. It works about the same as most "cycle of history" theories I've seen...

Posted by: tschafer on August 1, 2006 12:16 PM

Peter --

I took him to mean that Vietnam would be united with Laos.

Posted by: J. Goard on August 1, 2006 4:14 PM

Re: New Class Theory -- Bakunin scooped him on that one way back in the mid-late 19th C, when all he had to go off of was the direction the Marxists were headed in. His term was "red bureaucracy," which would "beat the people with the people's stick." This was decades before the USSR was even founded. "One of the few predictions in the social sciences to come true," as Chomsky likes to point out when discussing Bakunin.

Why doesn't Bakunin get any press for having made this amazing prediction? Hmmm, I'll think about it...

Posted by: Agnostic on August 1, 2006 4:34 PM

Interesting comments, all. But I want to focus on Lexington for a sec.

He seems to basically [see] nationalism as reasserting itself and political boundaries following, with a lag.

For reason of not wanting to burden readers with too much quoted material, I left out the following:

The nation and all that is national are stronger than either ideology or economics. Ideologies are already only superficially international, while in reality they are national -- Leninism in the U.S.S.R., Maoism in China. Economic ties are viable only if they do not run counter to the aspirations of nations.

National aspirations will lead to significant changes in national boundaries in those areas of the world where there are remnants of imperial conquests or where nations are just now emerging...

Nice work picking up on nationhood, Lex.

Posted by: Donald Pittenger on August 1, 2006 6:09 PM

It is interesting that a communist from Yugoslavia would see this. The nationalism of the various peoples who comprised Yugoslavia was constantly threatening to break out. And Djilas lived personally through the rise, peak and decline of communist fervor as a binding and supranational source of loyalty.

National identity has more reality to it -- real history, real language, real cultural affinity and animosity to others -- than many people want to admit. And it can be manipulated for political purposes, and politicians willing to do so are alert to this reality and act on it.

So, by taking his own experience seriously, and projecting it onto the rest of the world Djilas had a model for future development.

Moreover, nationalism is a developmental phase, and Djilas correctly saw that most of the world was underdeveloped and would have to go through something like a nationalistic phase. As a lapsed Marxist he was comfortable with the idea of "stages of history". This provided additional support for the model.

As it happened, Djilas' model was generally valid. All the specific predictions flow from it, and hence many of them are pretty good predictions.

And while it is true that Andrei Amalrik predicted the USSR would fall apart by 1984, he was a severe outlier. Reagan was an outlier, too, in predicting the near-term demise of the USSR. And he, too, was right.

All three men deserve full marks for seeing more deeply than most of the so-called experts.

So, two questions (1) If we apply Djilas' reasoning to the world today, what predictions do we make? and (2) who is making credible predictions using similar reasoning today?

Posted by: Lex on August 1, 2006 6:52 PM

Let's not get carried away. I side with Donald on this one. People make predictions about all sorts of things all the time. Some are bound to be correct, rarely due to superior insight, but mostly through sheer dumb luck.

For a long time I've thought that some altruistic soul could render a big service to humanity by keeping track of predictions made by public figures.

Posted by: Andrew on August 2, 2006 1:28 AM

"People make predictions about all sorts of things all the time. Some are bound to be correct, rarely due to superior insight, but mostly through sheer dumb luck."

I was talking to a client the other day who told me about a trader who works for him who earns his company tens of millions of dollars a year. That trader predicts the future for a living, specifically, what certain things will be priced at in the future. And he is very, very good at it. Being very good at making predictions, or certain kinds of predictions, is rare. But it does occur. Some people actually are better at making predictions, and the ones who are all follow the same pattern. Such people have more accurate models and they rigorously apply them.

Djilas being the only guy on this "panel of experts" to figure out the Soviet Union would break up could have been dumb luck. But the other predictions he made are part of a consistent pattern. He had a model, and the model was basically accurate. In fact, it is still accurate. That, to me, is the value of this post. We can learn something from it that is useful to understanding the world as it is today.

(And a query: Is the strength of nationalism as a force in politics diminished in the Muslim world compared to religious ideology? It seems that it is. However, the different minority linguistic groups within Iran, a Shia Muslim country, seem to be restless under Persian rule -- might that tell us something about the future stability of Iran?)

Posted by: Lexington Green on August 2, 2006 7:50 AM

Cool post. It's interesting to know that at least some folks have a decent crystal ball.

Posted by: Yahmdallah on August 3, 2006 7:39 PM

>>>Is the strength of nationalism as a force in politics diminished in the Muslim world compared to religious ideology?>>>Is the strength of nationalism as a force in politics diminished in the Muslim world compared to religious ideology?

By all accounts the power of religious ideology for muslims transcends their national or geographic identity. From birth to death a Muslim is ruled by the law of the book. However, this ideology seems to bind them together only when they are against a common enemy - "the infidel". Without a common enemy they would separate/fight on the basis of their "lesser" identities such as linguist, regional, racial identities. For this to happen they have to be left to their own devices - examples of Bangladeshis and Kurds come to mind.

At this point with the west carrying the fight into Muslim lands coupled with Muslim sense of being under seige it is highly unlikely Iran will break apart on ethnic or linguistic lines.

Just my 2c.

Posted by: Thamizhan on August 5, 2006 12:10 AM

What did he mean about Somalia? The British and Italian colonies united immediately.

Did he mean it would subsume Djibuti ("French Somaliland")? The five-pointed flag of Somalia also represents its claim to chunks of Kenya and Ethiopia.

Posted by: Douglas Knight on August 5, 2006 1:27 PM






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