Imagining Future War Before It Arrives
In this essay for The Free Press, Elliot Ackerman reflects on how the geopolitical tensions explored in 2034: A Novel of the Next World War increasingly resemble present-day strategic realities involving Iran, Russia, China, and the evolving nature of modern conflict.
Drawing on his background in the Marine Corps, intelligence, and national security, Ackerman examines how speculative fiction can help policymakers and the public think more seriously about escalation, deterrence, authoritarian alliances, and the risks of future war.
Iran, Naval Power, and Escalation
The essay explores rising tensions surrounding Iran, shifting naval warfare dynamics, Russian-Iranian military coordination, hypersonic missile threats, and the vulnerabilities of modern military power in an era increasingly shaped by drones, asymmetric warfare, and technological disruption.
Ackerman argues that understanding future conflict requires imagination as much as prediction. Rather than attempting to forecast exact events, speculative fiction creates frameworks for thinking through how localized crises can rapidly expand into larger geopolitical confrontations.
The piece also examines how authoritarian states often align around regime survival and strategic necessity, even when their broader ideological or economic interests differ.
About 2034
2034: A Novel of the Next World War, co-authored with Admiral James Stavridis, imagines a near-future conflict involving the United States, China, Iran, and other global powers as technological disruption and military escalation push the world toward catastrophe.
The novel explores artificial intelligence, naval warfare, cyber conflict, geopolitics, deterrence, and the fragility of global stability in an increasingly multipolar world.
Read the Full Essay
This article originally appeared in The Free Press.