Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world. George Friedman More Quotes by George Friedman More Quotes From George Friedman When you're young and going to war, it's a genuinely exciting moment. You are going to risk yourself. On the battlefield, you are suddenly free. You realize: I'm here, I'm in it. Exaltation. Suddenly you're hit by another extraordinary feeling: my God, I can be killed. And: will I embarrass myself? It's like you're in a kaleidoscope and all of these extraordinary feelings are zipping by. George Friedman risk feelings war By the 20th century, war ceased to be an encounter between two armies. It became an encounter between two societies, because a factory worker producing a gun or a bomb is as deadly as a pilot. George Friedman army gun war The Chinese have a long history of slaughtering each other without bothering their neighbors. George Friedman chinese neighbor long While certain coastal cities have become very prosperous, the rest of China has a per capita income of $200 a year. The coast wants to have nothing to do with the interior; it wants to work with Tokyo and New York. This is an old story in China. It is why Mao succeeded in 1927. He wanted [coastal] Shanghai to throw the foreigners out, but Shanghai was doing too well financially [to expel foreigners]. So Mao went to the interior and raised a peasant army. He came back to Shanghai and sealed off the country. George Friedman army new-york country The importance of the question and the availability of an answer are two different things. I'm not willing to state that because the question is fundamental, therefore I possess the answer. And I'm certainly not willing to say that since I don't possess the answer, I'll pretend that I do. George Friedman availability fundamentals two There is a radical and unprecedented shift [in war] that is part of the general transformation of civilization. First, understand that the past 150 years of warfare are totally unprecedented in that we introduced a breathtakingly inefficient technology: guns. In the First World War, and this is not an exaggeration, it took 10,000 rounds of ammunition to kill one person. Any given shot had a one in 10,000 probability of ending someone's life. George Friedman technology gun war The warrior must continue to make decisions in the face of extreme circumstances. He cannot afford to get angry or frightened. George Friedman warrior decision faces The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it. George Friedman elements important war The most horrible sort of war is civil war. George Friedman horrible civil-war war I'm not a journalist. So I didn't down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say "my god he's got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal." George Friedman apples down-and likes Now if you can recognize and memorize a grandmaster's game, and you have the respect to understand [Zimbabwean president Robert] Mugabe who has survived past anyone's expectations, and make the simple assumption it wasn't an accident, and you understand why he did what he did, now you're ready to predict ... The key to forecasting is to understand both the constraints nations are under and the manner in which the struggle for power shapes leaders. George Friedman simple struggle past Constraint theory defines for you what outcomes are possible and what outcomes are impossible. It also eliminates wishful thinking. George Friedman outcomes impossible thinking Constraint theory argues a number of things. First, that the impossible has to be identified. Second, that the actor is then constrained by circumstances to act a certain way. For example, should we invade ISIS? Can we invade ISIS? What would it take to invade ISIS? Once you ask that question you discover the price of that option and then you take a look at American politics and see that the country is probably not prepared to invest the 2 to 3 million people that it would take to defeat ISIS and the insurgency afterwards. All right, so that's not going to happen. George Friedman isis numbers country If you go through the list of things that are not possible you're left with a very finite amount of possibilities. The fancy name for this is constraint theory. It's a nonquantitative model, but it's a field of mathematics. George Friedman fancy fields names So you go to Brookings, or you go to Heritage or others, they know their position on any subject before they research it. If you go to an investment bank, they know what parts of the world they are going to cover and what parts of the world they are not going to cover depending on client interest. We cover the world without being skewed by that. And that makes it more valuable. George Friedman heritage research world With the decline of American interests in the outcome of this region, there is no glue holding it together. And the countries in this region are invented ... The last guarantor of the region's borders was the United States, and the US has basically said "the hell with it." What you're really having is the collapse of nation-states because they're not nations. They're only states. George Friedman borders together country When I get asked the question, "Do I want to loan you money?" I want to know, how much do you earn? How much do you owe? What is your net worth? When people talk about countries for some reason they only ask how much did you earn and what's your debt? George Friedman debt country people The United State has a net worth against which our debt is a joke ... we wrote in 2008 the United States is going to come out of this recession fast. The Europeans are going to fragment. The Chinese are going to be cremated. Why could we come out of it? Why has all economic theory been proven wrong? Because we're rich and we could afford it. George Friedman debt chinese united-states Constraint theory asks: What is the price for doing this? Now one way around constraint theory is declaring your enemy crazy. Crazy and stupid are not concepts used in forecasting. When people say they're really stupid or they're crazy, that's laziness. That means I don't want to think through their position or about what they're really going to do. George Friedman crazy stupid mean When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that's when systemic wars start. That's when it gets dangerous, because they haven't yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos. So we're looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war. George Friedman japan war country
