George Friedman Quotes

By 2040, France and Germany are going to be has-beens, historically. Between population crises and the redefinition of the geopolitics of Europe, the French and Germans will be facing a decisive moment. If they do not assert themselves, their futures will be dictated by others and they will move from decadence to powerlessness. And with powerlessness would come a geopolitical spiral from which they would not recover.

I think Iraq will have a formally independent government that will be in perpetual gridlock and chaos, and essentially, there will be a U.S. military administration utilizing NGOs that can do a lot of the heavy lifting in the country.

Your 15 minutes are here, Friedman... I'm just saying, all your life you know useless and obscure things. And suddenly... It is a fairly strange experience.

The twenty-first century has begun with an American success that on the surface looks like not only a defeat but a deep political and moral embarrassment.

Contemporary Europe is a search for an exit from hell.

Mexico will emerge as a major global economic power. Ranked fourteenth or fifteenth early in the century, it will be firmly within the top ten by 2080. With a population of 100 million, it will be a power to be reckoned with anywhere in the world—except on the southern border of the United States.

Al Qaeda has failed in its goals. The United States has succeeded, not so much in winning the war as in preventing the Islamists from winning, and, from a geopolitical perspective, that is good enough.

[D]isequilibrium will dominate the twenty-first century, as will efforts to contain the United States. It will be a dangerous century, particularly for the rest of the world.

[T]he twenty-first century truly began on September 11, 2001, ten years later, when planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

[A]ny seagoing vessel—commercial or military, from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea to the Caribbean—could be monitored by the United States Navy, who could choose to watch it, stop it, or sink it.

Europe has always been a bloody place.

Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century.

Understand that you're now in a superheated atmosphere; there are all kinds of rumors floating around. And one of the players is deliberately feeding us lies.

Two forces are emerging that will moot global warming. First, the end of the population explosion will, over the decades, reduce the increases in demand for just about everything. Second, the increase in the cost of both finding and using hydrocarbons will increase the hunger for alternatives.

Japan must import all of its major minerals, from oil to aluminum. Without those imports-particularly oil-Japan stops being an industrial power in a matter of months.