“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.” WorldLongSufferingTermImaginationViewsPowerfulImagineBlindProfoundCloudsPassingPassingsPermanentAnalysisLong TermConventional Book:The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
“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.” IfsKnowsWorldInterestSubjectsPositionResearchInvestmentValuableHeritageClients Author:George Friedman
“What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other's throats so they don't have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.” WorldFirstsWarStatesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesColdWar Of The WorldsThroatCold WarEasternNavySecond World WarFirst World War Author:George Friedman
“Because the US has control of the sea. Because the US has built up its wealth. Because the US is the only country in the world really not to have a war fought on its territory since the time of the Civil War ... Therefore we can afford mistakes that would kill other countries. And therefore we can take risks that they can't ... the core answer to why the United States is like this is we didn't fight World War I and World War II and the Cold War here.” WorldWarCountryStatesFightingWealthAnswersUnitedMistakeUnited StatesRiskSeaColdBuiltCoreWar Of The WorldsCivil WarTerritoryWorld War IiWorld War IOther CountriesCold War Author:George Friedman
“Italy is the fourth-largest economy in Europe and the eighth-largest economy in the world, and its banking system is collapsing. And Germany is desperate. It must maintain its standard of living. It can only do that with exports and Deutsche Bank is very exposed to Italian debt. But so is the rest of Europe.” WorldEconomyStandardsEuropeDebtGermanyDesperateItalianExposedFourthBankingStandards Of LivingBanking System Author:George Friedman
“There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war - a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.” WorldYearsWarCenturyEuropeSevenWar Of The WorldsSeven Years19th CenturyNapoleonic Author:George Friedman
“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.” WorldYearsFirstsPersonsWarPastGivenTechnologyCivilizationGunShotsTransformationRoundsRadicalWar Of The WorldsWarfareProbabilityExaggerationUnprecedentedAmmunitionFirst World War Author:George Friedman
“The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a city. The result was nuclear weapons.” WorldWayWarSometimesWantedNightResultsCitiesThousandWeaponsWorkersBritishNuclearPlanesAwakeWar Of The WorldsBombsWorld War IiFactoriesEfficientWorld War INuclear WeaponsDroppingAwake At Night Author:George Friedman
“It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious.” WorldBelieveHas BeensTwoWarStatesCareEasyUnitedUnited StatesImagineColdWeaponsUnionsFortuneNuclearSovietNuclear WeaponsCold WarSoviet UnionCautiousSuperpowerRetrospectDiplomatsMeticulous Author:George Friedman
