“Stratfor”:http://www.stratfor.com/ CEO George Friedman discusses his new book The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century in a presentation to the JHUAPL’s latest session of its “Rethinking Seminar Series”:http://outerdnn.outer.jhuapl.edu/Default.aspx?alias=outerdnn.outer.jhuapl.edu/rethinking.
Though many “international relations professors are ignored”:http://zenpundit.com/?p=3034, George Friedman is one of those whose voice gets heard. Friedman is a geopolitics man from the old school of Mackinder and Mahan. He is by no means subtle, and while sometimes sounding preposterous, he is not afraid of taking risks in forecasting. He may be Americo-centric, egotistical and sometimes “dead wrong”:http://www.amazon.com/Coming-War-Japan-George-Friedman/dp/0312076770/, but whatever you think of Friedman and his organization Stratfor, realize that many people in Washington and around the world take him seriously. That fact alone means that he cannot be ignored.
If you want to hear him jam on the five great powers of the future (Japan, Turkey, Poland, Mexico and Brazil), the continued rise of American power, the space-based solution to the energy problem, the coming war with Mexico, robots, and shooting bears with a handgun “right click to download”:ftp://ftp.jhuapl.edu/nsadrethink/020309/Friedman.mp3 the MP3 file.
Poor Friedman, who will take him seriously when guys like us refuse to forget that dreadful book.
Loved it. Great talk.
I see Friedman as being more important and more interesting than most of the popular big thinkers today (Thomas Friedman, Fareed Zakaria). I also hope our policy makers listen to him relating to the “long war.” It would be great mistake to waste resources trying to “shrink gaps” instead of building our space based capabilities to remain the global hegemon.
I agree that Friedman is good – although he hasn’t managed to resolve some of the contradictions in his own theories, such as describing Mexico as a failing state and also as an emerging power. Definitely a voice to be read though!
Friedman offers some interesting possibilities of the 21st century and an alternative to the grand strategies among some theorists that American power is waning and has reached its zenith. Along with Thomas Barnett, Friedman offers a world view that sees America as the dominant power of the current century and, perhaps more importantly, looks at North America as the center of global power and culture for the foreseeable future. Grounded in a geopolitics, Friedman looks at the realities on the ground from a broad historical arc, refusing to get bogged down in the urgencies of the immediate. This is perhaps his greatest asset – the capability to go beyond what is happening and examine world affairs from the viewpoint of what will come. His thoughts are stimulating and move ahead of a foreign policy establishment consumed by current trends.
For more information, check out http://newworldglobaloutlook.typepad.com
Friedman is one of the reason why I think geopolitics,a political phrenology.
Good to know we are among the powers of “future” and not “have-been”…..
Aceface, Friedman is definitely taking the minority view on that one — who else thinks that the up and coming world powers are Japan, Poland and Turkey!
Mexico as a great power. Yeah, I’ll have to give that a listen. And war with Mexico, well that might well lead to civil war in the States- Nevermind, I’ll give it a listen first.
Thanks for this post. I plan on listening to the podcast this weekend. Just as a sampler how utterly unpredictable the future can be, please mosey on down to the cnn.com page today. Among the various headlines of today’s news are references to the launching of a satellite by north corea, an american black president, terror attacks in mumbai, america invading iraq and afghanistan and the lowest stock prices since 1997. On this last piece of news I sat back and pictured the world as I knew it back in1997, so much has changed in a mere 12 years!
Mexico??
Poland?
dude.