George Friedman
@George_Friedman
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Leading geopolitical forecaster and Chairman of @GPFutures . Author of #Flashpoints , #TheNext100Years , The Storm Before the Calm.
Austin, TX
Joined September 2015
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The U.S. has decided to ban imports of Russian vodka. Personally, I think Russian vodka lacks vigor. Polish vodka, on the other hand, generates manliness. I recommend Monopolowa. The impurities add to the experience - I'm serious.
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The U.S. and China met for 7 hours with few details released. What is clear is this is the time for China to construct a new relationship with the U.S. China no longer sees Russia as a full counter weight to the U.S., and Beijing’s treaty with Russia just lowered in importance.
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Putin has made a massive failure. He hoped Germans needed Russian fuel; that Europe would fragment. What happened is the exact opposite. Its part of sanctions on Russia. NATO's more united than its been in decades. Japan's joined in. Russia’s ability to withstand is questionable.
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I wrote in my book The Next 100 Years that Japan would emerge as a major regional and perhaps global power. The decision to commit to the defense of Taiwan – if indeed that is Kishida’s aim – is a major stepping stone in this direction. This may well be Japan’s return to history.
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The Russians are attempting a complicated, multi-front war waged by untested troops. They have not fought a multi-divisional battle like this since World War II. Their military is competent, but none of their commanders have commanded this type of battle.
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Russia has put itself in a bad position. The fragmentation of Europe is no longer possible. Even if it defeats Ukraine, it will be that much closer to a hostile Europe, led by a newly remilitarized Germany.
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I voted for Ronald Reagan, and I had friends who voted for Jimmy Carter. We disliked the candidate but not each other. I am sanguine about the future of the republic, but our inability to remain friends with those who vote differently is growing and alarming.
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Yesterday I introduced the idea of sharing excerpts from my 2009 book "The Next 100 Years" as we come to understand the situation in Ukraine. Today we're starting with Chapter 4: The New Fault Lines. Thank you for humoring me in this experiment.
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In “The Next 100 Years,” I forecast a period in which Russia would become more assertive, followed by a period of increased economic weakness and social disappointment. The fall of the Soviet Union failed to deliver what Russia has always longed to be: a modern European country.
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The most startling thing about the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, and one likely to be studied by military historians, is that the Ukrainian resistance did not break and in many instances intensified. From the American point of view, Ukraine has become a strategic opportunity.
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My 2009 book The Next 100 Years has been quite helpful for people in understanding the current situation in Ukraine. So this week, I’ll be sharing excerpts from the book & hope you find it valuable. Anything to take us away from the slap heard round the world and back to reality.
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The United States recently said that it would defend Taiwan in the event China invades it. More interesting is that Japan, a country that hasn’t undertaken military action since 1945, said the same. This changes the political environment dramatically.
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I long for a lost world in which reasonable people could disagree over politics and still be friends. Donald Trump did not rip friendships apart; we did that to ourselves. I love this country. It is time for its citizens to get a grip.
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If Russia wanted to create a sense in Europe that it could invade at will, it has failed. It has only succeeded at bringing the U.S. and Europe closer. The continued combat and the brutality that Russia seems to think are required to defeat Ukraine only galvanizes it more.
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The EU is expected to give the green light for recovery funds to Poland. Why? If
#Ukraine
weakens, the rest of Europe is at risk and the bloc’s need for a strong Poland becomes essential.
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In my view, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine signals a new era, whose shape is not yet clear. The use of economic warfare by the U.S. and the resurrection of Cold War institutions signal a new way of using economics – from enriching the world to now an instrument of war.
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The Russians are now claiming that their only intention in the war was to secure the eastern Donbas region, not to occupy Ukraine. What made the Russian claims dubious, of course, were the columns of tanks heading south from Belarus toward Kyiv, among other things.
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Zelenskyy believed that American intervention would at least allow Ukraine to counterattack on a vast scale. But the U.S. is engaged in a different conflict: keeping Russia away from NATO. It would provide enough force to keep Russia at a distance but not enough to crush them.
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Putin has vaguely threatened nuclear war, indicating he's nervous. Nervous people are dangerous since they are in the grip of emotion. Then again Putin doesn't seem to have emotions & is very much a man who intends to survive, traits I look for in someone threatening nuclear war.
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Russia seems undeterred by sanctions. The measures will indeed hurt the Russians, but, knowing that sanctions would inevitably come, Moscow figured that having Ukraine as a buffer is worth the economic pain.
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The US election, like so many before, illustrates the stability of the US political system. Neither Reps nor Dems are in a position to govern decisively, partly because neither party is coherent enough to unite over any plan aside from castigating the other. This is by design.
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Germany’s foreign minister suggested that Germany cannot send more weapons to Ukraine due to deficient supplies. If true, the largest economy in Europe does not have the facilities to rapidly produce more weapons – despite pledging money for the production of weapons for Ukraine.
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Putin has led his country into disaster. We have to ask the questions, how secure is he in his position? How much do the Russian people have control over him? Will the Russian elite stop him? The oligarchs have spoken with him; we have to start talking with the people around him.
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The US fought WWII and the Cold War to prevent Europe from being overrun and controlled by a single power. Blocking Germany & Russia have long been fundamental principles of US foreign policy – not exclusively for its own benefit but fundamentally in pursuit of its own interests.
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The Russian army wasn’t designed for this war, hadn’t planned for this war and has only brutal counter-civilian action to take. And Putin will take it. The problem, then, is that Putin cannot stop, nor can he reach an agreement with Ukraine that he will keep.
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Tomorrow, I leave for Poland and Hungary; two countries which must formulate complex calculations to manage Russian and American strategic imperatives. Neither wants to be occupied by Russia, but neither wants to become a pawn in another chapter of European grand strategy.
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The American attack on the Russian economy mobilized its allies. When the stores are empty and food for children can’t be bought then someone will be blamed. That someone could be Putin or it could be America. But it will be the crowds of hungry people that will make history.
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One of the West’s greatest problems is that the former Soviet satellites lack the strength to deter a Russian advance. They see themselves as too weak to defend themselves and expect an American miracle. The miracle could come, but not without a united and motivated Intermarium.
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The primary reason about half the US voted for Joe Biden was that he wasn’t Donald Trump. Trump was seen as violating fundamental norms of the presidency & of personal dignity. On the other hand, just under half the country voted for Trump because they saw the norm as unbearable.
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What has happened in Ukraine is a systemic breakdown of leadership that lead the country into a poorly understood war, insisting victory is just around the corner. Putin is responsible because he is the president. But the general staff & intelligence services share the blame.
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One of Russia's initial claims for invading Ukraine was that the country was corrupt and riven with Nazis.
For Moscow - home of the oligarchs - to clutch its pearls over corruption deserves a chuckle; Moscow attacking another country because of corruption deserves another.
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The center of gravity of the enemy today is not military but financial. The US - the largest economy and the largest importer in the world - can wreak havoc on a country. As Iran discovered, lack of access to dollars coupled with blocking exports can cripple a nation’s economy.
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The Russians want to convince Ukrainians that their situation is hopeless, and the Ukrainians want to convince themselves that there is a real chance if they believe in their country. The result is that the first day of war is madness, and trying to understand it is impossible.
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Wars like this usually end in political deaths. Vietnam finished Lyndon B. Johnson, WWII the Japanese and German regimes. The pivotal question is: What makes Russia think it can win next week when it hasn’t won in seven months?
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The Chinese Communist Party is increasing citizen monitoring countrywide. Neighborhoods & regions are divided into grids, with residents going door to door inspecting houses & reporting findings. This escalation is worth noting, as it indicates intensifying unease within the CCP.
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We are at a crossroad. Ukraine has held and Russia has not been defeated. Each side can double down in the war or accept a settlement. I think
#NATO
is discussing that now.
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According to the Pentagon, China’s spy balloons have entered the airspace of more than 40 nations in recent years. Given these objects are somewhat visible from the ground, it's strange no one noted them at least loudly enough to be noticed. So what were the Chinese looking for?
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It’s clear that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack was designed to draw Israeli forces into the direction of Gaza, which would open the door for an attack to the rear. It was a sound strategy that ultimately failed. The key now is to understand whether Hamas has a follow-up plan.
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During the first phase of a full scale invasion the first
thing the Russians would do is isolate the Ukrainian leadership and take down all internal communications. That has apparently not happened, as information is flowing. Communications have not been brought down.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has said that an off-ramp must be found for Putin in Ukraine. An off-ramp for Putin is an illusion. He cannot reach a peace agreement until he demonstrates – convincingly and not by his assertion – that his initial failures have been recovered.
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Throughout Russia's offensive in Ukraine, Russia was able to keep Ukrainian forces on the defensive – until last week, when Ukraine invaded
#Kursk
oblast. My latest on the new reality in the
#Ukraine
War is at
@GPFutures
:
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Look to what’s happening in China, and the value of the yuan. Look at supplies decreasing in Russian stores. The ultimate point where economics meets the road is where people buy the things they need to live. All the abstractions of finance resolve themselves at this point.
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The United States is a moral project and, like all moral projects, thinks its model superior to others. Moral intervention is rarely in the geopolitical interests of the United States, and it almost never ends well.
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Rather than a rapid and decisive defeat of Ukraine, Russia is engaged in a slow, grinding war unlikely to impress the world with its return to the first ranks of military power.
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Wars are won by defeating enemy armies, not necessarily taking cities. The Ukrainian army appears very scattered. This makes them difficult for Russia to target and requires Russia to adjust its strategy.
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Geopolitics is the study of how nations interact. My most important forecasts are about pain, even when they aren't about war. Some, like my forecast on the U.S. now taking place, is a rare exception to war. Others, like the decline & fragmentation of China, haven't yet happened.
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So far, NATO has not crossed the line to direct, overt intervention in Ukraine on a major scale. Putin’s new appointment of Russian general Alexander Dvornikov, who is credited with saving the Russian campaign in Syria, to lead the war effort, could change that.
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In the Cold War, the U.S. overestimated its enemy. In Iraq, the U.S. failed to understand the structure of the resistance it would encounter. And now with China, it fails to recognize a well-trained but untried enemy.
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Russia has officially ordered soldiers into Donetsk and Luhansk, and though this certainly increases the sense of crisis, it must also be put in context. The region has effectively been under Russian control since the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan revolution.
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All wars result in uncontrolled government spending. Vietnam drove prices through the roof. The American Revolutionary War bankrupted the U.S. War without massive economic instability doesn't exist.
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The entire US strategy for Afghanistan was each president keeping the war going so the next president had to bite the bullet. After 20 years, the bullet was bitten. The end looked the only way it could, chaos hard-wired into the system. We all believe we could have done better.
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The current peace deal is that Ukraine agrees to be neutral – out of NATO. But since Ukraine wasn't about to join NATO anyway, this might mean it would not buy arms from the West. Either there is more Lavrov won't say publicly, or the Russians are extremely eager to end the war.
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Many have speculated on the Ukraine invasion and its relevance to China. China doesn't have many allies. Their only formal ally is Pakistan. An alliance between Russia and China gives both countries an illusion of strength. But the problem is, they can't help each other.
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The U.S.' war in Afghanistan did not threaten national security because of the vast oceans between the war and the homeland. An extended war in Ukraine can result in a trained Ukrainian special forces group expanding the fighting into Russia. Russians cannot assume immunity.
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The American revolution was fought to make certain the government was weak and society strong & free. Our founders feared strong presidents & contrived to cripple them by confronting them with Congress & a Supreme Court. Very little can get done, yet America flourishes.
#July4th
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The war in Ukraine is having reverberations around the world. There are many reverberations to discuss. Today we'll focus on three areas: Poland and Turkey taking on greater significance as a result of the war, and China losing significance.
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The most important Chinese imperative is to maintain exports, and the greatest threat to its exports is if China were denied access to the global sea lanes. If its ports were closed or interdicted for any reason, the Chinese economy would be stunned at least, shattered at most.
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So long as Ukraine fears a defeat by Russia, capitulation is practically impossible. The same cannot be said of Russia. Thus the most likely outcome of the war in Ukraine will be peace talks, forced by domestic unrest in both countries.
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In my most recent book, “The Storm Before the Calm,” I predicted that the 2020s would be a period of intense economic and political unrest in the United States that would wind down toward the end of the decade. I wrote that the U.S. undergoes political cycles every 50 years.
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This week's meeting between Biden and Xi in San Francisco is an important one. China’s economic weakness has created social tensions that Xi has to manage. The U.S. wants China to curb some of its naval activity, but I suspect they also have a common interest in curbing Russia.
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The economic war with Russia has created worldwide instability, including in terms of commodities. This is the war that I suspect will ultimately decide what happens, whether Russia in some way capitulates or not.
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Before the war broke out, China had signed a “love is forever” treaty with Russia. Reports had circulated in Chinese media that invading Ukraine would be a mistake. If Russia thinks it can survive, China, which would be subject to sanctions if it helped Russia, knows it cannot.
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This strategy made Russia dependent on something it didn’t control – energy prices. Putin’s task was to build a modern economy in Russia using the revenue from energy as investment capital. It was a daunting task and he failed at it.
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Here are the top five nations as a percentage of global GDP:
1) The United States (24.06)
2) China (15.2)
3) Japan (6.02)
4) Germany (4.56)
5) India (3.2)
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Two cities, nearly neighbors at just 500 miles (800 km), are strangers to each other. The languages are not easily transferrable. One is part of Ukraine’s war; the other is distant, even indifferent. Poland is like much of Europe; Hungary, its own entity.
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The COVID-19 vaccine is incredibly successful, we’re told, which I would expect given the amount of money spent by my government in developing it. But my government is telling me that in spite of the vaccine nothing will change. I’m obviously missing something.
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The era that began in 1991 is coming to an end, and a new era is beginning. For Russia, the invasion of Ukraine is only the latest and most important attempt to reverse the events of 1991.
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When Putin took power, wealth was in the hands of a dozen or so oligarchs, and the economy and Russian power depended on energy, which was the source of revenue and leverage over nations reliant on Russian supplies. In many ways, Russia was like Saudi Arabia in the 1970s.
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This week we celebrate two holidays in our house: Hanukkah and Christmas. Hanukkah is about war and vengeance; Christmas is about God’s love for man, imposed by political force. The intertwining of Judaism and Christianity is far more complex than many would appreciate.
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Vladimir Putin has submitted a peace proposal, which is essentially an acceptance of the fact that Russia does not have the power to retake all of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the EU is in disarray, and the US is facing an election that will change its reality regardless of the outcome.
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This is an extraordinary moment in human history. Our world has contracted. I used to think about the Russia-Turkey confrontation in Libya, about Brexit, and about the development of hypersonic missiles. All that is still there, but for now none of it matters. - GF
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The withdrawal from Afghanistan is necessary. Bringing over the translators to the U.S. is a moral obligation. My thoughts are for the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan long after good reasons had evaporated. This was another war lost because it could never have been won.
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During WWII, one needed to say only “the war” for others to know what was being discussed. We have reached that point with the Russo-Ukrainian war. No one would have believed Ukraine could survive the Russian onslaught in the first months. But it did.
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Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds are filing legislation demanding that the federal government reveal the files on what it knows about unidentified anomalous phenomena. If there is nothing to fear out there, then why not release the files?
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Hamas’ major attack on Israel on Saturday morning was a vastly complex operation, carefully coordinating air and rocket attacks, naval landings and large-scale infantry assaults. It was designed to discourage a counterattack. (1/2)
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China is in the midst of a systemic failure based on the increasingly irrational allocation of capital driven by market forces and state policy. It now faces an extended period in which the economy is shaped less by markets than by the state.
This will affect the entire world.
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The important question was always how Europe would react, specifically Germany, to a Russian resurgence. Continuing our look back at my 2009 book "The Next 100 Years" as a means understanding the crisis in Ukraine, here is more from Chapter 4: The New Fault Lines
#TheNext100Years
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I've been accused of supporting President Donald Trump, as if it were obvious that no reasonable people can, and accused of opposing Trump, as if no reasonable people might. An analyst cannot take sides, not even in something as fraught as last week’s presidential election.
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The light of the city on the hill must be relit, and to relight it we must begin by willing ourselves to friendship, and to refuse to despise each other regardless of disagreement. That is the start. I don’t know if we have the will or the strength to do that.
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The U.S. drew several conclusions from the two world wars. For one, the possibility of a threat to the Atlantic as a byproduct of continental war is real.
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Above all else, what the Russians want is to have their sphere of influence, as the Americans do, so that no one enters to threaten them. What comes out of this is a weakened EU with foreign business opportunities, which Russia can then take advantage of.
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Some have argued that the U.S. has no interest in Ukraine, or if it does then it’s a moral interest. The moral argument is not sufficient in the hard realities of geopolitics.
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The American
#economy
, the largest and most dynamic in the world, is a geopolitical issue. And right now, it is in a predictable period of dysfunction. We will of course blame the politicians for what happens, as that is an American tradition.
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The next wave of immigration is always feared and held in contempt. The European immigration system seeks to soften the blow. It can’t. But then, Europe has no tradition of how to handle immigration. It doesn’t have a Bronx.
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Rainfall is perhaps the most important geopolitical factor for China. In order to have sustained agricultural production, a minimum annual rainfall of 15 inches is necessary. The line of demarcation is called the 15-inch isohyet, which cuts modern China roughly in half.
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There are also now preliminary, unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers have set up roadblocks and other fortifications in the city. This is the natural next stage of the city’s defense...
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Continuing our look back at my 2009 book "The Next 100 Years" as a means understanding the situation in Ukraine, we're moving on to Chapter 6: Russia 2020: Rematch. Here I laid out future scenarios in which Russia attempts to reassert its power.
#TheNext100Years
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In forecasting, we focus on cycles & milestones. We don't worry so much about elections, only that an election is a milestone, where there's a shift in how the system works. And every 50 years, there's a significant shift. This pattern goes back to the days of George Washington.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had the same disruptive effect as a war and created the same raging anger. This has been followed by another war, Ukraine, which is having a massive effect on the global economic system. Inflation is surging and interest rates rising.
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Putin is responsible for the whole insurrection affair. He vastly misunderstood Ukraine’s army and his own, and instead of disengaging he threw Wagner into the fray. This strange solution created chaos. From the chaos came the insurrection.
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Following interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan which resulted in substantial US casualties, the US seems to have adopted a national strategy of using force without risking casualties. This was the central US strategy in Ukraine. We now see something similar in the Middle East.
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“He who controls Eastern Europe controls the world” has long been a common refrain in the history of geopolitics. I take much more seriously the principle that, “He who controls the moon controls Earth.”
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The population over 65 is now the fastest-growing group in the US – & much of the world. In 2040, those older than 65 will outnumber 15-24 yr-olds. As the demographic crisis unfolds, immigration will become critical. But as the world changes, immigration patterns may change too.
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Russian negotiators knew full well in January that who joins NATO is not a decision Washington can make. Allowing the Russians to force the U.S. to agree on future relations with a sovereign state was simply a nonstarter. The consequences would be global.
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In other words, Russia would need to concede that the invasion of Ukraine was a mistake.
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At an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, China urged all relevant parties to guarantee the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities – without naming Russia or Ukraine directly. China said the responsibility for nuclear safety rests with sovereign states.
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There are deep social & cultural divisions in the nation. Donald Trump did not create these divisions; rather, he emerged from them. But the current political debate reveals the great danger in being passionate: the loss of a sense of proportion, reflection and flexibility. - GF
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