George Friedman Quotes & Sayings

The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends. — George Friedman

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational
if not necessarily moral or decent
actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane. — George Friedman

Elsewhere I have argued that civilizations are divided into three phases. The first phase is barbarism, a time when people believe that the laws of their own village are the laws of nature, as George Bernard Shaw put it. The second phase is civilization, where people continue to believe in the justice of their ways but harbor openness to the idea that they might be in error. The third phase, decadence, is the moment in which people come to believe that there is no truth, or that all lies are equally true. — 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. — 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. — 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. — George Friedman

It mattered a great deal who occupied your country. The — George Friedman

Europe is in an economic crisis. Germany is the wealthiest country in Europe and it benefits the most from Europe. However, the German public doesn't want to pay for what they see as Greek indolence and corruption. — 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. — George Friedman

There are endless unknowns, and no forecast of a century can be either complete or utterly correct. — George Friedman

Success looks like you sitting here pretty confident that an armed brigade isn't going to come pouring in here and blow your head off. Which I don't think is your major concern. Therefore, the United States' foreign policy is successful. — George Friedman

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric. — George Friedman

... common sense is the one thing that will certainly be wrong. — George Friedman

But wishes don't make policy. Policy is made by reality, and the reality of what has been created, whether intentionally or not, can't be abandoned without breathtakingly severe consequences. — George Friedman

Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different from others' beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed. — George Friedman

The American people must mature. We are an adolescent lot, expecting solutions to insoluble problems and perfection in our leaders. — George Friedman

While you and I are allowed the luxury of our pain, president isn't. A president must take into account how his citizens feel and he must manage them and lead them, but he must not succumb to personal feelings. His job is to maintain a ruthless sense of proportion while keeping the coldness of his calculation to himself. — George Friedman

Osama bin Laden wanted to coax just the right response out of the United States by creating a situation in which the United States could not ignore him. His goal was to cross a threshold that Americans would deem intolerable (something bin Laden had failed to do with his previous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa or the USS Cole in Yemen), causing a massive attack to be launched on the Islamic world that used the most advanced and sophisticated methods available. Bin Laden was confident that if the U.S. plunged into the Islamic world, he would get the uprising he wanted. He had studied the Afghan war against the Soviets carefully. He felt he knew how to survive the initial American attack and, over time, defeat the Americans. But first, he needed the Americans to attack. — George Friedman

Success will require the studied lack of sophistication of a Ronald Reagan and the casual dishonesty of an FDR. The president must appear to be not very bright yet be able to lie convincingly. — George Friedman

Maintaining the balance of power should be as fundamental to American foreign policy as the Bill of Rights is to domestic policy. — George Friedman

Horthy was no more of an anti-Semite than good manners required, and this was not something he may have wanted himself, but his duty was to preserve an independent Hungary, and if putting Jews into labor battalions was what was needed, he was going to do what was needed. For — George Friedman

If the cost of naming the enemy is diplomatically or politically unacceptable, then the war is not likely to go well. — George Friedman

Italy spills over to everything. Italy is a huge banking system. It has been the major banking system in Eastern Europe. It's worked with Austria's banking system. There's all sorts of interplays there. So it's not the PIIGS one should worry about. Germany hasn't even begun falling yet. And when Germany falls, and it will, that's when the panic begins to set in. — George Friedman

At the end of the war American and Soviet troops massed throughout most of the European peninsula, with Americans also in Britain and the British in Europe. The peninsula was occupied, shattered and exhausted, no longer the arbiter of its own fate. — 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. — George Friedman

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

The pursuit of universal rights requires more than speeches. It requires power. — George Friedman

The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don't want Serbia to reemerge as a major power. — George Friedman

President Obama dropped the term 'war on terror', and rightly so. Terrorism is not an enemy but a type of warfare that may or may not be adopted by an enemy. Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, an attack that relied on aircraft carriers, President Roosevelt had declared a global war on naval aviation. By focusing on terrorism instead of al Qaeda or radical Islam, Bush elevated a specific kind of assault to a position that shaped American global strategy, which left the United States strategically off-balance.
Obama may have clarified the nomenclature, but he left in place a significant portion of the imbalance, which is an obsession with the threat of terrorist attacks. As we consider presidential options in the coming decade, it appears imperative that we clear up just how much of a threat terrorism actually presents and what that threat means for U.S. policy. — George Friedman

Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense. — George Friedman

Economists talk about an invisible hand, in which the self-interested, short-term activities of people lead to what Adam Smith called "the wealth of nations." Geopolitics applies the concept of the invisible hand to the behavior of nations and other international actors. The pursuit of short-term self-interest by nations and by their leaders leads, if not to the wealth of nations, then at least to predictable behavior and, therefore, the ability to forecast the shape of the future international system. — George Friedman

One of the great weaknesses of journalists is they interview people and they think that's important. They think that they are going to show them their true hand. But more to the point, they're trapped. — George Friedman

It is good, as I have said, to be neither victim nor victimizer. Unfortunately, it is not possible. What — George Friedman

The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but you must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then l lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold. — George Friedman

Japan will need to foster deep — George Friedman

The Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue demands that one honor one's mother and father. That is not about calling home. It is about this: Their God is your God, their friends are your friends, their debts are your debts, their enemies are your enemies and their fate is your fate. — George Friedman

In Geo-Politics, a nation has no permanent allies or permanent enemies, only permanent interests. — George Friedman

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it. — George Friedman

There is no difference in a country between military, economic, and political affairs. It's useful for Business Insider to divide things that way. That's useful for a college program. But a country is a country. How do you understand China's economy without China's army? If you take these all into account you're ready to explain a question like, "How come the US doesn't have a debt problem?" — George Friedman

Long-term solutions are more attractive and cause much less controversy than short-term solutions, which will affect people who are still alive and voting. — George Friedman

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

As the global powers diverge and Europe is caught in the middle, the lack of hard power will matter more and more. Being rich and weak is a dangerous combination. Europe therefore lives in a world of wolves. — George Friedman

The European peninsula was occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, its sovereignty compromised. Over the next decades its empire would disintegrate and its global power disappear. — George Friedman

The idea that the president has the power to craft a new strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of reality crafted by those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. — George Friedman

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

Germany is the new pig. Germany depends on exports and its markets are drying up. When the Germans start getting 10% unemployment, 15% unemployment, which is the real variable, how are they going to handle it? — George Friedman

Empires always spawn demons, — George Friedman

In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment. It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at the cost of their souls. — George Friedman

Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. — George Friedman

In 732 Charles Martel, in a defining battle, defeated the Muslim armies, forcing them back behind the mountains and confining them to the Iberian Peninsula. Had Martel lost that battle, Europe would have been a very different place. It — George Friedman

I had a son in 1976. When I went to Europe, I met an Italian and we became friends. We would talk about what we would tell our families to do if the balloon went up. The conversation
strange and perhaps pathological as it was
bound us together. It was not war, it was not peace, but it was a place in the mind where the preparation for war and the anxiety that it generated created strange forms, such as plans for the movement of children in order to avoid a nuclear holocaust. — George Friedman

The worst president is closer by nature to the best then either is to anyone who has not gone through what it requires to become president. — George Friedman

Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in context and try to understand what has happened and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for action can be made. Rage has its place, but actions must be taken with discipline and thought. — George Friedman

But smuggling people is a referral business, and you don't get good references by robbing and killing your charges. You may get away with it once or twice, but then business dries up. — George Friedman

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures. — George Friedman

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean - first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other. — George Friedman

In 711 Muslim armies went north into Spain, ultimately occupying it and crossing the Pyrenees into France. In 732 Charles Martel, in a defining battle, defeated the Muslim armies, forcing them back behind the mountains and confining them to the Iberian Peninsula. Had Martel lost that battle, Europe would have been a very different place. — George Friedman

And from this story I learned about the geopolitics of taking out one's salami. — George Friedman

The nation provided a human with the things that are most human - language and a past that stretched back before his birth. — George Friedman

A century is about events. A decade is about people. — George Friedman

Building a naval power takes generations, not so much to develop the necessary technology as to pass along the accumulated experience that creates good admirals. — George Friedman

And here's a fact that should get you thinking: when Social Security set the retirement age at sixty-five, the average life expectancy for a male was sixty-one. It makes us realize how little Social Security was designed to pay out. The subsequent surge in life expectancy has changed the math of retirement entirely. — George Friedman

In some sense, the military is the most modern part of a developing country. — George Friedman

Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case. — George Friedman

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

Hitler believed nothing, so he was free to believe in anything. — George Friedman

Presidents and other politicians manage the appearance of things, largely by manipulating the air and hope. — George Friedman

As the Russians press on the Poles from the east, the Germans won't have an appetite for a third war with Russia. The United States, however, will back Poland, providing it with massive economic and technical support. — George Friedman

Due to some incident, real or manufactured, Russians in a Baltic capital begin demonstrating, police use tear gas, and somewhere violence breaks out and Russians are killed. The Russian government demands the right to protect its citizens, the Baltic country rejects the demand. Violence mounts, and the Russians demand that NATO stop the fighting. The Baltic state insists it is an internal matter, claims that Russian intelligence caused the violence, and demands that Russian intelligence stop its intervention. A series of explosions kill a large number of Russians, and Russia occupies the country. For — George Friedman

The Enlightenment sought to rid the world of myths, but the nation could not justify itself without them. — George Friedman

We should remember what Bismarck said in 1888: "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." Balkan — George Friedman

There are many who predict that China is the next challenger to the United States, not Russia. I don't agree with that view for three reasons. First, when you look at a map of China closely, you see that it is really a very isolated country physically. With Siberia in the north, the Himalayas and jungles to the south, and most of China's population in the eastern part of the country, the Chinese aren't going to easily expand. Second, China has not been a major naval power for centuries, and building a navy requires a long time not only to build ships but to create well-trained and experienced sailors. Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. — George Friedman

The Mediterranean was, before the northern European industrial revolution, one of the wealthiest regions in the world. Divisions between Muslim North Africa and Christian southern Europe were contained, if not always peacefully. The — George Friedman

Nations do not become strong because they feel like it but because they must. — George Friedman

The computer focuses ruthlessly on things that can be represented in numbers. In so doing, it seduces people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we know and intended by reason. — George Friedman

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen. — George Friedman

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture. — George Friedman

It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility. — George Friedman

This highlights the single most important geopolitical fact in the world: the United States controls all of the oceans. No other power in history has been able to do this. And that control is not only the foundation of America's security but also the foundation of its — George Friedman

In the fog of history and myth, the American role in championing and underwriting European integration is frequently forgotten, along with the resistance of the Europeans. — George Friedman

Presidents may run for office on ideological platforms and promised policies, but their presidency is actually defined by the encounter between fortune and virtue, between the improbable and the unexpected - the thing that neither their ideology nor their proposals prepared them for - and their response. The president's job is to anticipate what will happen, minimize the unpredictability, then respond to the unexpected with cunning and power. — George Friedman

Here is the irony: Europe dominated the world, but it failed to dominate itself. For five hundred years Europe tore itself apart in civil wars, and as a result there was never a European empire - there was instead a British empire, a Spanish empire, a French empire, a Portuguese empire, and so on. — George Friedman

Machiavelli wrote, "The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms. You cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow." This is a better definition of realism than the realists have given us. — George Friedman

When you drill down and see the forces that are shaping nations, you can see that the menu from which they choose is limited. — George Friedman

Ideals without power are simply words - they can come alive only when reinforced by the capacity to act. Reality is understanding how to wield power, but by itself it doesn't guide you toward the ends to which your power should be put. Realism devoid of an understanding of the ends of power is frequently another word for thugishness, which is ultimately unrealistic. Similarly, idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can be corrected only by a profound understanding of power in its complete sense, while realism uncoupled from principle is frequently incompetence masquerading as tough-mindedness. Realism and idealism are not alternatives but necessary complements. Neither can serve as a principle for foreign policy by itself. — George Friedman

Europe was barbaric in the sixteenth century, as the self-certainty of Christianity fueled the first conquests. Europe passed into civilization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and then collapsed into decadence in the course of the twentieth century. The United States is just beginning its cultural and historical journey. — George Friedman

But every time new powers emerge they have to find their balance. New powers are emerging, old powers are declining. It's not that process that's dangerous, it's the emerging position that's dangerous. — George Friedman

since the EU was created, there have been more wars in Europe than between 1945 and 1992. Many — George Friedman

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy. — George Friedman

The most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening. — George Friedman

Terrorism is an act of violence whose primary purpose is to create fear and, through that, a political result. — George Friedman

It is interesting to note that Copernicus was German/Polish, Luther was German, and Gutenberg was German. — George Friedman

A research division develops marketing material for its deal makers. We have no policy position. If you have a policy position you can't possibly forecast. — George Friedman

Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here. — George Friedman

In the course of the century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century. — George Friedman

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