The next decade george friedman pdf free

A decade is about people. We live in the much shorter span in which our lives are shaped not so much by vast historical trends but by the specific decisions of specific individuals. This book is about the short run of the next ten years: the specific realities to be faced, the specific decisions to be made, and the likely consequences of those decisions. Most people think that the longer the time frame, the more unpredictable the future.

I take the opposite view. Individual actions are the hardest thing to predict. In the course of a 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. But in the shorter time frame of a decade, individual decisions made by individual people, particularly those with political power, can matter enormously.

What I wrote in The Next Years is the frame for understanding this decade. But it is only the frame. But having forecast for the long run, you can reel back your scenario and try to see how it plays out in, say, a decade. What makes this time frame interesting is that it is sufficiently long for the larger, impersonal forces to be at play but short enough for the individual decisions of individual leaders to skew outcomes that otherwise might seem inevitable.

A decade is the point at which history and statesmanship meet, and a span in which policies still matter. But within the span of a decade, events that may not matter in the long run may still affect us personally and deeply. They also can have real meaning in defining which path we take into the future. This book is therefore both a forecast and a discussion of the policies that ought to be followed.

We begin with the United States for the same reason that a study of would have to begin with Britain. Whatever the future might hold, the global system today pivots around the United States, just as Britain was the pivotal point in the years leading up to World War I.

In this book, I have to write about American weaknesses, which, I think, are not problems in the long run; time will take care of most of these. Most are rooted in structural imbalances that require solutions.

Some are problems of leadership, because, as I said at the outset, a decade is about people. This discussion of problems and people is particularly urgent at this moment. In the first decade after the United States became the sole global power, the world was, compared to other eras, relatively tranquil. In terms of genuine security issues for the United States, Baghdad and the Balkans were nuisances, not threats.

The United States had no need for strategy in a world that appeared to have accepted American leadership without complaint. Ten years later, September 11 brought that illusion crashing to the ground. The world was more dangerous than we imagined, but the options seemed fewer as well.

The United States did not craft a global strategy in response. Instead, it developed a narrowly focused politico-military strategy designed to defeat terrorism, almost to the exclusion of all else. Now that decade is coming to an end as well, and the search is under way for an exit from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and indeed from the world that began when those hijacked airliners smashed into buildings in New York and Washington.

The impulse of the United States is always to withdraw from the world, savoring the pleasures of a secure homeland protected by the buffer of wide oceans on either side. But the homeland is not secure, either from terrorists or from the ambitions of nation-states that see the United States as both dangerous and unpredictable. Under both President Bush and President Obama, the United States has lost sight of the long-term strategy that served it well for most of the last century.

Instead, recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goals because they have framed the issues incorrectly, as if they believed their own rhetoric. One can easily understand why George Friedman is an optimist in general and about America in particular.

Click Download or Read Online button to get the-nextyears book now. This site is like a library, Use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. He wrote the bestsellers The Next Decade and The Next Years and often comments on intelligence and international geopolitics for the media. Please click button to get the next decade book now. Shop by Category. He is frequently called upon as a media expert in intelligence and international geopolitics, and he is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Next Decade and The Next … George Friedman Dr.

Friedman is a New York Times bestselling author and his most popular book, The Next Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Certainly worth a rea Pertinent glimpse into the geopolitical crystal ball. Certainly worth a read especially for those who are being spoon fed baby news food from network news outlets.

Getting a glimpse into the motivations of foreign powers for those who haven't considered such on their own is well worth the time for this reasonably quick read. Sep 21, Jeff rated it really liked it Shelves: mark-s-suggestions. I read this book following The Next years by the same author and I'm glad I did - panning out before zooming in is how I tend to view complex scenarios; also the author references in this book geopolitical concepts that are outlined in detail in The Next years.

His description of the often conflicting responsibilities of the president of a republic and leader of an empire was intriguing. His foreign policy recommendations per region included mini history lessons and were fascinating. The I read this book following The Next years by the same author and I'm glad I did - panning out before zooming in is how I tend to view complex scenarios; also the author references in this book geopolitical concepts that are outlined in detail in The Next years.

The book is extremely US centric by design. Jul 11, George rated it liked it. I go this book at the airport thinking it was by the same guy who wrote "The World is Flat", that was Thomas Friedman.

It was a surprisingly interesting book and everything that he predicts over the next decade well now more like 8 yrs seems realistic. Now I am reading The Next years which was actually written before this, so it is like seeing Prometheus before Alien kindof I go this book at the airport thinking it was by the same guy who wrote "The World is Flat", that was Thomas Friedman.

Now I am reading The Next years which was actually written before this, so it is like seeing Prometheus before Alien kindof Jan 09, Kyriakos Michail rated it really liked it. Great for someone who wants to study the geopolitical role of USA and also wants to know some general facts concerning regional or possible regional powers.

Very interesting prologue when he describes that predicting a century is much easier than predicting a decade. The short term actions of men are difficult to predict, whether by mistake, stroke of genius, etc But these actions tend to become averaged out in the long run when considering the larger subtle shifts over time.

As Machiavelli, this book is highly focused on power and objective. Friedman delves deeply into the difference between great presidents and mediocre ones being that those are the ones able to sacrifice morality for the sake of long term strategy while making the public believe that they are acting in an interest consistent with the principles that we all hold nobly high.

Friedman attests that it was and our knee-jerk reaction to seek out revenge that ended such a long term functioning strategy, as we no longer sought to balance Iraq vs Iran or India vs Pakistan, but to go 1-sided towards those who would help us eradicate terrorism, an obviously impossible and expensive goal. You really want to avoid unentangling alliances The art of telling the public what they think they want to hear while doing what you know is right is the key to good presidency.

I especially appreciate the non-partisan view that Friedman offers. He could at any time have hammered away at Bush or told just 1-side of the story to pronounce why right-wingers are bad for democracy, or left wingers are bad for personal freedom But instead tells both sides as a historian, without bias.

And why I think I could never be a politico. Just how do you judge the true intentions of candidates then as a voter? This novel of course has to center around the US as the dominant superpower.

Whether you like it or not, it's the reality and we are the 1 country where actions locally have the most dramatic impact felt by the international community And the president as the most impactful man.

At the same time, he must resist the temptation to try the impossible or undertake actions that have disproportionate costs relative to the effect. He can lie to the public, but he must never ever lie to himself. Above all, he must understand the real threats to the country and act against those.

As a result, Iran became empowered without balance in the region, endless resources have and will continue to be spent fighting terrorism that will never end, and no balance was paid to Russia's resurgence. 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. If he succumbs to sentiment, he will make decisions that run counter to the long-term interest if his country.

A president had to accept casualties and move on. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt calls for vengeance but privately decided to focus on Germany and not Japan. He understood that a president could not allow himself to craft strategy out of emotion. This is a natural procession following the rage against corporate abuses that led to the greatest recession since the depression.

Not a prediction, but suggestion to decrease the support for Israel and balance more towards the Arab states. Although politically difficult to do domestically, Israel has become too powerful to keep playing the Arab states against them. Freidman contends that the root of our support for Israel was after they lost French support, in order to provide a counterbalance to Syria on the side of Egypt. Our alliance was one of convenience, not ideology and so could just as easily shift the other way.

Not to say we abandon Israel altogether, just that we balance more support towards the other side especially since Israel is now a power in their own right and does not need to rely on US aid. Also a suggestion and not a prediction - making a formal alliance with Iran! Now that the Iran-Iraq balance has been destroyed, the US has to rethink how to accommodate the new shift of power in the region.

It is the option chosen by Roosevelt and Nixon when they faced seemingly impossible strategic situations: the creation of alliances with countries that had previously been regarded as strategic and moral threats. Roosevelt aligned the United States with Stalinist Russia, and Nixon aligned with Maoist China, each to block a third pier that was seen as more dangerous.

This locks the United States in place, trying to entice the Russians when in fact the only thing the Russians want the Americans to do is to remain permanently bogged down in the war. This Russian strategy reveals the price of the American over commitment to the war on terror.

It also shows that it is imperative for the United States to find an effective response to radical Islam, as well as an effective response to the Russians. As Friedman contends in "the next years", the rise of Poland is key and will see its rise in this decade. Strategically located right between Germany and Russia, and with a recent memory of brutal occupation by both, they will be apt to American aid to counterbalance these forces.

Will require quite some skill from the president to pull this off strategically without alarming the Russians. Turkey is an easy ally that should be no issue to continue supporting.

Story in the east will be that of china vs Japan competing for the world's 2 spot in the economy. As in "the next years" I have a hard time seeing a world in which USA and Japan are not close allies, but the beginnings of it may be coming in this decade.

US policy should be based on ensuring the china-Japan rivalry continues and remains balanced. The key 3rd party geopolitical allies that we should maintain with are Korea, Singapore, as Australia in preparation for the Chinese-Japanese conflict to escalate. A-ha for me was Freidman's analysis of Japanese economy based upon their lack of a social safety net in the post war boom: this caused a reliance upon personal savings for retirement and thus not the high level of consumer spending that fueled the American boom.