Quotes from George Friedman

the United States has a single core policy in Eurasia—preventing any power from dominating Eurasia or part of it. If China weakens or fragments and the Europeans are weak and divided, the United States will have a fundamental interest: avoiding general war, by keeping the Russians focused on the Balts and Poles, unable to think globally.

The technocrats saw expertise as the only measure of a person.

Expansion in the mission of the federal government has created a belief in its effective power. Its ineffectiveness is therefore seen not as a systemic failure but as the result of a deliberate failure designed to benefit the powerful and harm the many.

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.

The issue now and during the next decade is access to the center of gravity of the technocracy, the leading universities that not only teach subjects but train you in the social rituals that allow you to belong to the technocracy.

The selection process at the best schools is presently designed not to find the best minds but rather to find minds already shaped to the culture and ideology the universities regard as being able to benefit from their education.

The foundation of any empire is not guns, something that Hitler and Stalin never grasped. It is money, and the envy that brings. But more important than money or guns is the technology that represents the future and the culture that speaks of being contemporary. All lasting empires are empires of the mind and soul, empires that cause others to crave to emulate them.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Rome wasn't planned, and neither did it just happen.

The argument for expertise as the basis for political authority depends on the experts' success at managing both their small niche and society as a whole.

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

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.

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.

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

The founders made the president commander in chief for a reason: they had read Machiavelli carefully and they knew that, as he wrote, "there is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

En los últimos quinientos años, Europa fue el centro del sistema internacional, y sus imperios crearon un sistema global por primera vez en la historia humana.