The real battle these days is to find news sources that are
(a) relatively unbiased, and (b) truly knowledgeable, and that (c) focus on the
issues of real significance, as opposed to whatever the media or some activists
choose to feature to stir us up for the day. For domestic affairs the best I have
found thus far is The Economist magazine.
Re-reading George Friedman’s 2011 book, as discussed in the
previous post, reminded me again how good his analyses of foreign affairs are,
so I went looking to see if he has any new books out since his 2016 book Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis
in Europe (also previously recommended). It turns out that he has a new
book scheduled for publication in June of 2019, The New American Century: Crisis, Endurance, and the
Future of the United States. However
my search also revealed that he has a subscription website at https://geopoliticalfutures.com that
contains continuing analysis by him and his team. So I went ahead and
subscribed for a year ($139/year at current discount), and I have to say the
material is well worth the price. I highly recommend it for anyone who is
interested in understanding current geopolitics.
As Friedman himself says, he is interested in exploring what
is likely to happen, not what he personally wishes would happen. And his pragmatic
approach deals with the geopolitical problems nations and regions face, and the
limited range of option they have for dealing with these problems. As he
mentions in one of his books, it’s not too hard to guess where most nations
will go in their foreign policy because culture, geography, economics and
demographics sharply limit their options.
Unfortunately most Americans, certainly most voters and even
supposedly more knowledgeable people in government, academia and the media,
have views shaped and distorted by their politics and ideologies, and tend too
often to narrow their focus to spectacular but in the long run inconsequential
issues, and ignore the issues that really matter to the nation in the long
term. An example Friedman offers is the current “war on terror”, in which we
are expending an enormous amount of national resource on an issue that truly is
not an existential threat to the nation, whatever the media thinks. More people
are killed in US traffic accidents in a few days than all the Americans ever killed
by terrorists, including 9/11. (37,461 were killed in US traffic accidents in
2016). Indeed, more Americans kill themselves in a few days then all Americans ever killed by terrorists (there were 44,965 recorded suicides in the US in 2016). By contrast between 1995 and 2016 3,277 Americans were killed in attacks in
the United States – 2,902 of them in the September 11 attacks.
Friedman’s writings help to correct this tendency to focus on the wrong things.. I highly recommend subscribing to his site.
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