An acquaintance recently was complaining that they simply didn’t
understand the world –Brexit, Trump, Russia, China, the Middle East mess, etc,
etc.. Well of course none of us understand the world – it is far too
complicated for any human to fully understand, but it is possible to understand
at least the broad outlines of what is happening. Not that one could deduce it
from the American press, so focused on shallow sensationalism and partisan ideology.
But there is a core group of experts who, while they may debate details, do
seem to agree on the broad outlines of what is happening. For those who are
interested, let me suggest the following:
George Friedman seems to me to have an outstanding ability
to condense the complexity of geopolitics into something intelligible to the
ordinary reader. His 2010 book The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century is a
wonderful primer on geopolitics and how geopolitical experts think about the
world. His 2016 book Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe
gives a good explanation as to why the European Union is in such trouble now.
For those who are not especially prone to reading books like this, there are
some good presentations by him on YouTube at https://youtu.be/zpAkT5YnpEA and https://youtu.be/scVSEAhvRD4. Also his
2018 talk at https://youtu.be/tJmrODCZmmw
gives a nice succinct summary of American foreign policy. A couple of hours watching
these presentations on YouTube would be a good beginning.
Peter Zeihan, who worked with George Friedman for a decade
while Friedman was CEO of STRATFOR, has written two excellent, well researched
books. His 2016 book The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence
and the Coming Global Disorder lays
the groundwork for why the global world order that has prevailed since the end
of World War II is now coming apart.. His more recent 2018 book The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution
and a World without America carries forward from this and factors in
the profound affects that American energy independence (from the fracking
revolution) has produced. Again, if one is not especially interested in working
through the substantial detail and research in these books, good short (appx 1
hour) summaries of his views are available in his excellent and quite entertaining
presentations at https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU
and https://youtu.be/BclcpfVn2rg.
The second presentation repeats some of the information in the first one, but
has interesting additional information, especially since it came just after the
midterm elections and he has interesting things to say about how American political
parties are changing, so it is worth watching both presentations.
Finally, let me suggest Robert Kaplan’s excellent 2013 book The
Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the
Battle Against Fate. Again, if you don’t want to read the book, you can
get a good sense of his arguments from the extended (about 45 minutes plus an extended
Q & A discussion) presentation of Grand Strategy of his on YouTube at https://youtu.be/JK7fhSn5AGo. By the way,
none of these authors are especially happy with the way things are going; they
are just reporting what they see and what they think will happen.
For someone who wants to get a relatively quick overview of
the profound forces reshaping the world today, reading these books and/or
watching the presentations would be a good start. There are of course lots of
other viewpoints, especially from people who want to make the perennial argument
that America is in decline (and we ought to follow their preferred ideology to
avoid this fate). If nothing else, Friedman, Zeihan and Kaplan will provide a
sound, fact-based basis from which to judge and evaluate these other
viewpoints.
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