MASTERMIND: Dr. George Friedman

Dr. George Friedman is the founder and head of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor). His organization, which provides geopolitical intelligence to businesses, government agencies, and other clients, has been hailed by ABC News as "often able to uncover the globe's best kept secrets and predict world-changing events in ways that no one else can." Barron’s says, "Stratfor has enjoyed an increasing vogue in recent years as a result of its heady geopolitical forecasts and many news breaks." He is the author of a recently released book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century.

Dr. Friedman appeared at the Masters Forum in early 2006. Here are his comments on many and varied subjects.

On American Business
"The single greatest weakness of the American business community is that it does not take seriously the exogenous event. . . The world is infinitely more complex than American businesspeople like to think."

On the Folly of Extrapolation
"It is a grave mistake to try to forecast the future by extrapolating from the present."

• In 1900, Europe was generally prosperous, at peace, and highly interdependent (thirty percent of France’s capital, for example, came from Germany). To most observers, that meant that war was nearly impossible. Books were written saying that no war in Europe could last more than six weeks.

• By 1920, war had shattered Europe, killing millions. Everything that once was solid now was gone. A communist regime ruled Russia. It had taken a million American soldiers in Europe to end the war. Germany was destroyed. Observers saw no possibility that war could reappear.

• By 1940, Germany had conquered all of continental Europe. The Nazis were allied with the Soviets and Italy. To all observers it was clear that 'the fat lady had sung' – the war was over and Germany had won.

• By 1960, Germany had lost the war. The US and the USSR were facing off in Europe, and nuclear war between those superpowers seemed practically inevitable. Since the US had never been defeated in war, it was assumed that such a conflict would be 'won' by the US.

• By 1980, the US had lost a war – in Vietnam. The US was a declining power, and the Soviets were pressing everywhere. The one thing we know in 1980 is that the US has got to make an agreement with the Soviet Union; there has to be a nuclear freeze; the United States cannot keep up this competition, its economy will collapse.

• By 2000, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the US was undergoing the largest economic expansion in its history.

"Common sense doesn’t work. You cannot extrapolate. Anyone who says that twenty years from now everything’s going to be the same only more so is going to be wrong."

On the US Economy
"It’s always a claim that in twenty years the US is going to be a third-rate power. You go back in any time frame, and the one certain common-sense conclusion is the US is finished. It never is, but it’s a conviction."

"The one striking thing about the world, particularly since 1980, is that where everyone else is in a short cycle of economic well-being, military power, and so forth, the US is in a deep, long cycle, and that cycle is ever upward."

"Go out to the Mississippi. Look at it and see the foundation of American power. This incredible river system meant that the farmers in the American Midwest didn’t have to be subsistence farmers ."

"You need a bigger framework than economics. It is useful, but it is a severely limited tool. Purely economic thinking is irrational and empirically false."

"From 1991 to 2001 there was an 'optical illusion' that the world was generally at peace, everyone could 'become an American' – the 'giddy springtime of the bourgeoisie.' But the reality was that the force field that was holding the world together, created by the influences of the US and the USSR, had collapsed."

On the US - Jihadist War
"After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the US was unprepared to respond because its military had been downsized and intelligence was sorely lacking. So President Carter arranged for counterinsurgency efforts by the mujahadeen against the USSR in Afghanistan to be funded by Saudi Arabia, using primarily Saudi fighters, and be housed in Pakistan, with training from American military specialists and the CIA. Osama bin Laden was invented by Jimmy Carter, and that’s just a small exaggeration."

"The Saudis recruited ultra religious militants to conduct the guerrilla war in Afghanistan. They became the core of Al Qaeda. Once the USSR was defeated, they perceived an opportunity to recreate the once-enormous, once-powerful Islamic empire, the Caliphate. To do that, they intended to create Islamist uprisings to overthrow Muslim governments allied with the United States. To demonstrate the weakness of those governments, they intended to show that the United States was both weak and hostile."

"September 11 was a superbly executed covert operation to strategically destabilize the United States. It could be carried out because of bin Laden’s deep understanding of how the CIA works, which he gained in Afghanistan. That put the United States in a position that required military retaliation, which was bin Laden’s goal. He wanted to give the United States a shot that it couldn’t ignore, because he wanted an American response."

"The US war in Afghanistan was arranged through key alliances: Russia provided bases in Central Asia and arranged for the US to 'rent' the Northern Alliance as its principal fighting force; Iran agreed to provide Shiite support in western Afghanistan. The Taliban was never defeated, but in most ways the first round went to the United States."

After Afghanistan
"Now there's another problem: There is a legitimate fear of nuclear attack on the US from a suitcase bomb. So what do you do? The US plan became to simultaneously attack Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But the US did not have the intelligence information to launch such strikes."

"To understand how Iraq comes up, you have to understand the desperation in the spring of 2002. All the good options are gone. You have to either stand and hope or do something else."

"The necessary intelligence about Al Qaeda exists, among the Pakistanis and the Saudis. Pakistan can be coerced into some cooperation, but Saudi Arabia cannot see cooperation as being in its best interests, among other reasons because it has seen the US back away from long-term engagements and Al Qaeda, which has shown its durability, has considerable support within Saudi Arabia. For the Saudis, backing the United States is backing a loser. It has to worry about Al Qaeda; it doesn’t have to worry about the US. Cooperation with the United States is too dangerous."

"So the center of gravity of the problem becomes getting the Saudis to cooperate with intelligence about Al Qaeda. In a more general sense, the US realizes that it must demonstrate more military resolve, that it must put Saudi Arabia into a strategic bind, and it must take control of the most strategic country in the region if it intends to fight a long-term war. That country, because of its borders and its air bases, is Iraq. If we take Iraq, we can own the region."

Explaining US Policy
"Here is where everything goes wrong. It’s hard to explain this policy; it’s hard to go on TV and say, 'We’re attempting to blackmail the Saudis.' So WMD was chosen as the explanation to give the American public. And in fact, everyone thought Saddam had WMD. Even Saddam thought he had WMD because he was being deceived by his scientists. He thought he had nukes."

"Further, the US did not anticipate Saddam’s follow-on war plan, which included full preparations for a guerrilla war, and the US did not – because of CIA failures compounded by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s intransigence – respond to that plan for three crucial months."

A Deal with Iran Made and Broken
"Since the US did not have enough forces to deal with the problem on the ground in Iraq, it turned to Iran, which had a lot of influence on Iraq’s Shiites. A deal was struck in which Iran kept the Shiites from rising up against the Sunnis and split them off from the jihadists. The US promised, 'In the end, we will leave you with a Shiite-dominated government.' For three years, that was our position: we were in alliance with Iran."

"And then, as the situation started to stabilize, the US 'double-crossed' Iran by backing Sunni demands in Fallujah and then by cutting a deal with Sunni elders to participate in the elections and distance themselves from the jihadists."

Iran and Nukes
"Becoming desperate as it saw its strategy of the past three years going down the drain, Iran decided it needed a strategy related to nuclear weapons for leverage against the US. Iran cannot accept a return to power of the Sunni former Baathists in Iraq, which is what the US is currently facilitating. Iran does not really seek nuclear weapons, and it knows it will not be permitted to get them, but it believes that going after them will assure American attention. Now the Iranians are pushing toward some unspecified line that would be a flash point for a crisis, trying to stay on the safe side of that line while waving their arms to convince the world they’re insane so the US will negotiate with them. The US does not want to attack Iran, so negotiations are likely."

"We could of course just give Iraq to the Iranians. What do we care who has Iraq? But the Saudis would go absolutely ballistic, because the Saudis are the mortal enemies of the Iranians."

"So it gets complicated and complicated. We want a compromise in Iraq; the Iranians want a compromise in Iraq. It’s tilted differently: we’re using as our nukes the Sunnis; they’re using as their nukes, nukes."

The US Politics of Iraq
"President Bush is unable to defend his complex strategy regarding Iraq in part because he started off with a simplistic explanation. The idea that we are fighting to bring democracy to Iraq, if by democracy you mean something like Minnesota, is kind of a whacked-out notion."

"In combination with his problems justifying his Iraq strategy, Bush almost lost his presidency after Katrina because his approval fell so low that it showed his own party was turning against him. An approval rating below 35% leads to a failed presidency. Although the President has recovered, he still faces significant challenges to his approval ratings on many fronts."

As Things Stand in Early 2006

• "Iraq is chaotic but contained: the malignant possibility of a complete breakdown into a total guerilla war against the US is gone."

• "Al Qaeda is a shattered organization: the intelligence for counteracting real terrorist threats is coming from Saudi Arabia."

• "Anti-Americanism does not translate into strategic terrorism. They hate us in the Islamic world . . . but terrorism is hard to do, and most of the trained ones are dead."

• "Iran is now a serious threat, but even the Iranian problem is containable."

• "Islam will be a problem, but not the central problem. The idea that our geopolitics will be defined ad infinitum by this 'clash of civilizations' is not true."

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From Stratfor
The Next 100 Years Overture by George Friedman

Friedman on Geopolitics (Free Articles)

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Stratfor Video Center (Free)