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41 " 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. "
― George Friedman
42 " Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. "
43 " Rome wasn’t planned, and neither did it just happen. "
― George Friedman , The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
44 " The technocrats saw expertise as the only measure of a person. "
― George Friedman , The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
45 " 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. "
46 " Osama bin Laden wanted to coax just the right response out of the United States by creating a situation in which the United States could not ignore him. His goal was to cross a threshold that Americans would deem intolerable (something bin Laden had failed to do with his previous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa or the USS Cole in Yemen), causing a massive attack to be launched on the Islamic world that used the most advanced and sophisticated methods available. Bin Laden was confident that if the U.S. plunged into the Islamic world, he would get the uprising he wanted. He had studied the Afghan war against the Soviets carefully. He felt he knew how to survive the initial American attack and, over time, defeat the Americans. But first, he needed the Americans to attack. "
47 " 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. "
48 " If the cost of naming the enemy is diplomatically or politically unacceptable, then the war is not likely to go well. "
― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like
49 " since 2001 the United States has been in a constant state of war, even if not on the scale of World War II or the Civil War. But it is a war that has lasted far longer than any other in American history. And in the inability of the government to frame the war in such a way that it might be won, the institutions of the United States revealed their fundamental weaknesses. War requires a simplification, an understanding of a desired end, clarity on strategy, and allocation of resources appropriate to both. The government proved incapable of the clarity needed for a war because it could not simplify. The complexity of the government was translated into a complicated plan for the war, and the complexity trapped the warriors in a confusion that undermined their mission. "
50 " 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. "
― George Friedman , Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe
51 " The Enlightenment sought to rid the world of myths, but the nation could not justify itself without them. "
52 " 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. "
53 " 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. "
54 " 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. "
55 " Pero a comienzos de la década de los ochenta sucedió algo notable. Por primera vez en la historia, el comercio traspacífico igualó al comercio trasatlántico. "
56 " 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. "
57 " the most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening. "
58 " In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment. It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at the cost of their souls. "
59 " Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense. "
60 " As the global powers diverge and Europe is caught in the middle, the lack of hard power will matter more and more. Being rich and weak is a dangerous combination. Europe therefore lives in a world of wolves. "