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The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like QUOTES

The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like QUOTES

1 " Building a naval power takes generations, not so much to develop the necessary technology as to pass along the accumulated experience that creates good admirals. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

2 " Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest – sometimes with extensive borrowing – when and where matters of life and death are at stake. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

3 " Long-term solutions are more attractive and cause much less controversy than short-term solutions, which will affect people who are still alive and voting. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

4 " The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

5 " The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but you must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then l lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

6 " Their job as leader was not to solve the problem – the president really has little control over the economy – but to convince the public not only that he has a plan but that he is altogether confident in the plan's success and that only a cynic or someone in different to the public's well-being would dare to question him on the details. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

7 " While you and I are allowed the luxury of our pain, president isn't. A president must take into account how his citizens feel and he must manage them and lead them, but he must not succumb to personal feelings. His job is to maintain a ruthless sense of proportion while keeping the coldness of his calculation to himself. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

8 " Presidents and other politicians manage the appearance of things, largely by manipulating the air and hope. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

9 " 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. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

10 " A century is about events. A decade is about people. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

11 " The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

12 " President Obama dropped the term 'war on terror', and rightly so. Terrorism is not an enemy but a type of warfare that may or may not be adopted by an enemy. Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, an attack that relied on aircraft carriers, President Roosevelt had declared a global war on naval aviation. By focusing on terrorism instead of al Qaeda or radical Islam, Bush elevated a specific kind of assault to a position that shaped American global strategy, which left the United States strategically off-balance.

Obama may have clarified the nomenclature, but he left in place a significant portion of the imbalance, which is an obsession with the threat of terrorist attacks. As we consider presidential options in the coming decade, it appears imperative that we clear up just how much of a threat terrorism actually presents and what that threat means for U.S. policy. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

13 " The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

14 " The great presidents never forget the principles of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them--in the long run--without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand.
[...]
In preventing the unintended empire from destroying the republic, the critical factor will not be the balance of power among the branches of government, but rather a president who is committed to that constitutional balance, yet willing to wield power in his own right. In orderr to do this, the president must grasp the insufficiency of both the idealist and the realist positions. The idealists, whether of the neoconservative or the liberal flavor, don't understand that it is necessary to master the nature of power in order to act according to moral principles. The realists don't understand the futility of power without a moral core. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

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

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

16 " 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. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

17 " 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

18 " 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. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

19 " the most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like

20 " Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense. "

― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like