George Friedman, the head of Stratfor, in Austin, Texas - a private-intelligence agency has made a very successful career as an analyst of open source intelligence. After reading this book, I signed up for his weekly free e-mail alerts. I found them more informative & accurate in their predictions than the editorial pages and wire services.

Friedman has released a book, that it is extremely bold in its predictions. "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" indicates that despite the worlds current fiscal and military crises, America is and will continue to be the strongest nation on the planet for the next 100 years. Friedman draws on his deep knowledge history, geopolitics, economics and social factors - all indicators point to continued U.S. domination — mainly because America is surrounded by two large oceans and its U.S. Navy has supreme control over the world's seas. The game will change to control of space later this century, but the United States will lead that as well.

He is obviously influenced by the thinking of Alfred Thayer Mahan (September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914), a United States Navy flag officer, geostrategic, and educator, who has been called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." Actually Mahan basically invented geostrategic thinking. Friedman argues, conflict will continue, but not on the destructive scale as in the WWI & WWII or even the U.S. - Islamist war - that the Japanese call the war between the Christian and Moslems.

According to Friedman, the United States isn't’t concerned if it decisively wins a war; is overall strategic objective is making sure that a coalition of nations doesn't rise to challenge it. And the United States is very good at that. Friedman sees the U.S.-Islamist war as nearly over, not because Barack Obama is the new president, but because al-Qaida, which wants to create a new Islamic Caliphate, is nearly broken.

Having read this book, I realize that this recent Israel-Gaza situation was a put-up job. It really was about Turkey establishing its Islamic street creed to begin its expansion as the next Islamic regional power. A new cold war with Russia is on the way in the 2020s, but not on the scale of the previous one. In the '20s, Friedman predicts, China will fragment as the interior provinces get poorer and the coastal provinces get richer on world trade. The communist government will try to reinstate central control, but the coastal areas will have allies in their global trading partners.

In the '30s, America will see a massive financial crisis exacerbated by the retirement of the baby boomers and a worldwide population shortage. Instead of restricting immigration, Friedman predicts that the United States will start paying people to immigrate to America. He argues that the United States will emerge financially stronger, as it always does after such crises. What makes the book immensely interesting is that Friedman in his preface admits that he only expects to be half right, even though he will be long dead when most of this happens. I like his humility. Maxim