All right. We got the Next Hundred Years by George Friedman. Let’s see what George is talking about. Also by George, America’s Secret War. I’m just going to let you read it here. See it? All right. Cool. Forecast for 21st century. Let’s see, when was, 2009. So 11 years ago.
Here’s a nice little quote, “To him who looks upon the world rationally the world turns, present a rational aspect through relation is mutual.” All right. Overturn an introduction to American age, the Dawn of American age, earthquake, population, computer and cultural Wars. Let’s go there 50. 11 years ago. Let’s see how close he was.
In 2002, Osama bin Ladin, excuse me. Osama bin Ladin wrote in his letter to America, “You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools, calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.” Whoa.
Wow. Was not expecting that one to come out. Just like that. We’re in the Next Hundred Years just letting you know. Wow, didn’t see that one coming, that’s like a different book I was reading. See I’m trying to tell you, read these books, you just open them up, you never know what you’re going to read. It’s like, I’m trying to tell you Forrest Gump was like, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Life is like a box of books, you never know what you’re going to get when you open it up. Okay.
“As this quote indicates that Al-Qaeda is fighting for the traditional understandings of the family, this is not a minor part of their program. It is at heart, the traditional family is built around some clear defined principles. First, the home is the main of the woman and life outside the house is a pure view of the man. Second, sexuality is something confined to the family and the home, an extra marital, extra familial sexuality is unacceptable.”
Remember, we’re talking about Population, Computers, and Cultural Wars. Boom. “Women who move outside the home invite extra marital sexuality just by being there. Third, women have their own, their primary tasks, reproduction and nurturing of the next generation. Therefore, intense controls on women are necessary to maintain the integrity of the family and the society. In an interesting way it is all about women. And Bin Ladin’s letter drives this home. What he hates about America is that it promotes a completely different view of women and the family. Al-Qaeda’s view is not unique to Osama bin Ladin or Islam. The lengths to which that group is prepared to go may be unique, but the issue of women and family defines most major religions.”
See, now we’re getting into what, the meat of what he was talking about. Excuse me, “Traditional Catholicism, fundamental Protestantism, Orthodox Judaism ,and various branches of Buddhism, all take similar positions.” I did not know this. “All these religions are being split internally as all societies. In the United States, where we speak of the cultural Wars, the battlefield is the family and its definition. All societies are being torn between traditionalist and those who are attempting to redefine that family, women, and sexuality. This conflict is going to intensify in the 21st century, but the traditionalist’s are fighting defensive and ultimately losing battle. The reason is that over the past hundred years, this very fabric of human life and particularly the life of human has been transformed.”
This is very, I’ve never really thought of it like this. “And with its structure of the family, what has already happened in Europe and the United States and Japan is spreading into the rest of the world. These issues will rip many societies apart, but in the end, the transformation of family can’t be stopped. That is not to say that transformation is inherently a good idea or a bad one. Instead, this trend is unstoppable because the demographic realities of the world are being transformed. The single most important demographic change in the world right now is a dramatic decline everywhere in birth rates. Let me repeat that. The most meaningful statistic in the world is an overall decline in birth rates. Women are having fewer and fewer children every year. That means not only that the population explosion of the last two centuries is going to end, but also that women are spending much more… Much less time bearing and nurturing children, even as their life expectancy, you know longer has soared.”
This is… How much is this? That’s extremely interesting. Now we’re probably, this is just chapter, but I also want to understand the fault line. So we’re going to read a little bit about fault line, the new fault lines because I’ve seen a cool picture. So we’ll go over it to.
So right here, this is the Pacific Trade Routes, right. Also in the new fault lines, he also says that successor States of the Soviet Union, I mean, this is older, but I mean, again, you see how I mean man, I’m trying to tell you, it’s crazy because if let’s say, boom, we’re talking about Soviet Union, boom, Cold War. Soviet Union. We learned a little bit about that earlier today or in this box.
And then Ukraine’s strategic significance. Right. And we’ll look right here.
And what they’re saying is, I mean, let me see if I can, before we go too far into it.
All right, ” are fragmented to this extent, it would have created chaos in Eurasia to which the United States would have objected since the U.S. grand strategy has always aimed for the fragmentation of Eurasia as the first line of defense for U.S. control of the seas as we have seen. So the United States had every reason to encourage this process. Russia had every reason to block it. After what Russia had regarded as America attempt to further damage it.”
Now, obviously during this all I’m going to, I just jumped right in, right, that’s because of time. But of course, I’m going to go more into where I was talking about. “Damage that Moscow, reverted to your strategy of reasserted its sphere of influence in areas of the former Soviet Union. The great retreat of Russia power ended in Ukraine. Russian influence is now increasing in three directions, toward Central Asia, toward the Caucus and inevitably towards the West, the Baltics in Eastern Europe for the next generation until roughly 2020. Russia’s primary concern will be reconstruction of the Russian state, and reasserting Russian power in the region.”
Let’s see, why are they doing that? All right, “Increasingly the geographical or geopolitical shift is aligned with an economic shift. Putin sees Russia less as an industrial power, than as an exporter of raw materials. The most important of which is energy, particularly natural gas. Moving to bring the energy industry under state supervision, if not direct control, he is forcing out foreign interests and reorienting the interests towards exports, particularly to Europe. High energy prices have helped stabilize Russia’s economy internally.”
All right. It didn’t. I mean, it shows, it talks about the Soviet, but it doesn’t go too much into it. But not, this is pretty interesting because then it talks about the new, the four Europe’s right here. Never really thought of it like that before we go. Look at the map and I’ll explain it to you, and then I got to go. The line is the Scandinavia Europe, then we have Atlantic Europe, we have Eastern Europe, we have Central Europe and those are the four Europe’s. So Central Europe is your Germany, your Italy, your Switzerland. Atlantic is, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal. Eastern is everything East of Germany and Italy. They don’t even consider… look, they don’t even consider Greece, part of Europe in this map.
Any who. That’s interesting. Oh, then we even talked about the Muslim state. We talk about Turkey in 2008. Oh man. Yeah. This is going to be very interesting. We talk about Mexico.
“If you’re looking for new challenges after U.S., Jihadist war is over. There are two obvious places to look, Mexico and Turkey are clearly not ready for a significant global role. And Europe remain insular and divided. That leaves two fault lines, Pacific and Eurasia. And in context of 2020, that means two countries possibly asserting themselves, China or Russia. A third possibility more distant is Japan.”
So it’s 2020. Remember he wrote this book in 2009, a lot of interesting things, it’s 2021 actually. China’s more dominant. Russia, a little bit more dominant. Like to see what else he has to say. Nonetheless, interesting book, interesting to see his perspective.