George Friedman on 21st century

“[D]isequilibrium will dominate the twenty-first century, as will efforts to contain the United States. It will be a dangerous century, particularly for the rest of the world.”

“When I was growing up in the 1950s, the twenty-first century was an idea associated with science fiction, not a reality in which I would live. Practical people focus on the next moment and leave the centuries to dreamers. But the truth is that the twenty-first century has turned out to be a very practical concern to me. I will spent a good deal of my life in it.”

“Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century.”

“The twenty-first century will be the American century... [T]he twenty-first century truly began on September 11, 2001, ten years later, when planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon... Al Qaeda has failed in its goals. The United States has succeeded, not so much in winning the war as in preventing the Islamists from winning, and, from a geopolitical perspective, that is good enough... The twenty-first century has begun with an American success that on the surface looks like not only a defeat but a deep political and moral embarrassment.”