{"id":12881,"date":"2016-03-08T23:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T05:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=12881"},"modified":"2016-03-08T23:00:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T05:00:21","slug":"stratfor-founder-warns-be-ready-for-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/08\/stratfor-founder-warns-be-ready-for-war\/","title":{"rendered":"STRATFOR Founder Warns: “Be Ready for War”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"waterloo\"<\/p>\n

Interstate warfare is a\u00a0thankfully\u00a0unusual occurrence in the present day.<\/p>\n

State-assisted nonstate\u00a0groups frequently fight governments, a scenario currently unfolding in Syria, Eastern Ukraine, and a host of other places.<\/p>\n

But you’d have to go back to the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, or the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict of the late 1990s<\/a> for an example of two nations fighting a full-scale ground war against one another.<\/p>\n

The two world wars were catastrophic proof of the inherent instability of an international system that allowed for frequent interstate conflicts and that considered\u00a0warfare to be a legitimate foreign policy option, rather than an absolute last resort.<\/p>\n

Since World War II,\u00a0many of the\u00a0world’s political and legal systems have been built around preventing states from going to war with one another \u2014 with a fairly impressive record of success.<\/p>\n

But could that ever change? Last month, Business Insider sat down with George Friedman<\/a>, the founder of Geopolitical Futures<\/a>, which is the only place where it’s possible to read Friedman’s latest original work. Friedman is also the author of “The Next 100 Years<\/a>” and\u00a0founder of STRATFOR, the influential\u00a0geopolitical forecasting\u00a0firm.<\/p>\n

He warned that destructive interstate warfare has been a recurring characteristic of global politics and he said it could make a comeback.<\/p>\n

Friedman\u00a0noted that there have been earlier periods in which international observers have been deluded into believing nations would no longer go to war.<\/p>\n

“From 1815 to 1871 there was not an interstate war of any substance in Europe,” said Friedman.\u00a0“Then came World War I, a biggie.”<\/p>\n

Friedman warned that in the modern era, every period of peace has been a built-up towards a violent reckoning. “There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war \u2014 a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses,” Friedman continued, citing\u00a0the Seven Years War<\/a>, the Napoleonic Wars, and the world wars. “Do you want to bet this will be the only century that doesn\u2019t have one? I\u2019ll take that bet.”<\/p>\n

\n

Friedman’s analysis assumes that any international system, whether it’s the alliance of conservative\u00a0forces in Europe<\/a>\u00a0that kept the peace after\u00a0the Napoleonic Wars or the US-led post-Cold War order, has inherently fatal weaknesses. In his mind, the current international system contains the seeds of its own destruction.<\/p>\n

At the very least, the current world order still\u00a0allows for crises that the system itself is incapable of solving.<\/p>\n

Friedman thinks that\u00a0the decline of certain global powers could create\u00a0just such a crisis.<\/p>\n

“When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that\u2019s when systemic wars start,” Friedman explains. “That\u2019s when it gets dangerous, because they haven\u2019t yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos.\u00a0So we\u2019re looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war.”<\/p>\n

Here’s Friedman’s entire answer when asked about the possibility of a return of interstate warfare, edited for length and clarity:<\/p>\n

BI: In this day and age it’s relatively unusual for nations to go to war against one another.\u00a0 Do you see that changing? Do you see interstate warfare making a comeback?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

GF: <\/strong>From 1815 to 1871 there was not an interstate war of any substance in Europe. Then came World War I, a biggie.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you another statistic. There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war \u2014 a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years’ War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.<\/p>\n

Do you want to bet this will be the only century that doesn\u2019t have one? I\u2019ll take that bet …<\/p>\n

When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that\u2019s when systemic wars start. That\u2019s when it gets dangerous, because they haven\u2019t yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos. So we\u2019re looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war.<\/p>\n

BI: Any predictions on where it could be?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

GF: <\/strong>Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.<\/span><\/p>\n

But every time new powers emerge they have to find their balance. New powers are emerging, old powers are declining. It’s not that process that\u2019s dangerous, it’s the emerging position that\u2019s dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Business Insider<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interstate warfare is a\u00a0thankfully\u00a0unusual occurrence in the present day. State-assisted nonstate\u00a0groups frequently fight governments, a scenario currently unfolding in Syria, Eastern Ukraine, and a host of other places. But you’d have to go back to the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, or the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict of the late 1990s for an example…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2280,74,3812,3929,4333,475,2378,1814,2933,1286,2820,1894,4418],"tags":[5306,5307,1760,5308,5309,5310],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}