The British had the Colonial Office. The Romans had the Proconsul. The United States has a chaotic array of institutions dealing with foreign policy. There are sixteen intelligence services with overlapping responsibilities. The State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council, and national director of intelligence all wind up dealing with the same issues, coordinated only to the extent that the president manages them all. To say there are too many cooks in the kitchen misses the point—and there are too many kitchens serving the same meal. Bureaucratic infighting in Washington may be fodder for comedians, but it can shatter lives around the world. It is easier to leave it as it is, but only easier for Washington. The American foreign policy apparatus simply must be rationalized. The president spends much of his time just trying to control his own team. This must change in the next decade, before things spiral out of control.
Americans like to hold everyone responsible for the problems of the United States but themselves. The problem is said to be Fox News or special interests or the liberal media. At root the problem is that there is no consensus in the United States about whether it has an empire and what to do about it. Americans prefer mutual vilification to facing up to the facts; they prefer arguing about what ought to be to arguing about what is. What I have tried to show is the reality as I see it, in terms of both the regime and the next decade. In arguing that the United States has unintentionally become an empire, I have also made the case that the empire poses a profound threat to the republic. To lose that moral foundation would make the empire pointless.
I have also made the argument for what I call the Machiavellian president, a leader who both understands power and has a moral core. The president is the only practical bulwark for the republic, because he alone is elected by all the people. It is his job to lead so that he can manage, but the president, no matter how crafty, cannot lead alone. He must have the other institutions the founders gave the republic functioning maturely, and, above all, he must have a mature public that takes responsibility for the state of the nation. The New Testament contains this passage: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” The United States has grown up. Its public must too.
Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan all led fractious nations. Each was skillful enough to craft coalitions that were sufficiently strong to get through the storm. But going forward, we need not only clever leaders but also a clever public. A woman asked Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention about the kind of government the delegates had given the country. “A republic,” he told her, “if you can keep it.”
I genuinely believe that the United States is far more powerful than most people think. Its problems are real but trivial compared to the extent of its power. I am also genuinely frightened, not about America’s survival, but about the ability of the United States to keep the republic provided by the founders. The demands and temptations of empire can easily destroy institutions already besieged by a public that has lost both civility and perspective, and by politicians who cannot lead because they are capable of neither the exercise of power nor the pursuit of moral ends.
Four things are needed. First, a nation that has an unsentimental understanding of the situation it is in. Second, leaders who are prepared to bear the burden of reconciling that reality with American values. Third, presidents who understand power and principles and know the place of each. But above all, what is needed is a mature American public that recognizes what is at stake and how little time there is to develop the culture and institutions needed to manage the republic cast in an imperial role. Without this, nothing else is possible. The situation is far from hopeless, but it requires an enormous act of will for the country to grow up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every author of every book is indebted to many people whose thoughts and writings his own rest upon. My more immediate debts are to Rodger Baker, Peter Zeihan, Colin Chapman, Reva Bhalla, Kamran Bokhari, Lauren Goodrich, Eugene Chausovsky, Nate Hughes, Marko Papic, Matt Gertken, Kevin Stech, Emre Dogru, Bayless Parsley, Matt Powers, Jacob Shapiro, and Ira Jamshidi. Each of them helped make this book better than it might have been otherwise. I would also like to thank Ben Sledge and T. J. Lensing for producing the maps—not, I’ve learned, an easy task. My thanks to the Army and Navy Club Library in Washington, D.C., for all its help.
My special thanks to Jim Hornfischer, my literary agent, for his support and encouragement; to my editor at Doubleday, Jason Kaufman, for his unrelenting confidence in me and his always helpful criticism; and to Rob Bloom. Bill Patrick helped turn my turgid prose into much better prose. Susan Copeland kept me on track and organized. I am grateful to everyone at STRATFOR, including our readers, for their lively support and criticism. And, above all, I thank my wife, Meredith, as always, my rock and my guide.
George Friedman is the founder and CEO of STRATFOR, the world’s leading publisher of global geopolitical intelligence. He is frequently called upon as a media expert and is the author of six books, including the
Copyright © 2011 by George Friedman
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Tonronto.
DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
All maps created by STRATFOR
Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Jacket photograph © Chad Baker/Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedman, George.
The next decade / George Friedman.
p. cm.
1. World politics—21st century—Forecasting. I. Title.
D863.F75 2011
909.83’1—dc22 2010043116
eISBN: 978-0-385-53295-2
v3.1
