George Friedman’s Thoughts: War and a New Geopolitical Age

It is time to end this series of philosophical ruminations and turn instead to something that is at the center of geopolitics: war. The roots of my philosophical mumblings and my thoughts on war are from two of my books. The first is from my early academic work, “The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School.” The second, called “The Future of War,” came later. This is the book of which I am proudest. It is also the book that sold the fewest copies; its great moment came when the Brazilian war college adopted it as a text. I am proudest of this work because of the forecast. I wrote it in the early 1990s but envisaged a future of war that has since emerged – war waged by unmanned aircraft and hypersonic missiles and in outer space. So, I turn now to talk about the book on war in the hope that I can link the nature of enchantment to infantrymen wearing armored and powered suits. Let me begin at the beginning. The introduction of firearms created a new culture of weapons – what I call ballistic weapons. Once fired, the round goes where the initial explosion of energy drives […]