Bobby is a great geopolitical prognosticator. Next to George Friedman, he is the best.

Obama is the greatest disappointment of the 21st century. Obama was Bush Jr, there's not a dimes worth of difference between them.

+Cesar Farinho It means that geography helps determine how nations act in the world. He was once part of Stratfor, a company that focusing on geopolitical forecasting. Their founder, George Friedman believes that it's possible to predict geopolitical events. Both George Friedman and Robert Kaplan agree on much of their views of the world, but they disagree on how accurate geopolitical forecasting really is. Friedman thinks that it's possible to predict because of constraints that are in place on leaders, while Kaplan believes that it isn't as feasible because human nature interferes and adds an element of uncertainty to global events.

In the American bubble we can't even come to terms with our own imperial power Issues like geographical control of the world or even shipping lanes are not discussed in our main stream. You have to understand how badly the fall of the Soviets fucked up our grand strategy before you can understand why Americans write books like these. These should be issues we're well versed in, but the vast majority of our talk about foreign affairs is so ideologically charged it's worthless. Basically he just wrote a realist book that Americans can fit in their own odd view of the world.

Eric M seems to me that the prevailing view in the US, regarding diversity in the world, political in particular, is: why can't they just be like us? and foreign policy, on the surface at least, is about how to make'em more like us. you're quite right about the ideological charge. but if it is Democracy that's invoked, it's money and geostrategical interests that are the real cause and there seems to be a total lack of scruple about wreaking havoc anywhere if it serves the purpose

***** Yes exactly, we are stuck in an ideological struggle with hundreds of flavors of things we don't like. And can't change. We have an inability to look at the world from a realist perspective, or recognize what our ideological stances mean about our power. Complete denial Things used to be simple. One ideology to fight, and gave us simple and effective propaganda. And we had the soviets to make us think about the stupid shit we were doing. A complex world can't be governed by people who have no strategic empathy and no check on their power. We are now a global empire, and need return to the more realist approach of our forefathers. Trade and fund our defense expenditures. Keep standard of living up. Americans will acknowledge strategic interests, but we overemphasize things that we find distasteful so we can "fix" them. Which causes things like half a million dead in Iraq from us starving them through sanctions.