Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe By George Friedman
Friedman is in serious need of an editor. The first two sections, which intend to provide a brief history of 500 years of European history, are too short to be useful and too long to be interesting. The third part, which actually discusses the flashpoints of the title, is often unfocused and rambling. Interesting idea, but it should either have been a long form article on the European flashpoints of the third section, or a shorter book that provided a more focused discussion of flashpoints around the globe. George Friedman Flashpoints packs in some good information but it is too cursory, needlessly conspiratorial and unfoundedly biased.
Almost a half of the short book is a summary of the European history. From protestant reformation and renaissance to scientific revolution, French revolution and Napoleonic wars, colonialism, Marxism and the two big wars to the fall of the Wall and even the 2008 GFC along with the rise and decline of many states and kingdoms (I am getting breathless just highlighting some of the topics covered!) are discussed with summaries that are likely to be useful only to those completely uninitiated. The biases present in deriving the implications of these events are more galling because of a near complete lack of substantive proofs - for instance, the rise of Germany's economy (like Japan's) post WW2 is solely attributed to the US tariff policies and is apparently desired by Germany to reassert its regional superiority in the absence of militarism rather than any wish to have prosperity.
The book turns more interesting as the author begins his European travelogue. There are good insights when the book leaves the known or larger Western European countries to describe the life in the Balkan, the Baltic, the Caucasus or the Carpathian regions. Even if there are as many errors and sweeping generalizations in these sections as elsewhere, for most like me they will not be as apparent.
The discussion turns shallow again when the author journeys the larger countries. From the English' use of the cutlery to the French's comfort with contradictions,many absurd history lessons and supposed facts are used to draw massive predictions. Effectively, the premise is that in Europe everyone hates everyone else as they have a lot of bad history. Nobody is anyone's friend as per the author. The author expects some economic, social or political tension somewhere or the other to result in massive chaos because of the hidden animosities.
In some ways, the author's personal history and/or pre-conceived conclusions mar the book from the start to the end. With the logic provided here, the author would have forecasted WW3 all through the cold war. Or he would make equally strong case for civil wars leading to the break-ups in the US, China or India. Wars will happen again. And people do have long memories. But whenever and wherever next wars happen, they will not be for the reasons explained here (at least largely). George Friedman Job well done from the Master of geopolitics
Deep understanding of the roots of European conflicts of the the last 500 years of its history. It makes a fascinating and enlightening read. A little sad, maybe, because of the clear understanding that the wars are far from over. Nothing new for me. More then that, it actually proofed my own predictions which I shared in my own writing (see my novel Fort Ross). George Friedman
I had been intending to read a current political/economic analysis of Europe and its challenges for the future, considering the 2008 financial crisis and its fallout, the possibility of countries opting out of the EU, and the strategic implications of recent Russian intervention in the Ukraine. This is not that book, as I quickly found out, but I decided to see what Friedman had to say.
Friedman, according to the publisher’s blurb on the jacket flap, founded Stratfor, “the world’s leading private intelligence company.” One envisions some sort of trench-coat antics, but in fact, my research determined that Friedman has gathered a group of people to scour publicly available information and then assemble that into a package sold to clients willing to spend $40,000 per year for a subscription. In one Atlantic article, the author said that leading foreign policy analysts think of Friedman as a businessman repackaging last week’s The Economist articles for his unsuspecting clients. My research also indicated that in at least a few of Friedman’s previous best-selling books, he made predictions about Japan, the next decade, and the next 100 years. In the case of Japan, “The Coming War with Japan”, he was (reportedly) spectacularly wrong about nearly everything he predicted.
[As an aside: while doing so, I found information regarding a hack of Stratfor’s computers by Anonymous. It seems that they hacked emails, including one that announced Friedman’s resignation. Security experts determined that Stratfor had no firewalls protecting their data. Hmm.]
Although I by now suspected that this belonged to that class of books that contain very little astute analysis but whose authors have an astute pulse on what sells, I plunged in.
Friedman knows that what a lot of readers want to hear is about is violence, particularly the possibility of war(s) breaking out, and so this book is extremely light on global economics and globalization, and heavy on the political. As such, he seized on the motif of the haunting past, the premise that Europe has demons that it will never be rid of, and that the “European mind” (which he leaves unexplained) is fragmenting. For him, Europe (yes, apparently everyone) has forgotten the bad and the lessons of history. When it suits him, he makes bald assertions about Europe (in general) or a particular country without a cohesive argument before sprinting to his next conclusion of what is happening or will soon happen. Have you ever noticed that the predictions in these books are always negative?
Sometimes he relates entire paragraphs of historical facts before some baffling statement pops up. Apparently, he discerns that his target audience is a bit ignorant about European history, so a complete Rehash Lite of the last 500 years is in the offing. But, goodness me. So much has to be left out, so Friedman cherrypicks just the stuff that will bolster his assured opinions (in fact, the entire book can be considered a long editorial piece, or the ultimate blog entry of a mind leaping from one “flashpoint” to another, crossing those “borderlands” that have continued to foment so much military mischief in the past).
He starts off, however, with his personal story as the infant son of Hungarian Jews fleeing 1949 Budapest (having luckily survived the Holocaust). It’s an interesting tale that is not without its baffling omissions — suddenly they are somehow able to skirt being caught. I have to admit that I may have seen too many WWII films about betrayal to suppress some unease in this section. Basically, the section helps to add some 20 pages to the book (lessening the drudgery of composing the next 100 pages covering those 500 years that you should remember from history class but were too busy shooting spitballs at Tommy at the time).
On page 28, we get a map of the world labeled “Muslim population”, showing a shaded area that includes most of India. What is the shading supposed to mean? India has a population of over a billion people, but only 13% of that is Muslim. This map appears in a chapter primarily about Christian exploration of the world, so it’s puzzling as to its intent.
Sometimes I found myself thinking, really? 1912 was a very good year for Europe. No one saw WWI coming. Yow! I bet a lot of historians would reel at those two!
But compounding the problems is the extremely poor editing (or rather, lack thereof) of our author’s egregious factual errors. On page 109, the population of Britain is stated to be 94 million — it doesn’t matter if he’s talking about the 1950’s or today --the number has to somewhere downwards of 60 million, the current estimate. Oops. But wait, I forgot about page 83, and the first sentence of Chapter 5 — he states that Hitler committed suicide on May 5, 1945, not April 30, the actual date. I fact-checked those online in less than thirty seconds. Friedman thanks Rob Bloom in the Acknowledgments for “his close editing.” Well, you can pick who to blame. I knew that those were mistakes immediately, so it just made me think, what else is just blatantly wrong? Why the rush to publish a book so full of errors?
His discussion of Nazism is one example of where he just runs wild with his own beliefs without justification. He equates Nazism with nihilism without building a case for that claim. Also, even as a Jew he seems not to understand that Hitler was able to blame Jews for German woes because of many centuries of anti-Semitism and subsequent blame for calamities such as the bubonic plague in the 1300’s. The causes of both World Wars were the same, he says. Gee, is there anyone who might dispute that? Again, it’s stated without further comment.
Whew! Only 100 pages to go. To be fair, there is some informative stuff here if you haven’t been reading a newspaper or watching your favorite cable news station. But if you are a close follower of European events, then a lot of this you already know. Now he argues that EU is fragmenting (and he implies that this is irreversible — there’s no “unless…”) because they haven’t been able to deal with the 2008 crisis, wars in the Balkans and the Ukraine, etc. Well, the EU was only formed right when the Balkans blew up, and it’s an economic union, not a military one. So he blames them for not using military action, while at the same time acknowledging that NATO is primarily an American affair with token European effort. By the way, where is the map of NATO countries that would have been useful to the reader? I mean, he spends a fair number of page on them...
But one of the most ridiculous (at least, for me) notions is that resentment of Germany (from Greece and unnamed others), and a subsequent hostile public reaction in Germany, might push Germany into an alliance with Russia. Wow! Shades of Hitler and Stalin! Does anyone else find this one absurd? Maybe an action-filled sci-fi could be written around that premise (note to filmmakers: don’t forget the exploding helicopters. I love those).
George Friedman I picked up this book because I am living in Europe for another 18 months and wanted a bit of forewarning or basic knowledge of what I could expect to see in European politics and economics prior to my leaving. Since my second tour of living in England, I have seen the Scottish Independence referendum, the Brexit vote, numerous terrorist incidents, austerity measures, and the rise of hard right-wing parties gaining more political clout and votes across Europe.
The book is broken down into three sections: the Enlightenment Era and the beginnings of modern science; the thirty-one years from the start of World War I to the end of World War II; and a regional look at the current political and economic climate of today's Europe. I hope the reader likes a lot of European history, because 2/3rds of the book is just that, with an additional introduction that tells the story of how Friedman's family escaped Europe and came to America. Honestly, I wished I had skipped the introduction and first section of the book - it had nothing to do with the rest of the book. Section two's history focus related and influenced what you will read in the third section, so please start there. Section two's history lesson is very basic, but puts all readers (regardless of their depth in World War II and modern European history) on the same page and ready for the third section's content.
I like how the third section was organized and I found the multiple maps of the region very useful; my geography skills get weaker the farther east I go into Europe. Germany and Russia are the dominant players within a lot of the third section's content. Luckily, I found no Muslim bashing; when the conflicts arise between the Muslim and Christian world views, there was a balance to the writing and a depth of knowledge given. Friedman is definitely in the camp of viewing the EU and NATO as too weak to be of anything effective or significant. I found my knowledge growing of little talked about regions such as the Balkans and Baltic states as I read their respective chapters.
I was disappointed in the chapter on Britain - there wasn't much talk of the upcoming (as of the date published, Brexit was just in the beginnings of the campaign stages) EU referendum, the Scottish Independence referendum vote was swept under the rug, and there was no talk about the growing popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) or the rise in both Islamphobia and anti-Semitism (the UK editions of the newspaper The Guardian has a few articles on the latter you should check out). There was also very little to no talk of the backlash to the austerity measures the Tories have enacted. The crisis point here may be internal, but no less flammable, as the riots and demonstrations have shown.
Overall, a good primer for Americans to learning more about European politics and economics today and what to look for in the near future. But it would also help to read newspaper and magazine articles from specific countries as well to keep your knowledge accurate and up to date.
George Friedman
A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years), with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe. This provocative work examines flashpoints, unique geopolitical hot spots where tensions have erupted throughout history, and where conflict is due to emerge again.
With remarkable accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. In Flashpoints, Friedman focuses on Europe--the world's cultural and power nexus for the past five hundred years . . . until now. Analyzing the most unstable, unexpected, and fascinating borderlands of Europe and Russia--and the fault lines that have existed for centuries and have been ground zero for multiple catastrophic wars--Friedman highlights, in an unprecedentedly personal way, the flashpoints that are smoldering once again.
The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize built-in geopolitical tensions that historically have torn it apart. As Friedman demonstrates, with a mix of rich history and cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints narrates a living history of Europe and explains, with great clarity, its most volatile regions: the turbulent and ever-shifting land dividing the West from Russia (a vast area that currently includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the ancient borderland between France and Germany; and the Mediterranean, which gave rise to Judaism and Christianity and became a center of Islamic life.
Through Friedman's seamless narrative of townspeople and rivers and villages, a clear picture of regions and countries and history begins to emerge. Flashpoints is an engrossing analysis of modern-day Europe, its remarkable past, and the simmering fault lines that have awakened and will be pivotal in the near future. This is George Friedman's most timely and, ultimately, riveting book. Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe
Geopolitics of today's Europe and how WWI and WW2 reflect on it. Geography, and nationalistic identity play great role.
Japan defeated in WWII is not allowed to have real army, yet Germany is, why? Because of Cold War and Germany's proximity to Russia so Americans armed them, and much more stuff like that in the book.
But I don't agree on the pessimistic view. And I am not relying on this book for predicting the future, I am here only for the historical information especially that I never read about WWI and WWII.
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I was fearing that the Jewish American author with Hungarian parents who escaped WW2 will exaggerate the horrible Holocaust, not being biased in the process, but no, he was far from that and even show how he and her parents are glad for what Horthy (the leader of Hungary who cooperated with Germany) did: Horthy conceded the deportation of 100,000. In Europe at that time, this was what humanitarianism had degenerated into. A man who collaborated in killing only 100,000 but kept perhaps 800,000 others alive a bit longer was doing the best that could have been expected of him.
Then speaking of Hitler: At certain point there are actions by states that defy rational analysis. I have tried to understand Hitler's view of the Jews and imagine what he was thinking. The decision to kill Jews had a logic, however bizarre, as we shall see later. But the decision to kill the Hungarian Jews in the face of the urgent need to focus all resources, at a time when the Allies were clearly planning to come ashore in France and the Red Army was surging westward, is a decision that is extremely difficult to follow. The logic does not work.
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The book isn't boring, it's filled with (interesting) stories, and add to that the poetic style of the author, at least in the beginning, where he makes Ode To Joy and Odyssey and Faust metaphors, I didn't think his poetic style is that good but at least he's trying. But the personal style in the first chapter, where he shows the history of Hungary and WW2 through the journey of his parents and his older and himself (six months years old) escaping the Nazis, you're suspended in the story and when they are finally in New York safe and sound you find that you learned a lot about the complex situation of WW2: They managed to escape Hungary to Austria through Czech because Stalin wanted to weaken England by befriending the Israelis, confused already?
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Copernicus showed that Earth is not the center of the universe, Columbus showed that Europe is not the center of Earth, Luther showed that the Catholic Church is not the center of Europe: every individual is the center, no one holds the absolute truth, certainty was going, nationalism and other things developed, conflict and conflict!
Romantic nationalism rested on a commonality of culture, language, and religion, something it had in common with all other countries; thus, it was not superior to any. Therefore romantic nationalism could no longer mova a cynical and exhausted country, angry about what had happened [Germany after WW1]. Hitler believed that to resurrect Germany he had to resurrect pride. He redefined the foundation of nation, from culture to blood, from real history to toal myth ... The Grimm brothers saw myth as an element of the nation. Hitler saw myth [Teutonic knights], along with blood, as its essence ... When Hitler charged the Jews with being responsible for both capitalism and communism, he saw both as flowing from the same source, the Enlightenment. George Friedman Avrupa'daki politik patlama noktalarının tarihsel arka planları ışığında geleceğe dair öngörüler içeren bir kitap. Avrupa ve çevre ülkelerde yaşanabilecek her problemin artık barış içinde, Avrupa Birliği gibi uluslararası örgütlerde müzakere ile çözümlenebileceğine yönelik genel kanıya ters iddialar sunuluyor. Özellikle Almanya'nın AB içindeki güçlenen ve domine eden pozisyonunun diğer AB ülkelerini düşürdüğü durum çarpıcı. Bu açıdan bakıldığında Almanya'ya ciddi ekonomik avantaj sağlayan bu sistemin, askeri caydırıcılığı olmayan, politik olarak güçsüz bir Almanya ile devamı çok zor şeklinde bir iddia mevcut. bkz: Almanya'nın Ukrayna krizi sonrası silahlanma kararı alması.
Rusya için ayrılan bölüm de ilginç. Yazar özellikle Rusya'nın Ukrayna, Belarus, Baltık ülkeleri hattındaki faaliyetlerini Rusya'nın politik ve coğrafi güvenliği açısından makbul ve meşru sayıyor. Amerikan bir yazarın bu yönde bir fikir belirt(ebil)mesi dikkate değer.
Kitapta Türkiye ile ilgili de bir bölüm var ancak çok doyurucu olduğunu söyleyemeyeceğim. Türkiye'nin kırılma ve patlama noktaları Kürt meselesi, Ermeni meselesi ve seküler-muhafazakar fay hatları olarak çizilmiş. Yazar, ayrıca Türkiye'nin içine kapanma sürecini atlattığını ve daha da çok güçleneceğini iddia ediyor ama çok fazla ayrıntı vermeden.
Avrupa politik durumuna ilgili kişiler için güzel, basit ve keyifli bir okuma olarak tavsiye edilir. George Friedman If you watch or read international news in a state of befuddlement (which is where I find myself more often than not), this book is for you. “Flashpoints: the Emerging Crisis in Europe” is a good overview of Europe with some interesting analysis. The author looks backward & covers the last 500 years, with a focus on colonialism & how it has spawned so many of today’s problems. He explains why the geography of Europe is crucial to understanding it – why are mountainous regions so volatile, why is there such a difference between Northern Europe & Southern Europe?
In Chapter One the author describes how his family managed to escape from Hungary after WW II, it is dramatic & explains his unique perspective. By itself it is a fascinating tale on its own.
The spends a great deal of time explaining how things have played out on the borders of Europe & how they continue to show signs of strain that are potentially revealing about how Europe is slowly tearing itself apart. Though he states that she is forced to we see that Germany is once again exploiting the rest of Europe & this is clearly evident when you examine the size & sources of the economic imbalances being created in Europe.
Mr. Friedman also writes of the effects of liberalism, the enlightenment & scholars & philosophers & Hitler explains the growing seeds of nationalism that were always brewing.
He raises & answers many interesting questions: How did Germany end up starting two world Wars – yet is the most prosperous country in Europe today? What is the European Union (EU) & why is it in such turmoil today? Most importantly, why does Russia continue to threaten Europe?
It is a good read, & helps a great deal in making some sense from what is happening in Europe today.
George Friedman First, I'm a George Friedman fan. His perceptions of Geopolitics I find not only refreshing but well articulated and persuasive. His arguments are primarily based on the hard reality of how Geography often determines more of international politics than people. Leaders are ultimately forced to react to their Geography and that translates to the same conflicts re-occurring over and over again in the same areas. He argues that Europe's dark past is still alive and well just under the current veneer of wealth and prosperity and that the forces that drove conflict in the past will rear their demonic heads once more. To him there are 4 Europes and each is pulling in a different direction. The other problem the EU is facing is that they are Wealthy but Weak which is a dangerous combination because sooner or later human nature in that situation seeks to balance out that discrepancy.
I wouldn't say this is one of Friedman's better books but it felt extremely pertinent given the recent events in Europe with Britain's exit from the EU. George Friedman Highly recommended if you are interested in the World War 1 & 2 and the geopolitics of Europe and Russia. George Friedman puts a lot of effort to make it so easy to understand. Every page is worth reading. George Friedman
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