George Friedman

The fallout from the Iran war led to the Democratic victory in the midterm elections. This is not the first time a president has been deeply weakened by a war not fundamental to the national interest. Lyndon Johnson experienced a similar fate in the Vietnam War, as did Joe Biden with his clumsy retreat from Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter with his failed attempt to rescue U.S. diplomats held hostage in Iran.

Military failures tend to weaken American presidents, but the weakening of the Trump presidency was perhaps the most powerful of all.

My full analysis is available to GPF subscribers: geopoliticalfutures.com/the-geopolitic…

Before the midterm elections, I had several GPF subscribers asking if the Republicans lose control of the House or Senate, whether it will make much difference to the U.S.’s geopolitical actions globally.

My field is geopolitics, and this is in a way a political question. However, in my work I have encountered an oddity in the United States, a demonstrable, consistent set of cycles. One is socio-economic, with a crisis occurring every 50 years, with the last one taking place in the 1970s. I also found a consistent cycle of institutional crises every 80 years, with the last one climaxing about 80 years ago, in 1945.

I wrote a book on this, “The Next 100 Years,” forecasting that the 2020s would be the first time both cycles shifted at roughly the same time. It would therefore be a more disrupted cycle, with the disruption and restructuring of American society, economy and institutions creating massive tension. That was published in 2009. In a later book, “The Storm Before the Calm,” I forecast that the election of 2028 would signal the beginning of the end of both cycles and a radically new, increasingly stable and significantly different socio-economic and institutional system. Since then I have developed some thoughts on why the United States reinvents itself with such regularity, but I have not fully thought them out yet.

In my view politics is the outcome of these cycles and not the cause of them. I think we are nearing the end of the instability that emerged during the first part of the decade, and will stabilize toward the end of the decade, beginning after 2028. So I do not look at the political tension we are experiencing as the cause of the current crisis, but as an outcome of the cyclical crisis. The U.S. has spent this decade reinventing itself, a disruptive and at times unpleasant experience, but one that is nearing its end, that will not be fully in place until nearer the end of the decade.

As I have said, I am still working through the foundations of these cycles, but the political unrest is in my mind the product of the cycle and in that sense a clearing of the table in preparation for the beginning of a new and significantly different cycle. The political instability, along with the social, economic and institutional instability, is the effect, not the driver of this cyclical process.

I believe we are in a period so wracked by tensions, both national and regional, that it’s necessary to search to see if there is a commonality driving them, even if the tensions present themselves very differently. The United States – the world’s only superpower – is approaching the midterm elections, which have evinced more interparty (and intraparty) stress than usual. Europe is plagued by widespread protests that have, at times, turned violent.

The Middle East, a region where a degree of tension is the norm, is experiencing both the regular tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and profound tensions beyond the norm, while the Gulf states’ level of stress has soared given the war in Iran. That conflict has bled into parts of Africa, particularly around the Horn, and virtually every other region of the world because of its impact on trade and energy prices. India is experiencing political and social unrest, especially in the northeast, over basic political processes.

In China, at last week’s Communist Party plenum, some 33 members of the party were expelled, and five of the seven members of the Military Committee – China’s facsimile of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – have also been expelled. According to Freedom House reports, there is also growing unrest among Chinese workers over economic conditions. And last but not least, there is still a war in Ukraine that has wrecked Russia’s economy (to say nothing of the physical damage inflicted on both sides).

Individually, none of these events is all that unique. Taken together, what is of interest is not that these things are happening in these countries but that so many countries and regions are experiencing them at roughly the same time. That there is apparently no single cause behind these tensions – that they have their own origins and unique manifestations – is what makes them so intriguing.

My full analysis is available to read and share at @GPFutures: geopoliticalfutures.com/global-tension…

Trump badly needs to be seen as a peacemaker, and the very small and limited ceasefire currently underway in the Kherson region of Ukraine is by no means a prelude to the conflict’s conclusion – no more than a little diesel to the U.S. was a solution to the United States’ economic problems.

I admit that while I am cynical about the ceasefire and how it came about, I must be open to the very real possibility that this episode was in no way designed to influence the midterms. Or I may be wrong in assuming that it will have no bearing on the midterms. But I am American, and the midterms now obsess America, and I must labor not to see them as a window on geopolitics.

It will, however, be a very interesting week.

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to halt combat operations in the city of Oleshky, a Russian-held town, in the Kherson region. Starting today, it will allow food and other humanitarian goods into the town and give residents an opportunity to leave. Ukrainian and Russian civilian officials directly negotiated the details of the agreement.

This is not the first such #ceasefire of the war. What makes this one more interesting than the others is that it was said to have been initiated by President Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, who was in direct contact with Russian officials on the matter.

My full analysis is available to read and share here at @GPFutures:
geopoliticalfutures.com/possible-peace…