Hard-nosed geopolitical thinkers such as
George Friedman – CEO of Strafor, the private intelligence and forecasting company – argue that al-Qaeda’s
furtive attack on September 11, 2011, demonstrated not its strength relative to the United
States but the Islamic terrorist organisation’s impotence. Friedman’s The
Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), which I reviewed in the October 2009
edition of Quadrant,
presumed Uncle Sam’s uncontested geopolitical supremacy ruled out any genuine
threat to the Pax Americana in the twenty-first century, apart from the
slow-burning fuse of Mexifornia. Nevertheless, the ground has shifted in the
five short years of the Obama presidency and old certainties are no longer
assured.
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/03/downfall-obamas-middle-east-doctrine/
