The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

by George Friedman

The regime was built to be flexible and to leave the people free to evolve as quickly as they could take advantage of the land.

people—in pursuing their private interests—might

both had to be restrained in such a way that the machinery of government limited their ability to accumulate power. The founders had created such a machine.

first, it made the passage of laws enormously difficult; second, the president would be incapable of becoming a tyrant; and third, Congress would be limited by the courts in what it could achieve. The founders’ remarkably inefficient system of government did what it was designed to do; it did

common core: each American ought to be free to succeed or fail in the things he wished to undertake.

The founders did more than separate the state and private life. They created an ongoing tension between them.

Jefferson was a democrat. Adams was a Federalist. Franklin was an iconoclast, and perhaps best represented the American spirit.

On the banner, next to the eagle are the words E pluribus unum, meaning “From many, one.”

The pyramid ties the Republic for which it stands and the people who built it into one. It tells us that the Republic is not simply a concept but the product of a people, and that ties the Republic to a nation.

there is no mention of Christ or even God in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Yet there is a clear reference to something beyond humanity who judges and

The founders could have referred directly to Christ, or they could have avoided any reference to the divine. They did neither.

in naming it after an Italian—a name that is used to this day—he gave it a European identity.

They had superior technology, but the truth behind the victory was the diseases they brought from Europe.

One was animals with luxurious furs, particularly beaver. These were expensive and surprisingly profitable for the French, who also did little settling but much trapping and trading.

like Spain, France was not interested in a vast outflow of settlers when it needed manpower for its armies.

first English colony, founded on Roanoke Island in today’s North Carolina in 1587, less than a century after Columbus’s voyage. It failed catastrophically.

Indications are that the Indian nation giving the settlers refuge was attacked

by a hostile Indian nation that massacred both.

The English waited for twenty years before colonizing again, thi...

It was funded by investors, looking for a substantial return from the ambitions and efforts of others. Jamestown combined the British aristocracy with the American venture capitalist.

This was the year in which contemporary history truly began with the competition of three great European cities: London, Paris, and Madrid.

Like Jamestown, Plymouth Colony was funded by a venture capital group, this one called the Merchant Adventurers.

Ultimate control was in the hands of the investors, and the pressure was on the settlers to generate a return.

Geography made slavery desirable and profitable in the South. In the North, geography made slavery uneconomical.

A new sense of “nation” began to emerge from this war and from the Appalachians.

British contempt forged colonial America.

It was the colonists’ observation of the British officer corps during the fighting in the Appalachians that convinced them that victory in a revolutionary war was possible.

Napoleon’s desperate need for cash, and Jefferson’s yearning for Louisiana, gave the United States the key to global power for $15 million, a staggeringly small amount even then.

larger the country, the greater the stability, because local passions were more divisive in a small land than in a large one.

The term “Native American” would name them after an Italian.

The term the Canadians favor is “First Nation,” which suffers from being untrue.

I use the name Indian because it is no less appropriate than the other choices, and it is in common use.

No less inappropriate? Calling native americans indians is racist and still views them in a stereotypic way.

The Iroquois, for example, led a complex confederation of nations, as well as nations that had been subjugated.

They viewed each other as foreigners, and they viewed the Europeans as exotic but in the end comprehensible entities.

Finally, and most important, the Indians were deeply divided against each other, and allying with a European force meant they could subdue their enemies.

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Like all successful conquerors, including the Romans and the British, the Americans used these divisions in their favor.

And like people everywhere, they feared each other more than they feared the new stranger.

The United States was not ready for a war with Mexico, so it did not intervene militarily. It placed a blocking force east of the Sabine and left it to the Texans to repel the Mexicans.

Polk, who is insufficiently remembered, was critical in expanding the United States to its full size

Therefore, Jefferson and Jackson did what had to be done to create a single continental power.

they created a geography in seventy years

There was one thing that all Americans had in common: they left the things they were born to, and they desired to come to America.

Because immigrants came here precisely for the social and economic benefits, refusing to learn English was self-defeating.

is his wife. She abandons her religious beliefs and her oath to herself in order to save her husband’s

High Noon was about the West, but it was also about World War II and the way men had to behave

In all 350,000 women served in the armed forces. The pilots who flew the bombers from the factory to the combat airfield were women.

Thirty years after the revolution, the United States fought the War of 1812. About thirty-four years later, there was the war with Mexico, and then about thirteen years after that the Civil War broke out. Six hundred thousand Americans died. After this, there was the long final struggle with the Indian nations. Then there was the Spanish-American War in 1898. Sixteen years after that was World War I, and twenty-three years after that World War II. Then came Korea and Vietnam and, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the wars against the jihadists.

The first is basic science, the understanding of the underlying reality

nature. The second is technology, the transformation of basic science into tools for using nature. The third is the product, something that can be used to achieve certain ends.

It was installed in the Minuteman missile in 1962. The prototype of a microchip-based computer was created to guide ICBMs. By the 1970s, it was being integrated into systems created by Steve