George Friedman Quotes About Army
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The Chinese central government will slowly and steadily lose authority while regional armies [gain power]. The Western powers are going to take sides to protect their investments - they have put billions of dollars into Shanghai. Their fear is that [these investments] are going to be expropriated by a warlord from the interior who will sweep down on Shanghai. They will try to form alliances with warlords to protect their concessions, and there will be a huge flow of weapons into China.
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While certain coastal cities have become very prosperous, the rest of China has a per capita income of $200 a year. The coast wants to have nothing to do with the interior; it wants to work with Tokyo and New York. This is an old story in China. It is why Mao succeeded in 1927. He wanted [coastal] Shanghai to throw the foreigners out, but Shanghai was doing too well financially [to expel foreigners]. So Mao went to the interior and raised a peasant army. He came back to Shanghai and sealed off the country.
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By the 20th century, war ceased to be an encounter between two armies. It became an encounter between two societies, because a factory worker producing a gun or a bomb is as deadly as a pilot.
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There is no difference in a country between military, economic, and political affairs. It's useful for Business Insider to divide things that way. That's useful for a college program. But a country is a country. How do you understand China's economy without China's army? If you take these all into account you're ready to explain a question like, "How come the US doesn't have a debt problem?"
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Related Authors
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Thomas Friedman Journalist -
Steven Kotler Author -
Henry A. Kissinger Former National Security Advisor -
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Milton Friedman Economist -
Robert D. Kaplan Journalist