George Friedman's Geopolitical Journey

I've been following along for the past few weeks as George Friedman, the founder of STRATFOR and author of The Next 100 Years (which forecasts the wars and rise and fall of great powers over the next 100 years based on geopolitics), traveled through Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland and wrote about it. I find geopolitical thinking fascinating. Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard is the best book I know on the topic, thought it's more than a decade old, but Friedman and STRATFOR do good work too. Like me, he spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about the fascinating German-Russian relationship and how it is critical for Europe (and many argue for America as well). I don't agree with all of Friedman's forecasts (in his book he sees Japan,Turkey and Poland joining the US as the dominant powers of the 21st Century because China and Russia will collapse), but his Geopolitical Journey is definitely a good think and you can read it in bits and pieces, so here are links:

• Part 1: The Traveler
• Part 2: Borderlands
• Part 3: Romania
• Part 4: Moldova
• Part 5: Turkey
• Part 6: Ukraine
• Part 7: Poland
• Part 8: Returning Home