George friedman talks about the future of europe and the potential for conflict in the coming years. It is next on booktv. [inaudible conversations] anything. On behalf of the owners and staff of all it takes them press, while clement thank you for coming out on this wintry night. Before we get started i would like to take a moment to remind everybody to turn off for silent cell phones. As well i would like to remind everybody we are recording the event. When its time to ask questions, please do use the ideas microphone which is right there so that your question will be recorded as well. As well if you could at the end of the event can you hear me . Is it on now . Is this okay . And if you can also fold up your chairs at the end of the evening and put them against a nearby shelf, that would be very helpful. [inaudible] okay. Is this better . Also one your way out, be sure to grab a schedule that has our events politics prose is hosting a lot of wonderful event in partnership with us poison pellets. Be sure to check it out. And now to introduce our guest author tonight, George Friedman zip local scientist, author and ceo, which he founded in 1996. Hes many books in his most recent include to New York Times bestsellers. The next one is called the next 100 years of forecast for the 21st century and the next decade, what the world will look like. George is in great demand as a public speaker and has been invited to speak at events for a major Financial Institutions as well as many military and government organizations. As well, regularly appears for such Media Organization says wall street journal, New York Times, fortune this week, just to name a few. George is here tonight to talk about his new book flashpoints the emerging crisis in europe. If the title sounds germanic its because it subject matter warranted. In the preface, where pointed to the stunning facts in the first half of the 20th century 100 million is purchased disease and the like. George immediately sets putting us back into the larger context of history and presents to us the real possibility that the conditions that led to thought distracted the last century could go into the next. George analysis of the situation is made all the more relevant by the fact his own family, richly from budapest only narrowly survived world war ii in the beginning of the cold war. This book is the work of a political scientist, but also as george makes clear a study motivated by a highly personal connection to these historical events. Please join me in welcoming George Friedman. [applause] good evening. I always feel inadequate at politics prose. Im reminded of how many books i havent read and that is a frightening thought. I wrote this book for two reasons. The first was when i published the next 100 years which is a book i wrote and i forecast the European Union couldnt survive. This was published in 2008. 2006, 2007 and obviously was preposterous. I wanted to revisit it not only because i was right and its nice being right but more because europe is so central to Human History in the past 500 years. What happens in europe not that it happens everywhere but it is uniquely influential on the world. Europe is not just another place. The second reason i wanted to write this book as is mentioned as im ontarian. My life and my familys life is down to the geopolitics of europe. My parents were born just before world war i. There are fathers and brothers spotted not war and its reshaped for a long time. They made their lives falling in love, starting a business and the kind of liberalism and hungry between the wars. He survived the holocaust and found themselves to be hunted by the communists because the social democrats. At the age of six months i was put on a rubber raft with my 11yearold sister, my father and my mother and we paddled across the gnu on august 9th 1949. I told searchlights were across the water. Guard towers with machine guns and are leading with a nonearth life and death. The cold war had the gun in earnest in on both sides the sand of foreboding whiskey. I was six months old and i was wrote because how they cried out at night, we would die. So my life came from this place from the torture of what i called dirty one years. The years in 1914 and 1945 31 years in which year up went from an extraordinarily civil human and decent plays to a life of extraordinary barbarism. My family was shaking. My fathers night nurse my mothers nightmares. Every night they would go back to their past. For me, the cold war was the deciding elements of my life that grew out of this period. So very little that came to me except being genuinely american and not living in texas all places, you cant be more american than that, can you . [laughter] you know, growing up in new york moving around the country, i always had this tension between myself as an american which is where i went to school and grew up in Everything Else and as a hungarian, which was my first language. Theres a deep paradox in europe. On the one side it conquered the world and overstated the conquered nature. It transformed mans relationship to each other. When europe started as an adventure in the 15th century the mongolians had never heard of the congolese. The congolese had never heard of the aztecs. With the europeans stayed with blood and strife in horror is created humanity. Everyone became aware. To the point that for the first time, a single concept of humanity was an extraordinary achievement because after that point in the world we didnt know ourselves. We created this humanity. The humanity that we knew. It also created london, paris on the eve of world war i. An extraordinary place of not just physical culture, that place where on a night like this, mozart would be played in the winter would he kept outside and the lights were on and when you compare that to a century before, that was an extraordinary place. At the same time, it never conjured south. Many tried. The french english german, dutch. And more after war they could never come together permanently. They could never be said he did it. The geography of europe made it impossible. Europe is the second Smallest Company in the world. Today it has 52 sovereign nations. It is a place where you can drive for two hours in Northern Europe and encounter for languages, while difficult to understand in any way. Whats important about europe is that it conquered the world and it conquered and bought a singular culture of science and philosophy to the world. And yet never stopped being a war with itself. Never stopped this constant warfare. In 1910 and extremely bright man who won the nobel prize for the book called the great aleutian where he demonstrated there could he know serious wars in europe because the level of interdependence the exposure in the Financial Markets if there was a war the consequences for trade made such a warm possible. Email, we look back. Throughout my writing of this book, i kept remembering the absolute smug certainty that europe had put its history behind it. Its absolute smug conviction that it couldnt happen anymore. This is from a person of enormous sophistication, he was not a frivolous man and yet he didnt see what was coming right in front of them. Thats a story that has to be sold in it self. How europe convinces itself of its exceptional at them. I would argue again commences at health of european exceptional at them, but it solved a problem of war. It solved the problem of being oppressive. It solved the problem of poverty. And yeah remember this is a theme that repeats itself in european history. Never more catastrophically than just the eve of 1913 when so much is happening. In 31 years, europe one from being the center of gravity of an imperial system the likes of which the world had never seen to be in occupied territory. One half tied by the soviet union, one half occupied United States. Each treated their territory differently. But in the end european sovereignty was lost. The decision of war and peace the fundamental decisions was not made in a long in paris or london it was made in moscow. I might add really notice given the americans or the russians behaved with enormous burdens. Down. I was wondered what wouldve happened if the lysates in if the vice Eastern Europe in 1914 or 1939 owned nuclear weapons. From 1945 till the collapse of the soviet union, peace is not just here themselves. Is a if you are soviet union collapsed last entry. Europe is truly sovereign. Its in 1992 by then that the maastricht treaty creating the modern European Union dear son Everything Else went into existence. To create a continent of enormous hope and promise and is spread to countries like greece, open the doors that greece would participate in the european experiment promised to germany and france would never again be enemies. It succeeded magnificently. 50 years of 1992 and after were among most prosperous years the world. It is a period of extraordinary prosperity and certainly the europeans do you knew how to handle prosperity because its contained in the documents is peace and prosperity. Not like life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pursuit, but prosperity and it left open the question, what if there was no prosperity. But if there is no peace . What happened then quiet but it seemed from 1992 onward when they speak of the european sense of exceptionalism, it was the belief that they had reached a plateau where they have learned the lesson that war doesnt pay and that understanding meant they would he eat no war. The other prosperity is better and property scaredy. All of this changed in seven weeks in 2008. On august 8th 2008, Russian Troops invaded georgia. This is not an event of transcendent importance. But it announced that even the things you thought were gone in europe that goes to come back to life. The presence with authority and that is still playing itself out in ukraine and elsewhere. The idea that the russian question had unsettled in august 2008 was demonstrated by so many things everything appears settled, but nothing ever is permanently. And then come the seven weeks, Lehman Brothers collapsed in the collapse of Lehman Brothers was an event that the europeans thought was there for the american cowboys. But it doesnt possess. You start with subprime mortgage crisis and a response to be a bang so many are free banks are as responsible as anyone else. They say to me, you americans started this. But it did and that is what they do. They know how to deal with financial crisis. Against all reasonable law says a half, ahead of the Federal Reserve inc. The secretary of the treasury major preferred secretary to a coworker do the next day. But the United States was headed. It didnt cascade cascade and cascade into we grew last quarter of 5 . The europeans had never experienced this before. This is what christ is United States is world war ii. The bond crisis. There was the third world that christ did. Theres the savings and loan crisis. All solved in the same way. The government intervened to save the bankers and the bankers call the government are responsible for his hit here. A wonderful game we play. The europeans hobnobbing to go. They have no commonality. In that room no question, it doesnt want to bail out. But the question that germany versus greece, france versus germany, this was the question and the fact that going bankrupt doesnt mean the people youve laid off are not your problem. So you would expect massive risktaking didnt occur because it could have been. When it occurred, it occurred on the black market because no one could afford the taxes. There was no google that was going to emerge in europe. Though microsoft is going to challenge ibm and destroyed the mainframe business. A corporation today. Europe was constructed in such a way as to ensure the existing additional corporations the massive ones was preserved and the wave of constant innovation that destroyed and created new companies didnt quite take place in the same way. When the banking crisis hit europe in the europeans try to solve the problem another banking crisis but to a sovereign debt crisis was simply that other countries in the periphery, a lot of them couldnt play back their loans. They couldnt pay off their bones. For me greece is the forerunner of everything that happens in europe could not be a liar. Everything that happens to greece eventually happens to everyone else. The question was what is to be done and what was to be done with either forget the dad in some way or force the debtor nations to pay back what they owed. There is a great debate between germany and the rest of europe and the germans voted for paying it back. The result was austerity. That austerity created a massive wave of unemployment. The Unemployment Rate today in spain is 23 . The Unemployment Rate reaches 26 . When you take all of miniature in europe, southern italy, france, the Unemployment Rate as it has been for years now 20 and more. Its an important number because its the Unemployment Rate to the United States and the great depression. Southern europe is in a massive depression. German unemployment is at 5 . Im not blaming the germans. The germans were trapped. They built an industrial plant far greater than their own economy that could assume they have to export them the tools they needed. The others consumed and didnt develop the industry. When it came down to it theres no one European Experience anymore. The idea that we europeans are one was lost. Germany was experiencing life in a different way than britain was, certainly in a different way than Southern Europe was in Eastern Europe facing the russians who are reemerging after 2008 was alone because the spaniards really didnt worry much about the russians. They didnt worry much about the greeks. What happened here was a fragmentation. There was no European Experience. There was the greek experience telling your and all the National Distinctions reemerge. Institutions remain in place, but what it meant to be a european changed tremendously. Companies were in fact did in the United States. Think of motor vehicles. Factors are government employees. Electrical engineers. The economy is much greater. You have a friend increase whose architect to chex houses after earthquakes used to earn 3000 euros to munch and now owns a hundred euros a month. Even those employed around the edge of tenure he beyond it. When the poor get poorer, it is not a radical event. They understand what it means to be poor. It is the circle compounded by misery. But when you are an architect when you are a professional in the middle class there is an expectation of how you will live and suddenly, the middle classes of europe, Southern Europe are plunged into a life they never expected. For a great period of time, there is expectation among the middleclass that it was going to get better. This wasnt the way it was going to be. It has been more than six years since 2008 and its only gotten worse. And so what you see happening in europe is the rise of the kind of parties is on the 19th on it and 30s extreme rightwing parties for the most part and leftwing parties. All united in the idea that europe was a very bad idea and one out. The rightwing parties solve that by the way cometh way cinema thumbsup and the greeks which had a Leftwing Party not mentioned. But the mainstream parties of europe that created the European Union are being challenged even in britain by the United Kingdom independence party. Spain, by putting mullahs, and france by the National Front parties have been nonexistent until recently are now as increase our forerunner of all things taking power. And what they are saying is we cannot live in this europe. Indians, the problem of europe is simply this. It is a coalition of nations who are there for peace and prosperity. And if they dont have prosperity, what is the point of being european . This was same problem to United States had one we were founded and recalled these United States emphasizing the states. We had a problem of this sort, which was the economy of the south and the economy at the north the verge, the moral understand what the United States meant diverse and we met at his work for a great conference and we agreed with as much blood and violence in order that this was one nation under god, indivisible but hopefully liberty and justice for all. Who will die to preserve the European Union . Who will go to gettysburg . Where will the grand army of the republic be raised from . There is no center of gravity of europe beyond the economic center. The basic reality of europe, which is the nation a continent of nations gave to share no fate remains the case. Weve just seen the decision by the European Central bank to do what is called kiwi which is print money. Too little too late, but they will print money. Its very interesting to find how they have to do it. The European Central bank will not distribute this money. Each of the National Banks would print the money and theyre about to but only their own debt. Why . Because no nation wants to take part in the default of another nation. No nation wants to be a viable for another nations irresponsibility and each nation wants to control how it is spent. They dont want the European Central