George Friedman
Readers have no doubt noticed that much of my writing over the past two-and-a-half years has focused on Russia. Some of the reasons for this are obvious: Russia is a global military power. It is not a great economic power, but it has the capacity, along with the United States, to shape and control events on many continents. I’m deliberately excluding China from this analysis, which I’ll explain in my next article. Other powers are less apparent but no less important, and you can see them in the map below – if you know where to look.
Iran is the center of what I call the northern crisis. Its government has a geopolitical imperative to retain its frontiers, and it pursues this imperative, as many do, through the deployment of armed forces and weapons (or, at times, the appearance of deployment). This pursuit potentially threatens the countries on its eastern frontier – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan – as well as Turkey to the northwest. Most important to me, however, is that it could also threaten Russia. Iran’s intentions and capabilities are often uncertain, but in a world of complex strategy you must prepare for the worst, and in this region the worst is what usually happens.
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