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

by George Friedman,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 15, 2020

In the 2020s, according to George Friedman, two geopolitical cycles will converge for the first time in American history. The end of our nation’s third institutional cycle (which controls the relationship between the federal government and the rest of society, and lasts about eighty years) and its fifth socioeconomic cycle (during which, in 50 year intervals, class structures and dynamics are altered), will create a crisis. “With its vast economy and military and seductive culture,” Mr. Friedman declares, the United States will emerge from the storm as it has always has, sustaining itself, and creating solutions in a “golden age with a diamond at its center.”