America's Secret War

Preface

The war that began on September 11, 2001, might be called the Fourth Global War, the U.S.-Jihadist War, the U.S.-Al Qaeda War, or the U.S.-Islamist War. Some would argue that it isn t a war at all but an isolated act of terrorism that has been manufactured into a war. Nothing tells us more about the extraordinarily ambiguous and divisive nature of the war than the fact that three years into it, we do not even have a name for it.

This book is called America s Secret War not only because so much of the war is hidden. It is the nature of war that each side must hide as much as can be hidden. The secrecy of this war goes deeper. More than in any other war I have studied, the true reasons for each side s actions are hidden from view. If I look at the war through the lens of public discourse, nothing makes very much sense. Actions seem unconnected to one another, leading nowhere, lacking meaning. In the words of Macbeth, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That is not how I view the last three years. In retrospect, sometimes we can see that the apparent chaos actually had a clear if deep order to it, an order sometimes not even apparent to the actors who, having said their lines and done their deeds, shuffle off the stage, unaware of the full meaning of what has happened. But it is my belief as well that if one fully understands the motives and reasoning of the players, it is possible to understand events while they are happening, or even before. The key is to understand the actors as they understand themselves and to understand the forces that drive and constrain them even better than they understand them.

In a game of chess, it appears that there are many moves available. There seem to be twenty possible first moves, for example. In fact, there are perhaps six. The better you understand chess, the fewer options you have. You come to realize that most of the apparent moves are disastrous, and the good

GEORGE FRIEDMAN is founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, which specializes in geopolitical forecasting. Prior to 2015, Friedman was chairman of the global intelligence company Stratfor, which he founded in 1996. Friedman is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Next 100 Years and The Next Decade. He is a senior advisor to Gallup, Inc.  He lives in Austin, Texas.

Acclaim for George Friedman and STRATFOR

Stratfor was miles ahead of CNN and all the other media . A private quasi-CIA, Stratfor has enjoyed an increasing vogue in recent years as a result of the heady forecasts and many news breaks . The web site has a huge underground following, dating back to the 1999 Kosovo War.
--Barron s

Stratfor moved the financial markets all by itself when it reported that a Russian envoy was en route to Baghdad to negotiate peace with the Iraqis . There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.
--The New York Times Magazine

Predictions have made George Friedman a hot property these days.
--The Wall Street Journal

Stratfor is changing the way we think about news.
--The American Spectator

They fill the appetite for international news and analysis that the newsweeklies once filled. But they do it twice as well as the newsweeklies and in real time.
--Lee Smith, Senior Editor, GQ

The Friedmans: better than the CIA.
--The Industry Standard