Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe [Audiobook]

A major new book by New York Times best-selling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman with a bold thesis about coming conflict in the world, this provocative work examines the geopolitical flashpoints - particularly in Europe - in which imminent future conflicts are brewing. In Flashpoints, George Friedman begins with a fascinating history of the events leading up to the horrific wars that nearly tore apart Western civilization - killing over 100 million people on the "civilized" European continent. Modern-day Europe, and the formation of the European Union, were designed to minimize the built-in geopolitical tensions that led to catastrophic war, but as Friedman shows with a mix of history and cultural analysis, those plans have failed. "Flashpoints" are now simmering as dangerously as in the early twentieth century. Zeroing in on half a dozen locations, borderlands, and cultural dynamics, George Friedman does what few historians can - he explains precisely how certain trends are unstoppable, and what the future holds… both in terms of conflict and also opportunity. Flashpoints also explains in riveting detail how events in Europe will affect the rest of the world.