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Zusatztext “There is a temptation! when you are around George Friedman! to treat him like a Magic 8-Ball.” — The New York Times Magazine “In Flashpoints ! Friedman combines analysis with prophecy. . . . Some personal biography woven into poignant narratives helps reveal how geography and history have always shaped Europe’s future.” — Winnipeg Free Press “One of the country’s leading strategic affairs experts.” —Lou Dobbs “Considering how right [Friedman’s] been over the years! he’s worth listening to.” — San Antonio Express-News “Insightful. . . . Friedman vividly describes a region where memories are long! perceived vulnerabilities are everywhere! and major threats have emerged rapidly and unexpectedly many times before.” — Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor 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. Klappentext New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman delivers a fascinating portrait of modern-day Europe! with special focus on significant political! cultural! and geographical flashpoints where the conflicts of the past are smoldering once again.For the past five hundred years! Europe has been the nexus of global culture and power. But throughout most of that history! most European countries have also been volatile and unstable-some even ground zero for catastrophic wars. As Friedman explores the continent's history region by region! he examines the centuries-long struggles for power and territory among the empires of Spain! Britain! Germany! and Russia that have led to present-day crises: economic instability in Greece; breakaway states threatening the status quo in Spain! Belgium! and the United Kingdom; and a rising tide of migrants disrupting social order in many EU countries. Readers will gain a new understanding of the current and historical forces at work-and a new appreciation of how valuable and fragile peace can be. 1 A European Life On the night of August 13, 1949, my family climbed into a rubber raft along the Hungarian shore of the Danube. The ultimate destination of the journey was Vienna. We were escaping the communists. There were four of us: my father, Emil, thirty-seven, my mother, Friderika, known as Dusi, thirty-five, my sister Agnes, eleven, and me, age six months. There was also a smuggler, whose name and provenance have been lost to us, deliberately, I think, as our parents regarded the truth of such things as potentially deadly and protected us from it at all costs. We had come from Budapest by train to the Hungarian village of Almasfuzito, on the Danube northwest of the capital. Budapest, where my sister and I were born. My parents had migrated there with their families, met, fallen in love, and then were sucked into the abyss of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. My mother was born in 1914 in a town near Bratislava, then called Pozsony and part of Hungary, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father was born in the town of Nyirbator in eastern Hungary in 1912. They were born just before World War I. In 1918, the war ended and the structure of Europe cracked, wrecked by that war. Four imperial houses—the Ottomans, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs—fell, and everything that had been solid between the Baltic Sea and Black Sea was in flux. Wars, revolutions, and diplomacy redrew the map of the region, inventing some countries and suppressing others. Munkács, the town my father’s father came from, was now ...
