This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Batchett with George Friedman. It's a pleasure to speak to the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

George and I have been speaking for decades. And he makes forecasts, sometimes in books, sometimes in documents that he publishes.

And he's preparing to make a forecast for a year, for ten years to look out and what changes are significant.

He writes a preview of this in a column recently in Geopolitical Futures, where his measure is the five biggest economies by measure of GDP.

The five together make up more than 50% of the solar systems GDP. George, you write very carefully that the US dominates everything all the rest of them together.

How are you thinking about the US over the next year, over the next ten years, George?

Well, we're doing what we normally do. This nation loves hysteria.

We've had recessions on average in space every eight years, nine years. Recessions are necessary. They build discipline into economies that are overeated.

So we're going to have one. But the fact of the matter is the United States is by far the largest economy in the world, by far.

Also, it's militaries by far the most powerful, most diverse, most capable.

So we're talking here about the paradox of the United States. Our power is enormous.

War is in front everywhere in the world, not in the story of the United States.

But at the same time, the public is always uneasy.

And they have a habit of taking normal processes such as the business cycle and blaming the presidents.

Now, presidents exist to be blamed and by all means blame them. But we are also in a period where we're transiting from one economy type tech to a new economy, which we don't yet know.

And we're uneasy in a million different ways. But the underlying fact is that as you said, we are by far the largest economy in the world, by far the largest military in the world.

And by far the nation most uneasy with itself. And that's something we are.

And we are participating right now in the conflict zone. That would be Europe and the potential conflict zone. That would be the Pacific.

Is that a new way of war for the US or did we back into this George?

We do very badly in the wars. We decide to start Vietnam Iraq.

We do very well in wars that are thrust upon us. World War II.

We see the Ukraine war as one that was thrust upon us because we did not want Europe in danger again because I would also do real problems.

...