Tag: Ian Bremmer

Ian Bremmer’s new book on the future of the US and geopolitics, Superpower, just hit the streets yesterday, and it’s already creating quite a buzz. It draws on Bremmer’s remarkable understanding of politics, America, and the world. I first ran into Ian at a conference about four years ago, where he was the after-dinner keynote speaker. It was one of those dinners where I had to go (I had spoken earlier), and I confess I had no knowledge of Ian other than his official bio. A professor of geopolitics. From New Yawk. So this Texas boy settled in while Ian walked on stage … and in three seconds I realized that this was an uber-nerd. Total geek. Seriously, when Hollywood wants to type cast a brilliant super-nerd, they should use Ian as the model. He hit all my stereotype buttons, and I of all people should know better.

Now I know, you’re saying it takes a nerd to know a nerd, and I do get that. But within five minutes, this nebbish professor was blowing me away. I was totally captivated. He took me on a trip through the geopolitical landscape as profound as any I had ever been on. I knew that I had to have him at my own conference, and he has been a featured speaker and crowd favorite there for the past three years.

Ian gave one of the most compelling presentations at our most recent Strategic Investment Conference. No fancy Powerpoint, just one machine-gun idea after another, strung together in what I now realize is his own carefully crafted style.

As I shared with you in Thoughts from the Frontline last week, Ian’s summary of the geopolitical situation and America’s role in managing it can be expressed in two words: it’s bad.

The US is not in decline, he asserts in today’s Outside the Box, citing “the strength of the dollar, US equity markets, employment levels and the economic rebound, the energy and food revolutions, and generation after generation of technological innovation”; but America’s foreign policy and international influence are most certainly in decline. Nevertheless, no other country can even come close to claiming superpower status, so the role the US chooses to play in the world remains of paramount importance.

For the past quarter-century, says Ian, our leaders have just been winging it:

From the fall of the Wall and Soviet collapse, US presidents of both parties have defined America’s mission in terms of tactics. US foreign policy has been reactive and improvisational for 25 years. And we can no longer identify a Democratic or Republican approach to foreign policy.

That’s where we, the American public, come in. We will have a national election in a year and a half, and our foreign policy needs to be front and center in the national conversation until then. To help us think about how we want to be in the world, in Superpower Ian offers three dramatically different foreign policy alternatives, which he outlines in today’s OTB. As I read Ian’s book, there was, I confess, an attraction to each elemental strategy.

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