“[W]hen you take a look at the objective fundamental power of the United States it is simply staggering,” says George Friedman, author of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, “[T]ake a look at the manner in which the United States shrugs off things like loss in Vietnam, the collapse of the American position in Iran, then you start to have a sense…of just how powerful the United States is.”