The difference between the media and Stratfor is that the media often recognizes no limits to what individual policymakers can achieve; Stratfor, while still recognizing human agency, assumes that there often are limits to individual choice. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz may have invaded Iraq, whereas Coats and Armitage might not have. But even Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had to contend with sectarianism in Iraq, which, in turn, was a product of the country's history and geography that could easily have been forecast in advance.
More examples:
-- A glance at the map would have revealed in 1989 exactly how the countries of the disbanded Warsaw Pact would perform economically and politically for two decades thereafter: Those in the north -- heirs to the Prussian and Habsburg traditions, like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic and Slovakia) -- became relative success stories, while the former Byzantine and Ottoman Turkish Balkans would languish in relative economic underdevelopment, political instability and war.
-- Russia, whoever leads it, requires buffer zones of a sort in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, owing to its flat geography and history of invasions. Thus, Russia will, for the foreseeable future, miss no opportunity to interfere with the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.
-- German leaders want to punish Greece for its economic indiscipline. They don't want Germans to retire at 70 so Greeks can retire at 60. But German leaders also require Greece to be within the Eurozone in order to be a market for German exports. German leaders also find Russia's human rights behavior distasteful, but they cannot pivotally break from Russia while their relationships within the European Union are so delicate. Hence, German leaders' decisions are constrained.
-- Israel would like to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment capabilities. But the fact that Iran has crossed one red line after another without an Israeli military response demonstrates how the decisions of Israeli leaders are constrained by geography and Israel's own insufficient military capabilities.
-- The Obama administration would like to help the Syrian rebels. But it is constrained by the very lack of the rebels' organizational and institutional coherence, which is in turn influenced by sectarian and ethnic divides that are partially determined by history and geography.
The theme of the above examples is that leaders face few good choices, hemmed in as they are by history, geography and economics. And without good choices, they often opt for caution. Caution by policymakers further enables forecasting.
Of course, not all leaders are cautious, as when Rumsfeld accepted a strategy for invading Iraq without a post-invasion stabilization plan that was fully fleshed out. But usually when policymakers act thus, they pay for it in ways that can be forecast in advance.
Forecasting is strongest when it concentrates on geographically -- and economically -- determinative factors, such as the trajectory of trade routes and the availability of natural resources. For example: What do the new discoveries of shale gas tell us about geopolitics? Stratfor analysts do studies on the geopolitics of iron ore, of coal, and so on. Forecasting is more tenuous when it involves the actions of individuals who can be influenced by the most complex and personal of motives. Thus, predicting what Israel's top decision-makers will do on any given day vis-a-vis Iran can be an iffy enterprise. Nevertheless, because Stratfor has gotten the constraints of Israeli leaders right so far, readers of this website will not be surprised that -- at least until now -- Israel has not attacked Iran, all the anxious media reports going back years to the contrary. Nevertheless, I must emphasize, tomorrow is another day.
Constraints are about necessity. They are not about the public statements of leaders voicing their often lofty, insipid and subjective desires to the media at press conferences.
Finally, forecasting requires humility. The forecaster must always be aware of what he or she does not know and perhaps cannot know. And about what the forecaster does know, he or she must constantly play devil's advocate, as analysts do at Stratfor. But by concentrating on what can be known, as well as on the various larger forces that limit the desires of policymakers, the forecaster has the ability to make readers somewhat less surprised by what happens next.
