" Brzezinski entirely ignores the dangers posed by Jared Diamond in collapse,and fails to account for three unavoidable factors that have nothing to do with international politics. The first is the inevitable effects of global warming in at least the next fifty years, and the growing dearth of conventional argibusiness, and food shortages, famines and riots. The second is the interactive effects of a decrease in available potable water, and its collateral effect on the rise and spread of pandemic diseases, an inevitable cycle in human history recorded by the University of Chicago's William McNeill in his book Plagues and People. The third failure is the refusal to account for the inability of any nation, however militarily strong, to score economic victory in a global economy where the fates of all nations and currrencies are interconnected. Additional shortcomings are failures to recognize, as Einstein did, the inevitability of proliferation of uranium-235 gun-type nuclear weapons, the creation of antibiotic resistance bioweapons and credible attacks on cyber-controlled infrastructure. Overall, Brzezinski's crystal ball is as clouded as was Herman Kahn's in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War. "
— David, 2/1/2014