Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's
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Iraq

Generational Dynamics predicts that a country will go through a crisis war approximately every four generations, or around every 80 years. Iraq had two crisis wars during the 20th century: The first came during and after World War I in the 1910s, resulting in the creation of a sovereign Iraqi state in 1924. The second was the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, following the accession of Saddam Hussein to power in 1979. Iraq's invasion and conquest of Kuwait in 1990, followed by America's Persian Gulf War in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait, brought Iraq's latest crisis war to end - or should have.

War in Iraq? [Graphic from PBS]

The citizens of Iraq are exhausted with war, and theoretically Iraq should have no trouble being a part of the larger community of nations peacefully and without problems for decades to come.

The problem is Saddam Hussein, the dictator who is dragging out the effects of the 1980s Iraqi crisis as long as he can. Generational dynamics predicts that the Iraqi people should be increasingly rebellious against Saddam, but his brutal, violent army exerts too much control, suppressing any rebellions, and any overt pro-American demonstrations.

(It's worthwhile mentioning here, in passing, that Iran, the other participant in the Iran-Iraq war, has regular pro-American demonstrations.)

Any American - Iraqi war would be a mid-cycle war (a war between two crisis wars) for Iraq. I call this particular type of war as a "momentum war" (based on Tolstoy's description of war as a "ball of invasion" with so much momentum that it can't be stopped), since it comes about because of unresolved issues from the preceding crisis wars.

Momentum wars (such as America's Korean and Vietnam wars) are almost never politically popular, and they're never pursued very energetically, and so there is no reason to expect the Iraqi people to support Saddam in the upcoming war; indeed, there's every reason to expect that without any war, the Iraqi people would rebel very vigorously against Saddam's regime in the next ten years.

(Incidentally, this is in contrast to Korea, whose last crisis wars was World War II, and which today is a pressure cooker just ready to explode into almost certain war, with enormous popular support, within the next few years.)

The reason that America is attacking Iraq is entirely because of Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.

There are only two ways that the Iraqi war might be prevented:

• If France, Germany, Russia and other countries get behind the United States in threatening war with Iraq, then Saddam may feel he has no choice but to back down, making war unnecessary. Unfortunately, this path now seems almost completely precluded, as France, Germany and Russia have openly refused to back the American effort.
• If the Iraqi people overthrow Saddam soon, instead of taking the five or ten years it would normally take, then war can be prevented.

Unfortunately, time is running out, and war with Iraq now seems almost certain.