Evaluation of American Crisis Wars

(Algorithmic evaluations added June 18, 2004)

Dear Mike,

The following are evaluations of American wars, with separate
evaluations for other countries participating in the wars.

In each case, the war is evaluated based on the previous criteria.
There is purposely no mention at all of cycles in the following
evaluations, to make it clear that each war is being evaluated on its
own, without reference to other wars.

The 1991 Gulf War. This war fizzled within a few weeks. The
Americans defeated the Iraqi army, but there was no crushing climax.
If this had been a crisis war, then the Americans would not have
hesitated to smash into Baghdad and destroy Saddam Hussein's
government, as well as Saddam himself. As it was, we just stopped
fighting. This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: little - (supports N)
        Politicization: high (determines N)
        Resolution: Punitive (supports N)

Iraq. The Iraqi army collapsed immediately, obviously having
no will to fight. This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: Uncertain
        Genocidal violence: little - (supports N)
        Politicization: high (determines N)
        Resolution: Punitive (supports N)

The Vietnam War This war fizzled as well. If America had
wanted to win this war, it could have bombed much more aggressively,
instead of being bound by antiwar politicians who imposed everything
from Christmas truces to personnel restrictions. Americans
"Vietnamized" the war, allowing us to back out, leaving South Vietnam
in charge of its own defense. This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: little - (supports N)
        Politicization: high (determines N)
        Resolution: Unnecessary capitulation - (supports N)

Vietnam. Now look at the Vietnam War from the North Vietnamese
point of view, and you get quite a different picture. The North
Vietnames, led by Ho Chi Minh, exploded in fury as early as the 1968
Tet Offensive, and energetically pounded the Americans and South
Vietnamese, ruthless crushing the opposition. The Vietnamese War was
a crisis war for North Vietnam, but a mid-cycle war for America.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: High - determines C
        Politicization: Low - (supports C)
        Resolution: Imposed reunification (supports C)

This makes the point that when you're evaluating wars, then you have
to evaluate them from the point of view of all the major
participants, since it may be a crisis war for some but not for all.

The Korean War Few people under age 50 know anything at all
about this war, and that fact alone means that this could hardly be a
crisis war. The war ended (or didn't end) in an armistice. This
evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: little - (supports N)
        Politicization: high (determines N)
        Resolution: Armistice - (supports N)

Korea. From the Korean point of view, the war evaluates to a
mid-cycle war as well. Not only did this war not end in any kind of
explosion, it technically didn't end at all, even though fighting
stopped because of an armistice.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: little - (supports N)
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Armistice - (supports N)

World War II. America. It took several months for
America to become fully mobilized after the Pearl Harbor attack, and
in that sense World War II got off to a slow start for America. If WW
II had been a mid-cycle war like Korea or Vietnam, America would never
have had the energy to mount the 1944 D-Day attack. America did mount
that attack, showing how massive energy for war can build up. By
1945, America's vengeful fury was in full force, with the massive
firebombing and destruction of Dresden and Tokyo, climaxing in the
use of nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities. It's worth noting
that nuclear weapons have never been used since then -- and the
reason is that no country since then has developed a nuclear
capability and then had a crisis war. This evaluates to a crisis
war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - (supports C)
        Resolution: "Policemen of the world" - (supports C)

England. WW II was also a crisis war for England. England
entered the war before America did, but it also got off to a slow
start, with repeated warnings to Germany, and the famous "peace in our
time" speech by Prime Minister Chamberlain. However England's efforts
also gathered energy, and even exceeded America's efforts in some
respects. By D-Day, the two countries were fully together. This
evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - (supports C)
        Resolution: Joins US as policement (supports C)

Germany. Hitler mobilized quickly and pursued the war
vigorously. By 1944 it was clear he had lost, but he refused to
surrender, and fought to the bloody end. This evaluates to a crisis
war.

In evaluating whether WW II is a crisis war for Germany, we can also
look at the issue of secrecy during mobilization. This is a
secondary factor in evaluating wars, but it provides an additional
indication. If an attacking country mobilizes in secret in order to
attack with the greatest possible power and effect, this is a fairly
certain sign of a crisis war. However, it's not completely certain,
because even some mid-cycle wars are pursued with some initial
secrecy.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - (supports C)
        Resolution: Partitioning (supports C)

Japan. Like Germany, Japan refused to surrender even when
loss was certain. And like Germany, Japan mobilized for war in
secret for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - (supports C)
        Resolution: Gives up imperialism (supports C)

Russia. Evaluating WW II for Russia is a surprise for many
people because it's not a crisis war.

Russia suffered enormously in what they called the Great Patriotic
War, but Russia had had a brutal crisis war just a few years earlier,
in the 1910s and 1920s. They were war-weary and had little of the
genocidal energy necessary to pursue a crisis war.

Like England, Russia had made peace with Hitler, and expected "peace
in our time." But unlike England, Russia did not declare war against
Hitler until after Hitler had already begun its invasion. Russians
in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and Leningrad suffered massive
starvation from German encirclement, but it took until 1944 for the
Russian army to finally expel the Germans. At that point, Russia was
ready to stop fighting, but the Allies wanted Russia to keep on
fighting to help defeat Germany. Josef Stalin achieved a tremendous
political victory at the Yalta conference in 1945, where he allowed
Churchill and Roosevelt to convince him to keep on fighting, in
exchange for hegemony over Eastern Europe. Stalin also promised to
declare war against Japan, but he didn't do so until several days
after America had already dropped a nuclear weapon.

So there was no explosion of violent energy from Russia. Like many
mid-cycle wars, this one was fought defensively and politically.
That's why it's not a crisis war for Russia.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: low to moderate - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Negotiates Eastern Europe (supports N)

World War I. Germany. World War I began in the
Balkans and spread to Austria. Germany was pulled into it because of
a treaty with Austria. Russia supported its ally Serbia, and Germany
attacked France because France had a treaty with Russia.

Germany pursed the war as almost a comedy of errors. There was
constant vacillation. First they were going to encircle Paris, but
then they moved forces from the east to the western front, so they
stalemated in France. Then in the west they fought well, but they
didn't bother to fully coordinate with their Austrian allies -- in
effect allowing individual egos to take precedence over the war. At
the end, Germany capitulated because of internal political problems,
while German troops were still deep into France. [Schivelbusch,
189-90] Germany had little energy throughout this war, and so it
evaluates as a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Capitulation - punitive reparations(supports N)

England and America. England was pulled into the war
to prevent Germany from overrunning France, as had happened in 1869.
One of the most dramatic indications of how little energy there was
the 1914 Christmas truce -- four months after the war began, the
English and German troops took time off on Christmas eve to drink
beer and sing Christmas carols together. Allies' participation ended
with German capitulation, while German troops were still deep into
France. There was no explosive violence at the end, so it evaluates
as a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Punitive reparations (supports N)

Russia. Americans seldom realize that World War I was mainly
an East European and Middle Eastern war, and only touched Western
Europe incidentally (even though many lives were lost).

Russia's management of the war was disastrously wild and frenzied,
and it led to one humiliating defeat after another. The 500-year-old
tsarist government collapsed, leading to the Bolshevik (Communist)
revolution of 1917, and the Russian Orthodox Church was reduced to
near wreckage. Russia pulled out of WW I, but then succumbed to a
massive civil war, resulting in tens of millions of deaths by 1928.

When you're evaluating where a war was a crisis war for a given
nation, you sometimes need to look beyond the war itself. Russia's
participation in World War I would not, per se, evaluate to
being a crisis war. But when you look at the entire crisis
period, beginning in 1914 with World War I and ending in 1928
after the civil war, you get an extremely violent, explosive picture.

When examining the violent, genocidal energy that accompanies a
crisis war, think of this energy as a fire hose that a nation can
turn on anyone, and can also turn on itself.

A crisis period generally lasts 10 to 20 years. Sometimes it begins
and remains explosive in one region. In other cases, it begins
slowly in one region and grows explosively in the same region. In
other cases, the war starts out slowly in one region, but then
explodes into a completely different region, and even a civil war, as
happened here. All of these must be taken into account.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Bolshevik Revolution - supports C

Turkey / Ottoman Empire. Turkey began with a war against
Russia, but had a violent civil war with its own Armenian population.
By 1922, the centuries-old Ottoman Empire had been completely
destroyed. This evaluates to a crisis war period.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Ottoman destruction - supports C

Spanish-American War (1898). Cuba. The Cuban War of
Independence (1895-98 ) ruthlessly devastated the island, killing 10%
of the population. [Stearns, 638] This evaluates to a crisis war for
Cuba irrespective of American intervention.

Once again, we see that we have to go beyond a single war to examine
an entire crisis period.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Devastation - supports C

America. The Cuban war aroused public sympathy for the
rebels, against Spain. When the U.S.S. Maine mysteriously blew up in
1898, America declared war against Spain and the Spanish Fleet. One of
the operations was a blockade of Cuba, something that was repeated in
1962. Spain withdrew from Cuba. [Stearns, 614] This evaluates to a
mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: no - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Fizzles or punishes Spain - supports N

Spain. After the Maine exploded, Spain immediately agreed to
all American demands, hoping to avoid war. [Stearns, 614] When war
occurred, Spain was descredited, causing political problems.
[Stearns, 496] This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: no - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Punitive - supports N

Civil War (1861-65). The Civil War got off to a slow start,
as both sides continued hoping for a peaceful compromise. The war
became decisive with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which
signaled a change in attitude. 50,000 men were killed or wounded in
the Battle of Gettysburg in July. In March 1864, Sherman destroyed
Atlanta and then marched to the sea, ravaging everything in his path.
This evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: yes - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Ends slavery - supports C

Mexican-American War (1846-48). American troops seized
California and Monterrey, and occupied Mexico City. There was a huge
antiwar movement [Almanac 251]. The war ended as Mexico ceded Texas
and other territories to the U.S., and the U.S. agreed to pay $15
million in return. [Stearns 605, 637] This evaluates to a mid-cycle
war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: no - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Negotiated - supports N

Mexico. Mexico was invaded an occupied by American forces,
and dealt with several internal uprisings, including a war with Mayan
Indians in the Yucatan, culminating in a massive peasant revolt in
Queretaro. [Stearns 637] This really requires deeper information
from other sources, but based on this information it evaluates to a
crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: yes - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Negotiated - supports N

War of 1812. America declared war on England because England
was restricting American shipping to Europe during the Napoleonic
Wars. The war was indecisive and ended when the Napoleonic wars
ended. The 1814 Treaty of Ghent restored the status quo ante.
This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: no - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Negotiated - supports N

England. England was engaged in the Napoleonic crisis war.
England tried initially to avoid war by agreeing to America's
demands, but war began anyway because of a miscommunication. England
pursued the war energetically, even to capturing and burning
Washington D.C. at approximately the same time that France was
capturing and burning Moscow. Both England and France lost these
forays, in both cases because they were eventually overwhelmed by
native (American and Russian) forces. Even so, this is part of the
Napoleonic wars, and evaluates to a crisis war for England.

Code:

    Evaluation: C (Napoleonic wars)
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: yes - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Congress of Vienna - supports C

Revolutionary War. The colonists fired the "shot heard 'round
the world" and changed history. This evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: New constitutional government - supports C

England. The British should have won. They had many more
soldiers and vastly greater provisions. But even when they saw the
war coming, they did requisition provisions to fight the war. There
was a powerful antiwar movement in England opposed to the war. In
the end, British General Corwallis let himself be encircled at
Yorktown, and then surrendered with 7,000 men. England immediately
established trading relations with America. Evaluates to a mid-cycle
war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: no - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Capitulation and acquiescence - supports N

Sources

The following sources were used in the above evaluations, as well as
the evaluations in the following messages.

[Almanac] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., general editor,
The Almanac of American History, Revised and Updated Edition,
Barnes & Noble Books, 1993

[Braudel] Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations,
1963, translated by Richard Mayne, Penguin Books, 1993.

[DK] Jeremy Black, general editor, DK Atlas of World
History, Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc., 2001

[Stearns] Peter N. Stearns (Editor), The Encyclopedia of
World History, 6th edition, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001

[Trevelyan] George Macaulay Trevelyan, A Shortened History
of England, Penguin Books, 1942

[Roberts] J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the
World, Penguin Books, 1995

[Schivelbusch] Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of
Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, 2000,
translated by Jefferson Chase, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and
Company LLC, 2001

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Evaluation of French Religious Wars

(Algorithmic evaluations added June 18, 2004)

Dear Mike,

Because of our long previous discussion of the French religious wars,
I wanted to do an analysis of the French religious wars from 1467 to
1714. I wanted to include every war, so I checked several sources.

As before, each war is evaluated on its own, with no reference to
cycles.

Louis XI defeats Charles the Bold (1467-1491). Louis united
Burgundy, Anjou, Provence and other provinces with the French crown.
Needs more information, but appears to evaluate to a crisis war which
merged together the timelines of several provinces.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Merging provinces and timelines - supports C

Charles VIII's expedition to Italy (1495-6). Charles
conquered Naples, but quickly withdrew. Evaluates to mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Fizzled - supports N

Invasion of Emperor Maximillian (1513). Battle of the Spurs
named after the hasty flight of the French. [Stearns] Evaluates to
mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Fizzled - supports N

French-Habsburg wars (1515-59). "Charles V, Emperor from
1519-56, ruled Spain, Flanders, and much of Italy as well as the
Habsburg lands of Central Europe. He was opposed by the German
princes, especially the Protestant ones, and Francis I and Henry II
of France, who pursued the claims of their predecessors to Italy.
Constant wars wasted many lives and much money, but gained nothing.
In 1556, Charles V abdicated, dividing his empire between his brother
and his son." [DK Atlas, p. 194] This evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Gained nothing - supports N

Religious Wars (1562-98 ). In analyzing a period this long, 36
years, I would look for a climax - something that's clearly
remembered, and changed history. There are two candidates: St.
Bartholomew Night's massacre (1572) and the Edict at Nantes (1598).
So, it makes sense, at least for purposes of investigation, to split
this long period into two parts.

Religious Wars Part I (1562-73). There were several wars
between the Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants) during the 1560s,
with an increasing level of conflict and acts of brinkmanship. In
1572 a decision was made to kill all the Huguenot leaders. This led
to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew on August 24, 1572, when Catholics
massacred some 1,000 to 2,000 Huguenot civilians in Paris in a single
night. During the next two months, some 10,000 to 100,000 civilian
Huguenots were slaughtered throughout the country, often in their own
homes. This massacre is an important event in history to this day.
This evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Devastation - supports C

Religious Wars Part II (1573-98 ). After 1573, with their
leaders killed, the Huguenots reorganized into a political
organization, and the war turned into a "permanently organized
revolt." [ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07527b.htm ]. The wars
ended with a political document, the Edict at Nantes, which granted
freedom of worship to Huguenots. This evaluates as a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Political Edict at Nantes - supports N

France in 30 Years War (1635-48 ). The war ended with the
Peace of Westphalia, agreed in 1648. It was called the "Peace of
Exhaustion" by its contemporaries. It settled by treaty the
boundaries between France and its ally Sweden on the one hand and the
Habsburg possessions on the other hand. About 250 separate German
states were recognized as sovereign. This evaluates as a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Devastation - supports C

The Fronde (1648-53). The nobility revolted against Cardinal
Mazarin. The Fronde ended and Mazarin returned to power. Little had
changed. [Stearns 326] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

Second Anglo-Dutch War (1666-67). France allied with Holland.
Ended with restoration of territories. [Stearns 328] Evaluates to a
mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

War of Devolution (1667-68 ). Louis XIV's war with Spain over
his wife's inheritance. Settled by Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
[Stearns 328] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

War against the Dutch (1672-78 ). Settled by Treaties of
Nimwegen, which divided up the region, with gains by France. [Stearns
315] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

Invasion of Spanish Netherlands (1683-84). Temporary truce in
1684. [Stearns 315] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). There was no war.

War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97). Louis tried to
prevent the success of the Glorious Revolution. France was engaged
on all her land frontiers in operations agaisnt Spain, Holland, and
the German Princes, and even so she held er own; neither side won any
sensational victories. Ended with the indecisive Treaty of Ryswick.
[Trevelyan, 363-64, 369] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: high - determines N
        Resolution: Indecisive treaty - supports N

War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). France began the war
with every apparent advantage except sea power, already holding vast
terroritories when the war began. "But contrary to all expectation,
the allies, who in the previous war had seemed no painful inch to
gain, chased the French out of every one of these lands with the
exception of Spain. These tremendous victories, as compared to the
stalemate of the previous war, can be accounted for in no small
degree by the military genius of Marlborough...." [Trevelyan, 370]
The war ended with Treaty at Utrecht, which defined many of the
borders of Europe that hold to this day. Western political geography
was thus set for a long time, owing much to the need felt by all
statesmen to avoid for as long as possible another conflict such as
that which had just closed. For the first time a treaty declared the
aim of the signatories to be the security of peace through a balance
of power. [Roberts, 584-86] This evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Treaty at Utrecht - supports C

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Evaluation of Southern African Wars

(Algorithmic evaluations added June 18, 2004)

Dear Mike,

A few months ago I did some incomplete work on African wars. Since I
want to provide you with as many examples as possible, I'm including
it here even though the wars need additional evaluation.

African Geography

If you look at some maps of Africa, you might think that Africa is
about as big as Texas. People who think that Africa is about the
same size as Texas also think of Africa as a continent of continuing
violence. Some people attempt to provide racial explanations, while
others look to tribal analyses.

But once you start to look at African geography, it's easy to see why
all of those thoughts are terribly, enormously wrong.



First off, Africa is just a little bit bigger than Texas.

In fact, Africa is bigger than the ENTIRE United States INCLUDING
Alaska PLUS all of China PLUS all of Europe -- and there's still
enough room left over to throw in New Zealand.

So when we think of continuing violence in Africa, remember that, for
its size, it's no more violent than comparable areas on the rest of
the planet.

There were other important geographical factors as well.



There was little European penetration of Africa until the mid 1800s,
especially into the rain forests. Why? Because Europeans who tried to
penetrate Africa usually died pretty quickly. Why? Because they got
either malaria from the mosquito or sleeping sickness from the tsetse
fly.

The worst were the rain forests, which act as "sponges, soaked with
water; they are thick with giant trees and tangled underbrush, dark
and silent." They are inhabited only by African pygmies, one of the
four major ethnic groups in Black Africa. [Braudel, p. 120]

Other black ethnic groups exist outside the rain forest.On the edge
of the Kalahari Desert (in the south) are the Khoi-khoi or Hottentots
and Saan or Bushmen; in Sudan are the Sudanese, and all along the
east are the Bantu, the largest group. These groups all have distinct
ethnic origins, languages, and customs. [Braudel, p. 122]

As a result of the medical and geographical problems, most of Africa
was off limits to Europeans for centuries. The result was that the
Africans themselves suffered the most of all, since they had little
or no access to the technological advances of the outside world.

But Africa wasn't entirely off limits to outsiders. There were some
areas of early outsider settlements:

• Northern Africa, the strip above the Sahara Desert that
  bordered the Mediterranean Sea, was repeatedly conquered by armies of
  various civilizations, including the Greeks, the Romans and the
  Muslims. Today, Northern Africa is pretty much entirely Muslim. In
  addition, the Muslims in Egypt moved down the Nile River valley,
  using the Nile to irrigate crops.
  
• Ethiopia is unique in that it's the oldest independent country in
  Africa, and has never been colonized by Europeans. The earliest
  evidence of Ethiopian history was in around 1000 BC when the Queen of
  Sheba visited King Solomon. Judaism spread, and Ethiopia became the
  site of the black Jews. Christianity was adopted in 330 AD.
  
• South Africa was settled first by the Dutch in the 1600s, who
  found it virtually empty. In 1815, the British seized it, forcing
  the Dutch (known as Boers or farmers) to move into the grassy plains
  of the veld. South Africa developed an internationally condemned
  apartheid (segregation) of the whites from the blacks that was only
  dissolved in 1990. [Braudel, p. 119]
  
• Liberia was first settled in 1822 by freed American slaves. The
  capital city was Monrovia, named after President Monroe.
  
• The island of Madascar was colonized jointly by the African black
  Bantu and by Malaysian tribes that came in from the east. [Braudel,
  p. 119]
  
• Muslims and Europeans established numerous outposts on the shores
  of Africa for the purpose in trading in gold and slaves. The Muslim
  slave trades came first, around 700 AD, mostly on the East coast of
  Africa, and the Europeans came later, in the 1500s, mostly on the West
  coast.

A little more needs to be said about slavery.

Slavery is as old as humanity. It's only in recent times that wars
have become "civilized," with conventions about prisoners of war, war
crimes trials, and so forth. In today's world, the winner of a major,
murderous war usually simply kills all the men and rapes all the
women, but this is somewhat new. In the old days, war victors had a
third choice, enslaving the losers, and that was done as a common
matter. The Romans had slaves, the Muslims had slaves - every
civilization had slaves, and every civilization was enslaved when it
lost major wars. People were enslaved by other people in their own
civilization, and by people in other civilizations.

So why was black Africa the last civilization to been enslaved? It
seems to me that returns again to the question of the impenetrability
of Africa, the resulting demonization of an unknown race, and a lack
of the technology that would have made it possible for Africans to
tell their story. Once colonization began in earnest, and Africans
could use modern communications to tell their story, slavery could no
longer survive. However, slavery still exists today within Africa
itself, especially where modern technology hasn't yet reached.

But in the 1850s it was discovered that malaria could be controlled
with quinine, and by the 1870s the floodgates opened. The "Scramble
for Africa" pitted England, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain
and Germany against each other to snap up as much of the continent as
possible. By the mid 1890s the Scramble had just carved up just
about all of Africa, and in 1914, all of black Africa except Ethiopia
and Liberia were European colonies. Since 1914, former colonies have
become independent nations.

So the problem of finding generational timelines for all the major
African regions is a big one -- probably as big as finding them for
the rest of the world combined.

Crisis wars for Southern Africa

The following identifies crisis wars in Southern Africa starting in
1817. This work is far from complete. Many of the wars have
been identified, and the crisis wars have been tentatively identified
as the Mfecane and the Anglo-Boer war. But these evaluations require
additional sources and evaluations before we can be certain.

The Mfecane - The Crushing (1817-28 )

The Zulus were a tribe in the northern portion of what is now South
Africa. The Zulus went from obscurity to world reknown as a result
of Shaka, born in 1787, who became the tribal chief in the early
1800s.

Shaka revolutioned tribal warfare: "During his reign he
revolutionized warfare ... by replacing the throwing spear with the
stabbing assegai and by developing radical new tactics. Use of the
short, stout assegai meant that warriors could no longer throw their
spears and run, but had to close with their foes. His army in
fighting formation was likened to the head of an ox; from either side
of the main body came "horns," troops that ran ahead to envelope the
enemy. He organized his regiments by age groups; no man could marry
until he had washed his assegai in the blood of an enemy. Footwear
was forbidden, and to make sure his warriors' feet were tough, he
required them to dance on thorns; those whose dancing was not
vigorous enough were clubbed to death." [Byron Farwell -
http://college.hmco.com/history/read...luandthezu.htm
]



(This picture shows Skaka's stabbing assegai on the top, contrasted
to the throwing spears on the bottom.)

Leading an army of 40,000 to 80,000 warriors in the early 1800s,
Shaka merged with or conquered a number of nearby tribes, killing more
than a million men, and by 1818 became Emperor Shaka the Great, head
of the Zulu Kingdom. At the point, the Mfecane began in earnest.
Genocidal warfare broke out among the tribes that the zulus had
defeated, turning much of the region into a wasteland. This evaluates
to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: significant - supports C
        Genocidal violence: high - determines C
        Politicization: low - supports C
        Resolution: Established Zulu kingdom - supports C

Zulu vs Boer Voortrekkers (1837-38 ). Zulus kill Boer
Voortrekkers in a meeting, and also also attacked trekker
encampments. Other Boers defeated Zulu army, and created the
Republic of Natal. [Stearns] Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N?
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Republic of Natal - supports C

British vs Boers in Natal (1842-43). British annexed Natal.
Evaluates to mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N?
        Historically significant war: forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: low - supports N
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Republic of Natal - supports C

Zulu kingdom civil war (1856). "Civil war in Zulu kingdom
established the supremacy of the Usuthu faction and the right to
succession of Cetshwayo, while Mpande remained king." [Stearns] This
needs more information, since civil wars are sometimes hard to
evaluate. In this case, it sounds like the civil war was led from
the top, rather than from the people. Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N?
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: Little change - supports N

Orange Free State vs Sotho (1865-66). "War between the Orange
Free State and Moshoeshoe's Sotho resulted in cession of most of
Sotho state's arable land." Evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: ?
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: ?

Ndebele civil war (1868-71). "Lobengula became Ndebele king
after a civil war over succession to Mzilikazi." I really need more
information about this war.

Code:

    Evaluation: ?
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: ?

Last Cape-Xhosa war (1877-78 ). The last Cape-Xhosa war resulted
in famine and defeat for the Xhosa. More information needed.

Code:

    Evaluation: ?
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: ?

British vs Zulu kingdom (1879). Zulus attacked British,
British win decisive victory after rushing in reinforcements. [This
is like the Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait.] Evaluates to
mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N?
        Historically significant war: Forgotten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: ?

Zulu civil wars (1879-87). Defeat by British led to a series
of civil wars in the former kingdom. British annexation of Zululand
in 1887. Need more information because there may be a partially
diverged timeline for the zulus since the Mfecane.

Code:

    Evaluation: ?
        Historically significant war: ?
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: ?
        Resolution: ?

Boer revolt against British (1880-81). After four months,
British recognized the republic in the Treaty of Pretoria. Evaluates
to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: Forgooten - determines N
        Genocidal violence: ?
        Politicization: Yes - supports N
        Resolution: Negotiated - supports N

South African War / Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). "At the outset,
Boers had the military advantage of numbers and knowledge of terrain.
Britain had only 25,000 men available. By Feb. 1900, the tide of
battle favored British forces. By November, the Boers turned to
guerrilla tactics, frustrating British army strategy. In Jan. 1901,
Gen. Herbert Kitchener used a scorched earth policy to counter Boer
guerrillas. Some 120,000 women and children were confined in
concentration camps, where poor sanitation and malnutrition
contributed to high mortality (around 20,000 died). British
journalist J. A. Hobson, covering the war, developed a new theory of
imperialism. At the end of the war, the British had 300,000 troops in
South Africa against 60,000-70,000 Boers. By the Treaty of
Vereeniging (May 31, 1901) the Boers accepted British sovereignty but
were promised representative government. The British promised 3
million to enable the Boers to rebuild their farms." [Stearns]
Evaluation: This is very much like the Vietnam war, with heavy
British antiwar sentiment, except that the Brits were able to
overwhelm the Boers with massive reinforcements. This evaluates to a
mid-cycle war for the British and a crisis war for the Boers.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: Yes - Supports C
        Genocidal violence: Yes - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Negotiated settlement - supports N

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Roman Crisis Wars from Buried Coin Hoards

(Algorithmic evaluations added June 18, 2004)

Dear Mike,

This is the final set of evaluations that I'm posting. It's an
analysis of three Roman periods, based on evidence from buried coin
hoards. I once posted some of this material in another thread.

This came about because a reader of my book challenged it on the
basis that Rome didn't follow the 80-year timeline. As evidence, he
provided the following page from a book, Michael Crawford, The Roman
Republic, 2nd Edition, Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 162:



This table shows how many Roman coin hoards were found with coins in
various four year periods. During times of war, people tend to bury
their gold coins for safety, and come back for them later. Thus, the
number of gold coin hoards tells us when the wars were.

The person challenging my book pointed out that the three periods
with highest activity were 218-201, 91-64, and 55-35. He said that
these periods did not run in 80 year cycles, proving that my book
must be wrong.

I did an analysis, and found that the first two are crisis periods,
but the third is an awakening period, which is consistent with
Generational Dynamics.

This indicates that coin hoards were buried during awakening periods
as well as crisis war periods.

Here's a summary of the analysis:

Second Punic War (218-201 BC). Hannibal marched his
Carthaginian army through southern France and headed for Rome,
defeating one Roman army after another along the way. The war raged
on for years, until 202 when Hannibals army was annihilated. Carthage
was to accept Rome's terms of surrender, and the unfaithful Italian
allies were punished as well. Evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: Yes - Supports C
        Genocidal violence: Yes - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Annihilated - supports C

Social War, Civil War, Mithridatic Wars (91-64 BC). Italian
allied states formed their own republic, Italia, and declared war on
Rome. Rome attempted to undermine Italian solidarity by extending
Roman citizenship to all Italians (unraveling strategy), but the war
continued. Before the war was over, 50,000 had died on each side and
Italy was devastated. [Stearns] A further civil war in Rome resulted
in much further bloodshed. This evaluates to a crisis war.

Code:

    Evaluation: C
        Historically significant war: Yes - Supports C
        Genocidal violence: Yes - determines C
        Politicization: Low - supports C
        Resolution: Devasted - supports C

Rioting in Rome, Civil War, Caesar assassinated (55-35 BC).
Caesar "crossed the Rubicon" and thus initiated a short-lived civil
war. Caesar made Cleopatra ruler of Egypt -- gender issues are often
important during awakening periods. Caesar carried out other foreign
campaigns, achieved power in Rome, and was assassinated in 44. This
evaluates to a mid-cycle war.

Code:

    Evaluation: N
        Historically significant war: No - determines N
        Genocidal violence: No - supports N
        Politicization: High - determines N
        Resolution: Fizzled - supports N

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

************************************************** **************

Dear Tim,

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

> Given the criteria for a Crisis war, and the fault lines listed
> for America, what scenarios can you foresee?

Thanks for asking that question. I was just finishing up a graphic
on a very closely related subject.

The interesting thing is that I can identify "hot spots" without
having to depend on saying that we're 60 years after the start of the
last crisis period.

Using the crisis war criteria given in the previous postings, I can
say that there are certain areas that appear to be headed for a
crisis war, based mostly on those criteria.

The most intruiging of these possibilities is something that not a
single pundit or high-priced analyst has considered, as far as I've
seen: That Iraq may declare war on al-Qaeda, and drag America into
it.



1. Israel / Palestine

The Jews and Palestinians appear to have entered a crisis war in
1999, starting with the beginning of the suicide bombings that drove
Israel out of South Lebanon.

Although full-scale war has not broken out, the level of energy has
been increasing steadily.

Israel has been killing Hamas leaders, leveling thousands of
Palestinian homes in Gaza, and is going ahead with a plan to wall off
Israel, restricting the Palestinians to three enclaves connected by
corridors. This is infuriating the Palestinians, and beyond that, I
know of no historical analogy which would paint that bizarre plan as
anything other than an unraveling-type Rube Goldberg idea that has to
come crashing down. (I'm not blaming Israel, however, since nothing
else would work either.)

The Palestinians have promised major retaliation by the end of the
year for the killings of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his
replacement, new Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Whether they meet
that deadline or not, there's no doubt that they're secretly planning
a series of major terrorist attacks, and will continue such planning
until one succeeds.

There's another wrinkle: The razing of Palestinian homes in Gaza has
exacerbated the hostilities between Palestinian groups. The ones who
lost their homes are blaming the groups that dug the tunnels that
Israel used as justification to raze the homes. Gaza and the West
Bank look like nothing so much to me as a place where a civil war
among Palestinians could "spiral out of control." This would draw in
Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and then Israel and America.

2. Pakistan

Similarly the level of violence has been increasing in Pakistan.

Sunnis have been blowing up Shi'ite mosques in Karachi, and Shi'ites
have been assassinating Sunni leaders, including repeated attempts on
President Pervez Musharaff's life. Muslim tribal leaders are
infuriated about Musharaff's crackdown on al-Qaeda suspects, and
retaliation is threatened. The level of conflict and violence has
been increasing steadily for about a year.

It was just a couple of years ago that the tension between Pakistan
and India over Kashmir seemed dangerously high. That tension was
alleviated with agreements between Musharaff and Indian leaders, but
the recent election upset has raised concerned. Both India and
Pakistan are prepared for war, and a Muslim civil war in Pakistan
could set up a regional war between Pakistan and India.

3. Saudi Arabia

Terrorist activity has been increasingly precipitously in Saudi
Arabia, and the situation seems to be deterioriating continually.
These activities have killed many Muslims, although they've recently
been targeted at specific Westerners. Bin Laden has stated his
committment to bring down the House of Saud, and al-Qaeda won't rest
until he succeeds.

4. Chechnya

The war between Orthodox Russia and its war-torn Muslim republic
Chechnya has been boiling for over ten years. Russian President
Vladimir Putin's Chechnya policy suffered a major setback on May 9,
when a terrorist bomb killed Kremlin supporter Chechen President
Akhmad Kadyrov. It appears that the level of violence will continue
to increase.

5. Georgia

There is a growing level of tension between Tbilisi and Moscow over
Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia, and the conflict may
become armed. Once again, the level of potential conflict has been
building for ten years.

6. Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan has been experiencing some violence, but not nearly
comparable to the previous regions.

What makes this country worthy of note is that it has terrorist
training camps, and, along with Chechnya, has been supplying
manpower to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

7. Iraq

For a year, pundits and high-priced analysts have been predicting
that the situation in Iraq would "spiral out of control" into a
Sunni-Shi'a civil war or uprising against the Americans. It drives
me crazy because Iraq is in an awakening period, and these things are
impossible.

But there is a possible scenario which none of the pundits are
considering, as far as I know: A mid-cycle war, declared by the Iraqi
government against al-Qaeda.

The terrorist attacks in Baghdad are infuriating the Iraqis. They're
demonstrating and protesting against the Americans, but the real
anger is sure to be directed against al-Qaeda, or terrorist leader
Musab al-Zarqawi.

After June 30, the Iraqis will have a sovereign government, and the
leaders will be anxious to look for ways to show their independence
from the Americans. It's quite likely that the new Iraqi leaders
will use their position to demand that al-Qaeda immediately cease and
desist from the terrorist attacks, and then to threaten some kind of
military action if they don't.

How this might unravel cannot be predicted, but there are many ways
that the Americans could be dragged in.

-------

None of the above scenarios is certain, of course, and some are less
likely than others. But it seems pretty certain that crisis wars
around the Mideast are building in "genocidal energy," and at some
point something will trigger one of them.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

A Jewish Maginot Line?

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

A Jewish Maginot Line?

Or the Berlin wall, I suppose.

John

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Dear Mike,
I went back to square one to try to figure out how I got to this
point. When I read The Fourth Turning more than 2 1/2 years
ago, and reread several times in the following few months, the
generational changes didn't always make complete sense to me, but the
"Fourth Turning" concept was always crystal clear. What I did since
then is to take S&H's Fourth Turning concept, refine it so that it
applies to regions, and tested that against hundreds of regions, very
successfully.

I'm really sorry I screwed this up so badly in the past, but I would
be very grateful if you'd take a look at the following material, and
tell me whether you now understand what methodology I'm using and the
results I'm getting and, as a separate issue, whether you agree that
the results are useful.

You didn't screw up. What you did was consult some of the literature on generational cycles and then used it as a springboard for further study. I urged you to read some of the war cycles literature to further stimulate your thinking.

Dear Mike,

OK, I've ordered both of your two books. I also ordered George
Modelski's very expensive book. They should arrive pretty shortly.
And Joshua Goldstein's book was out of print, so I ordered a used
copy, and it may take longer to arrive.

But keep in mind that the previous evaluations of crisis wars have
per se nothing to do with cycles. All I did was take Strauss
& Howe's description of a Fourth Turning crisis ("human history's
equivalent to nature's raging typhoon," etc.), turned it into a set
of criteria, and applied those criteria to evaluate wars to designate
them as crisis or non-crisis wars.

Do you agree that I've applied these criteria honestly to the dozens
of wars that I've discussed in the last few posts, with no attempt to
cherry-pick wars?

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Do you agree that I've applied these criteria honestly to the dozens of wars that I've discussed in the last few posts, with no attempt to cherry-pick wars?

How about a different type of presentation. For example how about a table with the various criteria making up the rows and the various wars the columns. Eash criterion can be expressed as a question to which a yes answer implies crisis war and a no answer mid-cycle war. At each intersection of row and column you would put the Y or N answer. Then on the bottom row you would total up the Y's and the N's.

This would give a striking visual representation of the idea of crisis versus non-crisis wars. Then in the text you could expand on those particular answers for which you feel some explanation is needed for why you answered that question in that way.

For example, one question might be: Did the war achieve a total victory (an unconditional surrender or total capitulation by the losing)? Five wars, Revolutionary, Meican, Civil War Phillipines and WW II would be answered Yes, the rest would be No. You could expand on this in the text by noting that the Civil War and WW II featured unconditional surrenders. The Revolution saw the total (and permanent) capitulation of British authority over the American colonies. The Phillipine war saw conquest of the islands and their incorporation into the American Empire. Mexico's capital was occupied and they forced to surrender a huge chunk of territory.

Another criterion would be scale of the war. And another the long-term consequences. And so on.

You will find that all wars will have some crisis features and score some Y's, but the true crisis wars will be dominated by Y's and so stand out as different from the non-crisis wars.

This sort of presentation would show in an easy to understand layout exactly how the various wars "work out to" a crisis or non-crisis war.

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Bertrand Russell

In the beginning everything is self-evident, and it's
hard to see whether one self-evident proposition follows from
another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.
Hence, we must invent new and even difficult symbolism in which
nothing is obvious.

I memorized this quotation when I was in college studying
mathematical logic, so I accept your suggestion that it would be
better to try to make evaluations more precise.

Russell's quote may be correct, but unfortunately if you write
something in which nothing is obvious then nobody will understand it
without taking more time than it's worth.

I experimented with several different chart formats and several
different kinds of symbols to put in the rows and columns, so -, +,
-*, +*, (-) and (+) all mean different things. It was a mess.

So I've arranged all the criteria into four groups (historic
significance, genocidal violence, politicization, resolution). The
war is tested against each of the groups until one is found to
determine "crisis" or "non-crisis."

I've edited the five messages:

Revised Evaluation Criteria for Crisis Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98544#98544

Evaluation of American Crisis Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98545#98545

Evaluation of French Religious Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98546#98546

Evaluation of Southern African Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98547#98547

Roman Crisis Wars from Buried Coin Hoards
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98548#98548

to include the new algorithmic criteria.

Please take a look at these revised crisis war evaluations, and tell
if you now agree that these criteria are honest and honestly applied.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Bertrand Russell

In the beginning everything is self-evident, and it's
hard to see whether one self-evident proposition follows from
another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.
Hence, we must invent new and even difficult symbolism in which
nothing is obvious.

I memorized this quotation when I was in college studying
mathematical logic, so I accept your suggestion that it would be
better to try to make evaluations more precise.

Russell's quote may be correct, but unfortunately if you write
something in which nothing is obvious then nobody will understand it
without taking more time than it's worth.

I experimented with several different chart formats and several
different kinds of symbols to put in the rows and columns, so -, +,
-*, +*, (-) and (+) all mean different things. It was a mess.

So I've arranged all the criteria into four groups (historic
significance, genocidal violence, politicization, resolution). The
war is tested against each of the groups until one is found to
determine "crisis" or "non-crisis."

I've edited the five messages:

Revised Evaluation Criteria for Crisis Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98544#98544

Evaluation of American Crisis Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98545#98545

Evaluation of French Religious Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98546#98546

Evaluation of Southern African Wars
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98547#98547

Roman Crisis Wars from Buried Coin Hoards
http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=98548#98548

to include the new algorithmic criteria.

Please take a look at these revised crisis war evaluations, and tell
if you now agree that these criteria are honest and honestly applied.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

I don't think all the criteria are easily answered. How do you tell if a war has been forgotten by the general public? Do a survey? I think most Americans are aware that there was a War of 1812 and a French and Indian War (Seven Years War). I'll guess fewer than 5 in a 100 have ever heard of the War of Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's war).

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> I don't think all the criteria are easily answered. How do you
> tell if a war has been forgotten by the general public? Do a
> survey? I think most Americans are aware that there was a War of
> 1812 and a French and Indian War (Seven Years War). I'll guess
> fewer than 5 in a 100 have ever heard of the War of Spanish
> Succession (Queen Anne's war).

As far as I can remember, there weren't more than one or two cases
where using "forgotten" to conclude "non-crisis" wasn't fully
supported by the other criteria. The War of 1812 comes up as "N" on
all four measurements. So as a practical matter, the fact that
"historical significance" is hard to evaluate doesn't seem to matter.

How do decide whether a war was historically significant? Maybe you
have some suggestions. For ancient wars, it's whether historians
consider it significant; for modern wars, it's whether the public
remembers it. I think it plays a part in the generational paradigm
for obvious reasons.

But what does "remember it" mean? Almost no one remembers the Korean
War anymore. But even the Vietnam War has a funny status. I don't
anyone under 30 remembers anything about the Vietnam War either --
except that (1) they've heard the name, and (2) they know there were
antiwar protestors. Beyond that they know nothing about it. Does
that mean that the Vietnam War is forgotten? I would say yes, but how
can I state it more clearly?

That's also true of the War of 1812. A lot of people have heard
about it, or even know that the Star Spangled Banner was
written. But even people who've heard of it, and who know what the
Revolutionary War and Civil War is about, aren't likely to have any
idea at all what the War of 1812 is about. I'll tell you quite
honestly that until the last year or two, I thought it was caused by
a British attempt to reverse the Revolutionary War; I had no idea
that America declared war on Britain over blocked shipping in the
Napoleonic Wars. So does that mean that I knew anything about the
War of 1812? I would say not.

I've never looked more than briefly at the Seven Years War, but I
have some suspicions about it: That it's a regional crisis war for
the French and the Indians around the Mississipi. In fact (and this
is a whole nother subject), I recall reading that the War of 1812 was
highly politicized by territory politicians who were angry at the
British for helping the Indians around 1810. Since the War of 1812
started 60 years after the French and Indian wars ended, perhaps
there's a generational link there. But this is VERY speculative
without more research.

I know that you're concerned about the French wars in the 1530s, and
I frankly admit to you that it seems very strange to me, and almost
doesn't make sense, that a war with such a high casualty rate is so
totally, utterly forgotten that it's barely mentioned in history
books and there isn't even a web page about it. What it means to me
is that people in the 1500s didn't value life in the same way we do
today. Perhaps the general feelings until recent times were that you
have to die anyway, and dying in war is a good thing because you go
to heaven. Since life expectancies were around 30, that would make
sense. I'm not saying that's anything more than a guess, but I agree
with you that it's hard to understand why so many casualties have been
so thoroughly forgotten.

But whatever the reason is doesn't matter. I'm trying,
mechanistically and unemotionally, to define criteria for
generationally important wars, and there's no doubt that if a war is
so thoroughly forgotten as those 1530s wars then they can't possibly
have had a generational effect.

In all four of the categories, there's a certain amount of judgment
that has to be made. But I've found that it's very rare for the
evaluations to be in doubt, or for evaluations in two categories to
conflict with each other seriously.

If you think about the American wars, and the impact of the
Revolutionary, Civil, and WW II wars, it's really pretty obvious that
those are the only wars that have really impacted us as a country.
My experience is that it's always that obvious. I've evaluated
hundreds of wars by now, and I've never had the feeling that I was
cheating.

So with regard to forgotten wars, I don't think there's a problem,
since it's very rare for a forgotten war -- forgotten by the public
and the historians -- to turn out to be significant in some other
way.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

In all four of the categories, there's a certain amount of judgment
that has to be made.

Exactly. There's nothing wrong with this. S&H's whole cycle is about judgement too. I can't apply S&H's biographical methods so I simply take them at theihr word that they found the generations they say they did. Similarly I cannot apply your rules for crisis wars and get the same exact answers as you do--although I can get a lot of them.

Where I had a problem was your insistence that your cycle is the SAME as S&H and that they got it wrong. They use a biographical method. If this method says there was a hero generation in rising adulthood in the late 17th century then that is where it was--regardless of the status of wars fought at that time. You are looking at a different phenomenon--the idea of periodic crisis wars, not biographical information.

Dear Mike,

So that's it? We went through all of this just so you could find a
reason to say, "Aha! Gotcha! See? The Glorious Revolution must be a
fourth turning crisis period after all!" That's what this has been
about all along?

The problem is that the Glorious Revolution doesn't follow their own
description of a fourth turning. And the English Civil War does.

Could you at least tell me which wars you're talking about where you
don't get the same answers? Maybe I can refine the rules to make
them clearer.

John

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

So that's it? We went through all of this just so you could find a reason to say, "Aha! Gotcha! See? The Glorious Revolution must be fourth turning crisis period after all!" That's what this has been about all along?

No (see below)

The problem is that the Glorious Revolution doesn't follow their own description of a fourth turning. And the English Civil War does.

S&H do not use their description of a fourth turning as the criterion for determining a fourth turning. A fourth turning is the period associated with the birth of an adaptive generation. In Generations they define the adaptive Enlightenment generation as being born from 1674-1700. Generations usually precede turnings by a few years. This means the Glorious Revolution Crisis turning should begin shortly after 1674 and end shortly after 1700. They chose 1675-1704 as dates for the turning. The description of what a crisis is like is not a definition. Thus, the War of the Spanish Succession cannot be a Crisis because the wrong type of generation is being born. Their cycle is based on the generations, which come from biographical information--NOT from consideration of the events that are happening.
********************************************
There are two approaches to this cycle business. Here is a plot of US producer prices from 1785-1925:



One can see the cycle here. There is no need for judgement. This is the empirical way to characterize cycles. The advantage is anyone can do it and get the same results as you do. The disadvantage is one has to deal with the data that is available and a lot of the time it is hard to see the relevancy of this approach. You can acknowledge that yes there is a cycle in price movements there, but so what? What on earth does that have to do with S&H's turnings?

The other approach is to start with something that is definitely relevant to what you want to show. Your crisis war concept does match the S&H description of what a crisis "feels like". The advantage of this approach is it is easy to show the relevance. The disadvantage is it is hard for other people to apply it.

Since you came up with a list of criteria that could be used to determine crisis wars, I thought perhaps one could develop a set of empirical rules that could be used by anyone to determine crisis wars. The table idea I suggested involved specific Yes or No questions. No symbols are needed. Each question would be designed to be easy to answer and involve no judgement. For example, a war either involves a surprise attack or it doesn't. A war either ends in an unconditional surrender or it doesn't. It is clear-cut, no judgement is needed. Think of it as an expert system for determining crisis wars. How would you program a computer to make this assessment?

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> S&H do not use their description of a fourth turning as the
> criterion for determining a fourth turning. A fourth turning is
> the period associated with the birth of an adaptive generation. In
> Generations they define the adaptive Enlightenment generation as
> being born from 1674-1700. Generations usually precede turnings by
> a few years. This means the Glorious Revolution Crisis turning
> should begin shortly after 1674 and end shortly after 1700. They
> chose 1675-1704 as dates for the turning. The description of what
> a crisis is like is not a definition. Thus, the War of the Spanish
> Succession cannot be a Crisis because the wrong type of generation
> is being born. Their cycle is based on the generations, which come
> from biographical information--NOT from consideration of the
> events that are happening.

I didn't say that the Glorious Revolution didn't follow their
generational criteria. Actually, I don't understand all their
generational criteria.

I said that it doesn't follow their own description of a fourth
turning, and yet the English Civil War and the War of the Spanish
Succession do follow it.

If what you're saying is true, the S&H's theory is worthless, because
you can't draw any conclusions about what a fourth turning crisis is.
If you can designate a major civil war and a major world war as
"awakenings," and then designate a simple change of the Crown as a
fourth turning crisis, then the whole theory is meaningless.

By that definition, we have the equivalent of a fourth turning crisis
every four or eight years, whenever we change Presidents. At the
very least, the resignation of Richard Nixon was just as much a
crisis as the Glorious Revolution was.

You know, Mike, I keep getting the feeling that you're just baiting
me.

You've been quick to criticize me for not providing 100%
unambiguously measureable criteria for crisis wars, and you've
demanded that they be so precise that they require absolutely no
judgment whatsoever.

Where are the similarly unambiguous definitions of adaptive
generations? I'll bet that with your knowledge of the subject, you
could sit down in a couple of hours and show that any 1600s generation
could be considered "adaptive" in some sense.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> Your crisis war concept does match the S&H description of what a
> crisis "feels like".

That's the problem. How do we know what any of the S&H generations
are? All we know is what they "feel like." We can't write them an
e-mail message every day and ask, "Hi Bill! Hi Neil! What turning
do you feel like we're in today?"

Nothing in generations or fourth turning is defined in any
unambiguous manner. It's all what they "feel like." What I've done
is I've taken just one of their concepts - the "fourth turning
crisis" -- and I've defined in a far more unambiguous and measurable
way.

I think that this is a significant achievement.

And once you have the fourth turning crisis unambiguously defined,
then you have everything else unambiguously defined: Because you can
define all the other things in terms of the fourth turning crisis.
(For example, the awakening begins 20 years after the first turning
crisis period.)

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The disadvantage is it is hard for other people to apply it.

What's so hard at this point? I think that the criteria I've given
are pretty clear. And I think that in your heart of hearts you know
that you could apply them, given all that you know.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> There are two approaches to this cycle business. Here is a plot of
> US producer prices from 1785-1925: One can see the cycle here.
> There is no need for judgement.

That's not true. Just because you've plotted a few data values
doesn't mean that judgment isn't involved. What do "producer prices"
mean during the Glorious Revolution? And where do you get the data?
If you're lucky, you might be able to get the price of wheat, but
nothing approaching what "producer prices" mean today. (Heck, I'm
not even certain that producer prices mean the same thing in the
1800s prior to the widespread use of electricity as they do today.
And why is your data graphed on a log scale if it's not showing
growth over time? And why isn't it showing growth over time? The
graph you have above looks to me like it must contain a ton of
judgments.)

I've already pointed out some problems in your war fatality data. For
one thing, you have no data for historically forgotten wars. (If the
war is forgotten, you wouldn't even know you're missing the data.)
And you've used "judgment" to scale the 20th century data by a factor
of 10. Isn't that factor of 10 a "judgment"? (And incidentally, it
can't possibly be correct, and is certainly an error in the data.)

So the fact is that I've come up with a set of measureable criteria
that apply consistently to all places and all times. The criteria
that I use require a little bit of judgment, but far less judgment
that the criteria that you use, since you have to make judgments to
deal with the fact that things like "producer prices" mean completely
different things in different places and different times.

By the way, I'd still like to know which wars you weren't able to
apply my criteria to, or where you got different results than I did.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> For example, a war either involves a surprise attack or it
> doesn't. A war either ends in an unconditional surrender or it
> doesn't. It is clear-cut, no judgement is needed.

That's not true either. How much of a surprise does a surprise
attack have to be? How unconditional does an unconditional surrender
have to be?

Does Germany's unconditional surrender in WW I count the same as
Germany's unconditional surrender in WW II? Of course not, since the
first occurred while German troops were still entrenched in Belgium
and France, and there were no foreign troops on German soil, while in
WW II Allied troops were storming into Berlin and Hitler was
committing suicide. Those differences require a judgment.

The fact is that there are no mathematical formulas here. Everything
requires some judgment. That includes all the criteria I've
specified, but it also applies as much or more so to your data, since
the quantities you're measuring (oh, excuse me, that other people are
measuring) are quite imprecise.

And incidentally, it applies to the hilt for S&H's generations.
There are no unambiguous criteria for measuring generations. It's
almost pure judgment and "feeling."

I know you already understand all this stuff, Mike, and I hope you've
been having fun baiting me. I put up with it because it's done me a
lot of good -- I've now come up with the most precise and most
reproducible set of criteria for determining cycles of all of us.

And in doing so, I've benefited not only myself but also S&H, since
the work that I've done adds enormously to the credibility of the
entire generational paradigm that they pioneered. And I would have
to point out again that the best world of all would be that if you
would stop baiting me and that we work together to integrate your work
as well. Then we'd have an integrated theory that would be very
powerful.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I didn't say that the Glorious Revolution didn't follow their generational criteria. Actually, I don't understand all their
generational criteria.

I didn't say you did.

I said that it doesn't follow their own description of a fourth
turning, and yet the English Civil War and the War of the Spanish
Succession do follow it.

It doesn't fit one aspect of their generalized description of a crisis. S&H specific state that crises usually involve war, but don't have to.

If what you're saying is true, the S&H's theory is worthless, because you can't draw any conclusions about what a fourth turning crisis is.

Sure you can, but perhaps war is not the key factor in what makes an S&H crisis.

If you can designate a major civil war and a major world war as
"awakenings," and then designate a simple change of the Crown as a
fourth turning crisis, then the whole theory is meaningless.

Not at all. The Thirty Years War occurred during a time of religious ferment. It was obviously an intense time and a "small c" crisis. What makes it an awakening is the religious ferment of the time, not the size of the conflict. Awakening wars can be bigger than Crisis wars. The late 16th century wars during the S&H crisis period were smaller than the wars of Charles V during the Reformation awakening. So the War of the League of Augsburg, which falls within an S&H crisis, is smaller than both the Thirty Years War that came before and the War of the Spanish Succession that came after. The present crisis is unlikely to see American warfare on anywere near the scale of Vietnam--an Awakening conflict. Already you have dubbed the Iraq war (a small-scale conflict) a crisis war.

By that definition, we have the equivalent of a fourth turning crisis
every four or eight years, whenever we change Presidents. At the
very least, the resignation of Richard Nixon was just as much a
crisis as the Glorious Revolution was.

No the Glorious Revolution changed the nature of the English government--permanently. The English Civil War also changed the nature of English government, but it didn't stick. England went back to monarchy.

Prior to the Glorious Revolution the English government was run by the Monarch as his own private enterprise. Tax monies were raised and could be spent as the Monarch saw fit. There was no formal accounting, tax money was spent by the monarch more or less as his own. The Glorious Revolution changed that. They got rid of their old King and imported a new Dutch King who was accustomed to ruling in partnership with businessmen. The new English government employed "Dutch finance" and was run according to business principles, with a budget and a central bank. And the result was the English government became much more effective despite the greater limitation of the monarch's powers. Britain was able to fight the War of the Spanish Seccession to great effect and emerge from it as the hegemonic power. In this scheme Britains success in the WSS reflects a HIgh turning as it is an expression of national power. Similarly the Napoleonic War was another expression of British power durng a High that resulted in another century of British hegemony.

This is simply another interpretation, but it fits with the S&H dating. As I said before the S&H dates reflect theihr generational biographies, not external events.

You've been quick to criticize me for not providing 100%unambiguously measureable criteria for crisis wars, and you've
demanded that they be so precise that they require absolutely no
judgment whatsoever.

Where are the similarly unambiguous definitions of adaptive
generations? I'll bet that with your knowledge of the subject, you
could sit down in a couple of hours and show that any 1600s generation
could be considered "adaptive" in some sense.

Didn't you read my post? I said there were two approaches. One uses criteria that can be objectively applied. The other uses judgement. S&H use judgement, hence I cannot apply their criteria. You could use judgement too. In that case it would be irrelevant what I thing of your criterian. Case closed.

But you keep asking me if your criteria have been applied honestly. You are asked me for my input. And I have replied that the criterion are not specific enough for ME to use to determine crisis wars and get the same answers as you.

Nothing in generations or fourth turning is defined in any
unambiguous manner. It's all what they "feel like." What I've done
is I've taken just one of their concepts - the "fourth turning
crisis" -- and I've defined in a far more unambiguous and measurable
way.

Yes you have. The application of your methodology has not reproduced the same cycle as S&H obtained using their generational methodology. Thus, what you are measuring with your critieria is related to, but not exactly the same thing as S&H are measuring with their cycle. Therefore you could call it the crisis war cycle instead of insisting that S&H got their own cycle wrong.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

What's so hard at this point? I think that the criteria I've given are pretty clear. And I think that in your heart of hearts you know that you could apply them, given all that you know.

I don't get same answers as you do. That's what we have argued about. And no I don't know enough to apply them in most cases.

That's not true. Just because you've plotted a few data values
doesn't mean that judgment isn't involved.

Of course it is true. The plot goes up and down and one can see teh cycles in the data.

What do "producer prices" mean during the Glorious Revolution? And where do you get the data?

You didn't read my post. I said seeing cycles is easy in the data. (This is the advantage). I also said deterimining the relevancy of the data to turings is the disadvantage. You point here invovles the second point, the disadvantage. Go back and read my post.

If you're lucky, you might be able to get the price of wheat, but
nothing approaching what "producer prices" mean today. (Heck, I'm
not even certain that producer prices mean the same thing in the
1800s prior to the widespread use of electricity as they do today.
And why is your data graphed on a log scale if it's not showing
growth over time? And why isn't it showing growth over time? The
graph you have above looks to me like it must contain a ton of
judgments.)

Actually there is a lot of price data availabe for England. Agricultural price indices. Consumer price indicies. Producer price indicies. Continuous prices series back to 1162 can be constructed see Fischer's The Great Wave

And you've used "judgment" to scale the 20th century data by a factor of 10. Isn't that factor of 10 a "judgment"?

The scaling is make the data fit nicely on a graph. How does it factor into determining cycle dates? This dosn't make any sense.
I discuss this judgement issue (although I call it cycle bias) here. I cannot excercise judgement without a risk of inserting bias because I already know the cycle. This is why I try to use other periods data--presumably they were't trying to shw a cycle when they complied it. Obviously there will be judgements in their work, but there is no reason to believe that this judgement will result in the production of a artifactual cycle.

Does Germany's unconditional surrender in WW I count the same as Germany's unconditional surrender in WW II?

Did Germany surrender unconditionally in WW I?

John Xenakis has come up with criteria for a Crisis war. But there is the concept of Crises that lack a major war.

Could we come up with a somewhat more generalized list for defining a Crisis period?

Dear Mike,

Before I directly answer your posting, I'd like to make a general
statement, and start with a personal story.

Years ago, in my callow youth, I was having a conversation with a
female person who believed in astrology. Most of my part of the
conversation consisted of scoffing.

There was an astrology reference book at hand containing one entry
for each day of the year, and giving the astrological description for
a person born on that day.

So I said, "OK, well, let's see. I'll look up my birthday and see if
it describes me."

So I opened the book and read aloud the astrological description.

My female friend chirped, "Yes! Yes! See? That's exactly like you!"

Of course, I'd picked a day at random, not my birthday. This
revelation was extremely displeasing to my female friend, but that's
another story.

Now in your postings, Mike, you've painted a picture of generational
descriptions with no more validity than astrology. There are no
rules to guide the judgments that must be made. There are just vague
guidelines that could apply to any generation just as surely as the
astrological description of any day of the year applies to me or you.
You can pick any individuals within a generation as representative of
that generation, and then conclude whatever you want about the
crisis. It's whatever you feel like or Strauss feels like or Howe
feels like today that makes a generation an awakening or a crisis.

If I believed anything remotely like what you believe, we would never
be having this conversation, because I wouldn't be here.

The only reason that I'm here is because I have a lot more faith in
the generational paradigm than you do. The algorithmic rules that
I've recently posted for evaluating wars are not new; it's the
algorithm I've been using for two years, and that I've seen work to
produce consistent, reliable results for hundreds of wars. What
you've done is to force me to write down these rules formally, but
they do work.

And the reason these rules work is because of a simple, timeless fact
about human nature: when a genocidal crisis war happens, it's so
horrible that no one will let it happen again until the people who
remember it are all gone.

I don't have to use all sorts of different datasets to reach my
conclusions; I use what really amounts to this one simple truth about
human nature.

What you're talking about is treating the generational paradigm as no
better than astrology, and that doesn't help anyone.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> No the Glorious Revolution changed the nature of the English
> government--permanently. The English Civil War also changed the
> nature of English government, but it didn't stick. England went
> back to monarchy.

This is exactly the problem with the approach you're using, and it's
exactly the same approach that astrology uses. You've tackled a huge
mountain of data and managed to find a slender thread through the
mountain that meets your minimum needs. The English Civil War
restored the monarchy, so it wasn't a crisis. The Glorious
Revolution "changed the ... government," so it was a crisis. Case
closed.

First of all, let me describe what happened in 1974. Before 1974,
any American President could terrorize people by drawing up enemies
lists, collecting information on them using the FBI and CIA, and use
the IRS and other government agencies to crush protests. In
addition, the President could bomb any country he wished, or declare
war on any country he wished. The Congress was so weak that it could
or would do nothing about these dictatorial powers.

In 1974, the Congress revolted, and threw out the oppressive Nixon
administration. At the same time, it forced the new President to
accept new restrictions on the Presidency, including restrictions on
the FBI, the CIA and the IRS. The War Powers Act would prevent a
President from declaring war on his own authority, and there would
henceforth be substantial restrictions on the President's ability to
use the FBI, the CIA or the IRS for his own personal gain.

In 1974, the U.S. Government was permanently changed.

That's why your explanation of why the Glorious Revolution was a
crisis period is meaningless.

Now let me discuss a few of things about 1600s England that you've
been forgetting about.

"The English Civil War also changed the nature of English government,
but it didn't stick." Gosh, that isn't much, is it.

The 1640s were a period of extreme violence throughout England, as
regions supporting the Crown raised armies that fought with armies
from regions supporting the Parliament. By 1648, the second civil
war ended in victory for the Parliament. The King was beheaded, and
the country was devastated and exhausted, and in many ways still at
war with itself. The countries of Europe considered England to be
inconsequential.

From the ashes rose Oliver Cromwell, a member of Parliament who had
led the army to victory over the Crown. He then took personal
control of the army and became a virtual dictator of the England. He
ruthlessly crushed Scotland and Ireland, and became dictator over
them as well. He dissolved the Parliament. The army was loyal to
him, and no one could challenge him. He built up the navy, and
defeated Spain in a sea war. When he died in 1658 his son took over,
in another 18 month period of anarchy which almost led to the
dissolution of the empire. Finally the Crown was restored in 1660,
but Charles II had vastly reduced powers than Charles I.

So gosh, Mike, "it didn't stick" to be sure, but a lot happened in
reaching the unsticking. When the Crown was restored, it wasn't
because there was "Constitutional Convention" of some kind to decide
what to do next; it was because England was in anarchy and sought a
safe harbor just to keep from disaster.

When the Glorious Revolution arrived, the war had already
been fought and won; the 1688 regime change simply put into place
what already was clear would happen. It's no different than the kind
of thing that happened when Nixon resigned.

Now this is a free country, and you're free to interpret these two
events in whatever way you want, especially if you want to do it that
way to make your data come out right, but please don't insult me by
telling me that the English Civil War was a game of musical chairs
that didn't stick, and that 1688 was a change of crisis proportions.
If you really believe that, then I'd like to talk to you about a
bridge I can sell you.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> What makes it an awakening is the religious ferment of the time,
> not the size of the conflict

Where did you ever get this from? Is this one of your rules? Does
that mean that ALL the religious wars were awakenings because of the
religious ferment? Pfffft.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The present crisis is unlikely to see American warfare on anywere
> near the scale of Vietnam--an Awakening conflict. Already you have
> dubbed the Iraq war (a small-scale conflict) a crisis war.

The Afghan and Iraqi wars are the opening battles of the current
crisis period.

I guess you must believe that the "clash of civilizations" world war
is already over - just two little wars. Wow! That wasn't so bad,
was it. I guess we'll just have to hope that things won't spiral
out of control in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kashmir,
Chechnya, China or Korea. Well, Mike, you and I obviously have
diametrically opposite views of what's going on in the world.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> But you keep asking me if your criteria have been applied
> honestly. You are asked me for my input. And I have replied that
> the criterion are not specific enough for ME to use to determine
> crisis wars and get the same answers as you.

You said, "Similarly I cannot apply your rules for crisis wars and get
the same exact answers as you do--although I can get a lot of them."

I'm now asking you for the third time to tell me some wars where
you apply my algorithm and get different answers than I do.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> You didn't read my post. I said seeing cycles is easy in the data.
> (This is the advantage). I also said deterimining the relevancy of
> the data to turings is the disadvantage. You point here invovles
> the second point, the disadvantage. Go back and read my post.

> Actually there is a lot of price data availabe for England.
> Agricultural price indices. Consumer price indicies. Producer
> price indicies. Continuous prices series back to 1162 can be
> constructed see Fischer's The Great Wave
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019512121X

Assuming that you're trying to get anything of use, then the problems
are much deeper than that. If you plot producer prices (PP) for one
period and look at it and "see" some pattern, that's fine. But what
you have is worthless for applying to any other period. Why? Because
you have to "construct" the data in other periods. That means that
you can cherry pick the data that you include in the PP to fit your
desired result. And this is true even if you're using other people's
work.

You've suggested that I create a "yes/no" chart, so let me make a
suggestion for you: Instead of "constructing" some data values which
may or may not be meaningful, why not just pick one thing -- the
price of gold or the price of wheat? Then you can get a graph that
we can "look at," without worrying about whether data was fudged.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> The scaling is make the data fit nicely on a graph. How does it
> factor into determining cycle dates? This dosn't make any sense.
> I discuss this judgement issue (although I call it cycle bias)
> here
> http://www.fourthturning.com/forums/...?p=91649#91649 .
> I cannot excercise judgement without a risk of inserting bias
> because I already know the cycle. This is why I try to use other
> periods data--presumably they were't trying to shw a cycle when
> they complied it. Obviously there will be judgements in their
> work, but there is no reason to believe that this judgement will
> result in the production of a artifactual cycle.

The URL you provided was for a note by Bob Butler referring to a
"Third Great Awakening anomaly" in your data.

Look, I'm just saying again that all this banter is fun, but there's
no way that that war casualty graph makes sense as it stands. I know
of no possible reason why per capita war casualties were flat for
centuries and then suddenly shot up by a factor of ten. It just
doesn't make sense, and the data must be wrong.

But let me use this as another example of the use of judgment. What
do war casualties include? Do they include just military deaths, or
do they also include civilian deaths? Do they include all civilian
deaths, or do they exclude "collateral" damage. Is it possible that
your peaks and valleys are caused not by wars but by changing in
casualty reporting philosophies? How do you deal with multiple
conflicting sources? How do we know how many people were killed?
Maybe in some generations there was a religious decree to kill as many
infidels as possible, so deaths were overreported, while in other
generations the decree was to keep unnecessary deaths down so they
were underreported. Maybe what you're seeing is a reporting
oscillation, rather than a war casualty oscillation.

Or maybe not. I'm not arguing about that. I'm just saying that when
all is said in done, it's all a vast amount of judgment and
guesswork. You go to other people's books and you select the series
that make your theories come out right and ignore the series that
don't. You selectively combine collections of data from different
authors in such a way as to make the meaning of "producer prices" that
will make your theories come out right. That's astrology.

If your methodology really worked, then you'd pick something clear
and simple that everyone could see - like the price of wheat or the
price of gold. But you can't cherry-pick data sets, call it producer
prices or war casualties, and then say you've developed a
judgment-free theory.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

> Did Germany surrender unconditionally in WW I?

That's one of the things that makes WW I so amazing.

When Germany capitulated on November 11, 1918, German troops were
still deep within Belgian and French territory. Writing in 1931,
Winston Churchill said that if Germany had continued to fight, they
would have been capable of inflicting two million more casualties
upon the enemy. Churchill added that the Allies would not have
put Germany to the test: simply by fighting on a little longer, the
Allies would have negotiated a peace with no reparations, on terms
far more favorable to Germany than actually occurred in the peace
dictated by the Allies.

Actually, the seeds of capitulation had been planted three months
earlier, on August 8, when the German high command realized that too
much time had passed, and the absolute military triumph over France
could no longer be achieved. From that time, the Germans lost most of
whatever remaining spirit they had, and completely lost momentum. They
called for cease-fire on October 4, expecting the German army and
people to rise up and demand victory, and planning to launch a new
attack with replenished strength, once the cease-fire had expired.

However, the mood in Germany turned firmly against renewing
hostilities, in both the army and the people. By the end of October,
it was apparent to the high command that it was too late. Writing
after the war, Prince Max von Baden of the high command concluded,
"The masses would likely have risen, but not against the enemy.
Instead, they would have attacked the war itself and the 'military
oppressors' and 'monarchic aristocrats,' on whose behalf, in their
opinion, it had been waged."

There was a change in government -- the old Second Reich was replaced
by a new Weimar Republic, initially led by president Friedrich Ebert.

"No enemy has defeated you," said Ebert to the returning troops after
they had been ordered to capitulate. "Only when the enemy's
superiority in numbers and resources became suffocating did you
relinquish the fight."

Whatever the rationale, it meant that harsh reparations were imposed
upon Germany. Hitler, who fought in WW I, was traumatized by the
capitulation, and blamed it on the Jews, which led to the holocaust.

A fascinating question, to which we'll never know the answer, is
this: Suppose Germany had done as Churchill suggested and fought on,
and negotiated a favorable peace. We know from generational
dynamics that there would have been a WW II anyway, but how would it
have differed from the WW II that actually occurred?

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Tim,

Originally Posted by Tim Walker

> John Xenakis has come up with criteria for a Crisis war. But there
> is the concept of Crises that lack a major war.

> Could we come up with a somewhat more generalized list for
> defining a Crisis period?

I'll give you two answers to your question:

The Mike Alexander answer: Ask S&H how they feel about some
particular period. Or else, cherry-pick some people of the
appropriate generation for the period you're wondering about, and get
whatever result you want.

The John Xenakis answer: Use the criteria I've developed to
find the crisis wars. A crisis period period begins at some fuzzily
defined time before the crisis war began, usually when some
"surprise" occurs, and ends when the crisis war is resolved. That
defines the crisis period with a high level of precision.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Now in your postings, Mike, you've painted a picture of generational descriptions with no more validity than astrology. There are no rules to guide the judgments that must be made. There are just vague guidelines that could apply to any generation just as surely as the astrological description of any day of the year applies to me or you.

Rules and guidelines are the same thing and vague is a value judgment on your part. You also use guidelines to determine crisis wars. There is an exercise of judgement in determining crisis wars and an exercise in judgement in determining generations.