Of course it would be China.
Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran don"t hold a candle to the U.S. militarily. China is a different story.
And China is currently an economic power with much leverage over the US.
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Of course it would be China.
Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran don"t hold a candle to the U.S. militarily. China is a different story.
And China is currently an economic power with much leverage over the US.
Last edited by Matt1989; 09-29-2006 at 02:58 PM.
So in that case, who will the alliances be on both sides? Clearly Japan, India, Britain, and Australia are with us. Clearly Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea are with China. What about the rest of the world?
I guess there are two real questions: will our formerly close Western European allies join us or not? Our relationship with Europe has deteriorated so much that only Britain would be sure to fight on our side. But I doubt the Europeans would want to help China either. Maybe they'd attempt neutrality.
And what about Russia? I know GD says Russia's with the Allies, but I'm not totally clear on this. Bush, like Clinton before him, has tried to create a friendship with Russia, but it seems strained. Are we sure that when it comes down to it, they'd be with us and not with China?
They're not so much pro-US as they are anti-China.
Russia and Europe
Dear Nathaniel,
When you're trying to evaluate questions like these, you have to keepOriginally Posted by 1990
a number of things in mind.
If you have two friends, and the three of you are friendly with one
another, then there's no issue. The issues arise when, for some
reason or another, you have to choose between them. In divorce
situations, people sometimes talk "humorously" of splitting up the
assets, splitting up the kids, and splitting up the friends.
So if you want to know what side Russia will be on, you have to
assume that they'll be forced to choose, and that they won't be able
to get away with staying neutral. In the case of Russia, they
clearly have no choice but to side with the Allies. In addition,
they have a mutual defense agreement with India.
The issues with Europe are more complicated. The three main players
are UK, France and Germany, and if look back over the last
millennium, they've lined up in all different ways, although I think
it was always two against one. It was U+F vs G in WW II (and WW I),
U+F vs G in Franco-Prussian war (though UK didn't really get too
involved), U+G vs F in Napoleonic wars (and remember, America entered
the war on France's side), and England v France in many wars back to
1066.
An interesting research project would be to identify the factors that
cause these switches to take place between crisis wars. Why are some
fault lines permanent, while others dissolve after the war (like
America vs Japan after WW II)?
In the case of Europe, I consider it most likely that there'll be
another crisis war between England and France, as there have been so
many times in the past. This opinion is based on the vitriolic
views of one another that were exposed by various European Union
disagreements. My only hesitation with this view is that the vitriol
was between politicians, but I'm assuming that the politicians
represent the attitudes of the people they represent.
As for Germany, I wish I could get a better read on the German people
themselves, but I consider it at least slightly more likely that
they'll side with the UK.
However, there's a completely different dimension to Europe: With
Muslim immigrants flooding into Europe from Africa and Turkey,
there's going to be a secondary war between Muslims and ethnic
Europeans, just as there'll be a secondary war in America between
Latinos and Anglos.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
And here is why John and I went round and round. Here is the first paragraph from the pase he cited:
The WSS is a crisis war because of the battle of Malplaquet, which had an effect like the battles of the Somme and Verdun in WW I. Thus, the WSS is a crisis war because it is like WW I in this regard. Except WW I wasn't a crisis war, despite having two Malplaquets.The battle of Malplaquet was one of the bloodiest contests in modern history. Its "Butchers Bill" was by far the worst of any engagement fought during the War of Spanish Succession, and the shock wave that it engendered reverberated through all strata of what today we consider to have been a polite and genteel society. The dawning of the Age of Reason had caused a shift in the political outlook of most Western European countries, and governments now looked toward the economic virtues of trade rather than religious intolerance. Thus the death toll at Malplaquet was to traumatize the nations of Europe just as much as the horrific loss of life at the Somme and Verdun were to do some two hundred years later.
Last edited by Mikebert; 09-29-2006 at 08:30 PM.
I haven't used any of these terms. John called me a hatchet man. I said that his way of assessing crisis wars in "oracular" in nature--only John seems to be able to identify them--I certainly cannot.
There have been various polls that I've seen that confirm this.
Last edited by Matt1989; 09-30-2006 at 01:37 PM.
I have to agree that, to figure on a 'side' for Russia, you'd have to assume that the neutrality option was off the table for them. However, it's worth pointing out the fact that although the years since the fall of the USSR have seen very little in terms of real warming relations (after all, the US has been steadily encircling Russia with bases and paid allies, as well as fomenting anti-Russian sentiment in their neighbors this whole time), Russian-Chinese relations seem to be showing significant progress. Once could look, for example, at the regular sales of arms technology; the Shanghai Cooperative Organization; the joint military exercises; the increase of cross-border trade, traffic, and investment (the Far East pipeline as but one major example), and so forth. If China and the US came to blows, I'm not sure why it would be so very certain that Russia would side against their immediate neighbor...
Mike Alexander, IIRC, has caught him changing dates on some predictions [Mike, do you have anything on that?]. Beyond that, in the few years John's been doing GD he has dramatically insinuated all sorts of things. Most have not come true, at least not yet. The most dramatic was the Bird Flu. Read his writings last year on that. He fully expected there to be a disaster this year -- interestingly, bird flu has nothing to do with GD, but he had it on his site and wrote about it here a lot anyway.
Furthermore, GD has only been around a little while. There has not yet been much time to see about it's predictive power. But Mike Alexander (who, BTW, is NOT an Xer as John says, and is a conscientious researcher) again may have something to say about his recent "predictions".
My big beef is what I stated in my post. GD, by it's own precepts, in order to remain consistent, would have called for a massive war in Europe in the mid-19th century and for a growing tension between Germany and Russia today. These, among other things, are or were not in the cards. And the performative contradictions of his theory are rife and fatal.
I'll buy that! Tell that to John.
Fair enough.
It sure seems fawning from this end. But as they say "opinions are like backside sphincters, everyone has one".
Perhaps you could start with Wikipedia articles, or some other form of summation, and then fill in details from there as time goes by? That way at least you have a rough idea almost immediately.
I don't think I am out of line when I say most here see WWII as the climatic end of a 4T for Russia, just as it was for us. Most here also subscribe to the idea that less developed societies seem to have longer saeculums than more developed ones (though we disagree on why). Russia did most of it's industrial development just before, during, and right after WWII.
So it is not unlikely under S&H's model that their 4T lasted longer than ours by starting earlier. 25-30 year long turnings are not unheard of in own pre-developed past. A 4T running from 1917-1945 (28 years) for Russia is not out of the question. It would also explain the great, overwhelming institutional power their analogue of our GI generation had in Soviet society (that would have been one LONG Hero gen). One could argue they were holding Soviet society together after the war. After they turned over the reigns to an Artist gen, things fell apart fast.
I'm beginning to feel really stupid.I used to be told that I knew a lot about world politics for my age, but this thread has reminded me how clueless I am about Eastern European history.
Must read some more books.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Cool.
Please start with the objections I posted yesterday. The stuff about the performative contradictions. If you wish, I can rephrase them for simplicity. Just let me know. Thanks!
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Pompous as ever
I didn't bully anybody. I criticized you and your theory and warned them about you.
Why do you insist on calling Mike an Xer? He was born in 1959. Or does GD have a Nomad generation starting in the Fifties? With all of your other mistakes and inconsistencies, I wouldn't be surprised.
Say what you will about me, because I find you amusing. But your criticism of Mike is unacceptable and incorrect. He is ever the researcher. And what you consider "hatchet jobs" are simply him calling you on your many inconsistencies, theoretical problems, evasions, and emotional outbursts. He's way too empirical for me, as I am a liberal arts major at heart. But he's also apparently to empirical for you too, in that he actually uses, and sticks to, data and facts. And he does this without, like me, getting emotional or taking it personally. If you think he's "after" you, you're paranoid.
You are so silly.
I have written my questions and objections in a numbered, listed form at least twice now. I made it as easy as I possibly could. You continually evade most of them, often by answering questions I didn't ask. I used to think you were just disingenuous. But I later concluded that you are constitutionally incapable of seeing outside whatever box you've put yourself in.
Nice. Very sophisiticated insight. Is this something gleaned from GD?
Yeah, and Mike just nailed you on it. But I don't suppose you're going to respond since proving you wrong is "sadistic" "hatchet" work, eh?
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Answering questions without getting pissy would really help. I have tried the nice thing with him more than once, I've tried the numbered question thing more than once. I finally gave up on both. I've only entered back because I take issue with him claiming "improvement" on S&H's theory (when it is nothing of the kind) and then advocating his theory as such with Michael (or is it Matt as JX calls him?) and Nathaniel.
I have hope that young Easton and I can have a real discussion about GD with 1990 participating. Real answers from John would be nice too, but I will not count on that one iota.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
It seems likely that Russia sees value in a strategic partnership with China and that his should make America uneasy. However, I keep thinking that Russia is duping itself by making nice with China. The latter is on the upswing, and Russia's recent growth is bascially oil-based only, not something to structurally base an economy on if you want real progress (Saudi Arabia is not exactly an industrial powerhouse).
Then add the demographic transition occurring in Siberia, esp. the Far East, with the Chinese becoming more populous there. I believe you have pooh-pooh'd that idea before, but everything I read, on the "internets" and elsewhere, point to that being a major issue.
China wants the resources in Siberia, and esp. in former Soviet Central Asia. Russia is kidding itself if they think this will not trump other issues.
Just as Stalin helped Germany build the Air Force it eventually used against Russia . . .
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Actually I have been thinking of a scenario in which in which the coming crisis features a series of large wars streching from 2010 to the early 2040's. This scenario first involves a war between the US/israel/pro-western arab governments/pro-american latin american governments vs Russia/anti-american muslim/several latin dictatorships coalition with europe and india maintaining neutrality and with china maintaining a (pro-russian) non-belligerence, this first war ending around 2019-2020 with latin america having been conquered by the US but with the mideast controlled by the russian/muslim coalition. This leads to an uneasy truce during which the russians consolidate their hold on the mideast, areas of the muslim world such as indonesia and malaysia which had remained neutral joining the muslim/russian alliance, and with the US becoming as a result of the war, a paranoid totalitarian dictatorship, liberal democracy having been discredited by the war. The uneasy peace ends in 2025 with a russian/muslim invasion of europe and slow conquest of that continent over the following years followed by similar invasions of india and china in 2027, the US recovering from the first war remains neutral during this period. The russian axis invasion eventually bogs down in china and india in the early 2030's however the axis gains the upper hand in europe which causes the US to reenter the war in the mid 2030's followed by an american(and latin satellite) invasion of europe to push out the axis. At the same time China forces out the invaders of their territory and the war ends in the early 2040s with american and chinese forces linking up dividing eurasia between them the US controlling the western hemisphere and europe (and north africa), and china essentially controlling the rest of the world. At which point a new (and much more 1984-esque) cold war begins.
Last edited by Cynic Hero '86; 09-30-2006 at 06:47 AM.
Objections to Generational Dystopia
Good luck. I found little to comment-on here, and only browse this thread on occasion. As someone who does allow facts to contradict strongly held opinions, I find the GD theory a bit tiresome. That's not to say that it's all rubbish, but it's not very valuable in its current form, either.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Japan and China would likely be going to war anyways, without the past animosity from World War Two. But it is that animosity that gives it near 100% certainty (happy?). It is relevant in regard to Russia and Germany's case, because past animosity doesn't seem to be affecting relations between those two countries. So it is near 100% in China and Japan because of a variety of factors plus past animosity. If Germany and Russia went to war, it likely wouldn't be cited as a main factor.
You have to look at the current situation and the moods and attitudes of the people. It can confirm totality in one case and be the lynchpin, but in the other it can have no effect. So I do not see how GD suffers from "performative contradiction." I cannot explain why some nations can't let go, but others can. It's a mystery to me.
Why would GD predict 100% certainty about a war between Germany and Russia? He has never stated that past crisis wars will always, 100% of the time, lead to a new genocidal war between those new nations in the next crisis war.But as shown above, GD is useless in it's current form to predict this. Anyone can predict this without GD, and GD predicts this but also should predict all sorts of things that did not happen, are not happening, and will not happen, e.g., genocidal wars in mid-19th century Europe, an upcoming war between Germany and Russia. If he were consistent with his use of what makes him 100% certain in East Asia, then the other things should be the case too.
When has it been stated that war casualties have anything to do with the cycle. If it was ever about war casualties, GD wouldn't exist. If you look at war casualties alone, the pattern is poor.You passed over a point I made earlier that demonstrated another performative contradiction in GD: Only great, intense wars can be Crisis Wars, and only Crisis periods will always have great, intense wars.
Let's assume these points are true. Then we have a problem: WWI killed far more people on the Western Front than WWII did. Yet John believes WWII was the Crisis War for western Europe. That's a contradiction.
WWII killed far more people on the Eastern Front than WWI did. Yet John believes that WWI was the Crisis War for eastern Europe. Another contradiction.
World War One (Western Front) was a great, intense war. It had some of the most horrific battles in the history of the world, some greater than the most intense of World War Two. But it is not a crisis war. I assume casualties were so great in this non-crisis war because 1. The youth bulge allowed for more manpower and 2. The fact that three great powers went head to head in a war that turned into a prolonged stalemate.
However in World War One (western front), there was an unnecessary capitulation by Germany (while they were in France, no less) and few attacks on civilians. The contrast between World Wars One and Two are obvious.
As for World War Two and the Soviet Union, I cannot answer that. I'm on the fence about whether World War Two fits into John's algorithm. With the Katyn massacre, "not one step back," and significance of the war (even though it was political), it would seem hard to label it a non-crisis war. Even John listed genocidal violence as "low to medium," in contrast to "low" or "none" for the rest. On the other hand, much of these actions were likely due to the personality and control of Stalin.
Hope this clears some things up,
Matt
Last edited by Matt1989; 09-30-2006 at 07:25 PM.
Don't forget that World War I also neatly coincided with the emergence of the so-called Spanish Flu, which killed more troops than actual battle did. Without this bug, the First World War would now be viewed as less horrific BY FAR than the Second.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
Abusive behavior
Dear Mike,
Oh no, you don't get to use that excuse. The guy who drives the
getaway car doesn't get to say, "My partner robbed the bank, not me.
I just drove the getaway car, and driving a car isn't illegal." The
getaway driver is just as guilty as the robber.
I was having a conversation with two high school students when you
and Sean Love charged in and started harrassing them, offensively
calling them "Boys", using words like "fawning" or "you are especially
adoring of Mr. Xenakis" or "You can just blindly follow the ramblings
of a madman."
You may not have used those particular words yourself, but you didn't
have to; Sean was using those words while you were there, fully
supporting him and coordinating with him. You're just as guilty as he
is, as if you'd used his words yourself.
Your role was to do your usual job as "hatchet man," making some
esoteric statements about crisis wars that you know very well are
crap, and that I've responded to dozens of times. You and Sean worked
together.
You and Sean went waaaaaaaaaaaay over the line. Your behavior was
grotesque and completely inappropriate. If you have any decency at
all, you would apologize to the two students.
Incidentally, you must surely be aware by this time that Sean isn't
playing with a full deck and that you're exploiting him for your own
agenda. He's been overwhelmingly obsessed with me for over a year
now, sometimes allowing his obsession to completely take over his
life. He freaks out whenever someone tries to join this thread, as
if he were a jealous, spurned lover, and that's very suspicious. He
has little impulse control, and as far as I understand such things,
he's suffering from something like bipolar disorder and borderline
personality disorder, both of which can be treated with medications.
You aren't doing him any favors by trying to advance your own agenda
by encouraging his personal obsession with me. He needs to get past
that and get on with his life, and if you're really his friend, you'll
help him.
I'm also critical of other people in the Fourth Turning Forum
community for allowing their abusive behavior, especially Sean's, to
continue without criticism for years. And this includes Jenny, whom I
had to remind of their abusive behavior after she directed a criticism
at me.
There's absolutely no moral equivalence between me defending my work
on the one hand, and the repeated abusive behavior by Sean and Mike,
directed at me and at other people who join this thread on the other
hand. If I call them idiots, it's because there's nothing else I can
do, because I have no other tools available. They're very good and
very manipulative at their abusive behavior, which is completely
planned, and they know that I'm helpless to do anything about it. Any
time they want, they can fill this thread with tens of thousands of
words of sheer crap, demand that I respond, and repeat the same crap
over and over again, and I'm helpless to do anything about it, and
they're both very well aware that I'm helpless. That's what's going
on here, and the community that criticizes me for calling them idiots
refuses to condemn their extremely abusive and inappropriate
behavior.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Malplaquet
Dear Mike,
Sooooooooooooo, you didn't make that prediction after all. You
merely repeated other people's predictions, in this case a mainstream
prediction.
As far as I know, you've only made one prediction of your own, that
stocks would underperform money markets, and that one can't even be
tested until 2018.
Contrast that to my web site, where I've written hundreds of articles
since mid-2003 containing dozens of predictions, almost all of them
non-mainstream. Many of these predictions have already come true or
are clearly trending in that direction; others are still pending; not
a single one has turned out so far to be wrong.
The last point is very important. I always like to point out that
it's very easy to get a million predictions right; just make two
million predictions.
This is a very good example of what I mean when I say you're a
just a hatchet man, not a researcher.
I've told you many times -- 10 times? 20 times? 1000 times? -- you
tell me -- that war deaths do not determine crisis wars.
So I referenced the battle of Malplaquet, and a web site with half a
dozen web pages on the battle, and the ONLY thing you even look at is
war deaths.
Are you too stupid to understand that war deaths aren't the issue,
after I've told you dozens of times? Of course not. You know it very
well.
In another message you say that Generational Dynamics is too
"oracular," by which you mean that Generational Dynamics uses
allegedly "unobjective" evaluations, and you use "objective"
evaluations using numbers like war deaths.
So which is it, Mike? Are you criticizing me for not counting war
deaths correctly, or are you criticizing me for being "oracular"?
You can't have it both ways.
The answer is obvious: You swing your "war deaths" hatchet when
that's convenient, and you swing your "oracular" hatchet when that's
convenient. You don't care if you're inconsistent, because you're
just a hatchet man. You really couldn't care less whether the War of
the Spanish Succession is a crisis war or not. You don't do research
any more; you just do hatchet jobs.
Go back to the Malplaquet web site that I referenced, and read
through it for yourself to see why it was a crisis war. Hint: It's
not about war deaths, except incidentally. And by the way, note that
the web site gives reasons why your famous "War of the League of
Augsburg" is a non-crisis war. I'll let you find it yourself, if
you're capable of reading past the first paragraph.
Sean: Above is my response to Mike. And here's my response to you:
You're still a complete idiot.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Oracular
Dear Mike,
I'm going to respond to this nonsensical statement at length in later
posts, but I just want everyone to know what's going on here.
Strauss and Howe used a particular methodology for their work --
reading histories and diaries written by people who lived through the
events being discussed, and cataloguing their attitudes and actions
that way using their own judgments. This is what Mike Alexander is
calling an "oracular" methodology.
I use the same "oracular" methodology. I've said repeatedly that you
can't evaluate crisis wars by means of war deaths or other numbers.
Alexander rejects Strauss and Howe's work for the same reason.
Mike wants to believe that there's some magic arithmetic formula that
you can apply to any event in history to evaluate it. He seems to
think that just by plugging into a formula, the answer drops out. If
(X+Y/Z)>28 then it's an awakening; if (X-Y/Z)<92.4, then it's a
crisis. That's the way Mike thinks, and he's never accomplished
anything using that approach.
I've repeatedly said that you have to read several histories of each
war to do a crisis war evaluation, and that you have to read the
histories from the points of view of each of the different
belligerents.
However, I've gone much, much farther than that. Because of the
complaint that this approach required too much judgment, I did a lot
of work on formalizing it.
Anyone who's interested in the details can go to my web site, where
you'll see the cover of my new book, Generational Dynamics for
Historians. Click on the cover, and then click on the chapter
entitled, "The Crisis War Evaluation Algorithm." There you'll find a
lengthy algorithm that can be used to evaluate crisis wars.
This algorithm has been VERY successful. It applies to at least
90-95% of all wars, and possibly to 100%. I've never found it to
fail, so I'm very happy with it.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Dear Sean,
I'll make a deal with you.
I don't object to answering your questions, even answering the same
stupid question over and over. If you can cut and paste the same
questions over and over, then I suppose I can cut and paste the same
answers.
What I object to is your abusive and offensive attacks on people IN
THIS THREAD. Your recent attacks, using words like "boys" or
"fawning" or "you are especially adoring of Mr. Xenakis" or "You can
just blindly follow the ramblings of a madman" was waaaaaaaaaaaay
over the line, and extremely inappropriate. Unfortunately this
wasn't a one-time experience, as you do the same thing regularly.
This is MY THREAD, and I don't want your disgusting behavior in MY
THREAD. Stay out of MY THREAD. You're not welcome.
So here's the deal: START YOUR OWN THREAD, and I'll promise to go
over there and answer your questions there. Anyone who wants to
joint YOUR THREAD can go over and you can abuse them as much as you
want.
So there's your choice: If you insist on continuing in this thread,
then you'll prove that my accusations about you are right.
If you're really interested in getting answers to your questions,
then ask them in YOUR OWN thread, and I'll answer them there.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Hypocrisy
Dear Justin,
This is a very interesting statement, and it's related to the
statement that I often hear: "We can't possibly go to war with China
over Taiwan because it would be bad for business." The assumption is
that if business between countries is going well, then there won't be
a war.
I think that everyone realizes that assumption has never been true in
the past.
But there's an interesting generational explanation of why that kind
of reasoning doesn't work in actual practice -- and this gets into
what I called "The Prophet/Hero generational model of mob psychology"
when I wrote about it last March.
http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...696#post169696
Let's start with Hannah Arendt's statement about the "mob" in Nazi
Germany: "In the growing prevalence of mob attitudes and convictions
-- which were actually the attitudes and convictions of the
bourgeoisie cleansed of hypocrisy -- those who traditionally hated the
bourgeoisie and had voluntarily left respectable society saw only the
lack of hypocrisy and respectablity, not the content itself."
Now the "bourgeoisie" are the business owners, Prophets and Nomads
who belong to the Shanghai Cooperative Organization or who build the
Far East pipeline. From their point of view, a war is anathema,
because it's bad for business.
The "mob" is mostly the Hero generation, joining with disaffected
Nomads. Since they're working slobs, they don't care much about the
Shanghai Cooperative Organization or the Far East pipeline.
Now, what are the attitudes and convictions of the Chinese
bourgeoisie? (The phrase "Chinese bourgeoisie" is so full of irony
that I can never help but laugh whenever I use it.) Their attitude
is: "We hate the Russians / Japanese / Americans, and they're
causing all our problems, but we have to do business with them."
The mob adopts the "the attitudes and convictions of the bourgeoisie
cleansed of hypocrisy," which becomes, "We hate the Russians /
Japanese / Americans, and they're causing all our problems." The
final clause, the hypocrisy, has been stripped off.
After that, a crisis war becomes possible, and business relationships
have nothing to do with it.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Crisis wars generally last only 5-10 years, because once the
genocidal fury intensifies, it can't be sustained for long, and burns
out pretty quickly in the fourth turning climax.
If you look at longer crisis wars from centuries past, such as the
"30 years war" of 1618-1648, you find that you can partition the war
into different regions, often with a kind of "rolling" effect, where
the crisis war rolls from one region to another, with only low-level
violence in the remaining regions.
However, regions have merged over the centuries, meaning that
multiple "small" rolling crisis wars are no longer possible. That's
why I don't believe that a new "30 years war" is possible today. Once
a crisis war involving America begins today, almost every country in
the world will be forced to choose sides.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Purges
Dear Matt,
Why are you including the Katyn massacre in the Great Patriotic War?
The thing that you're going to have to resolve in your own mind is
how you want to deal with Stalin's purges in the 1930s. Stalin
murdered or relocated millions of people, and the Katyn massacre
was a very small part of that.
Another thing to consider: Mass purges and persecution are methods
that dictators use to consolidate their victory during the Austerity
period following a crisis war. Compare Stalin to Mao and Saddam for
this.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Perhaps.
Is the Holocaust a crisis-era action or just another action by a leader with immense power that could have happened in any turning?
