In that case, if you insist that we are Late Republican Rome, then there is one scenario which said state managed to avoid because the Roman people accepted the rule of the Caesars (mainly Augustus). Had the Roman people (and not just 23 Senators one fine March morning) resisted the rise of the Caesars, there is reason to believe that the Roman Republic would have simply torn itself apart, taking the Classical World with it - 450 to 500 years earlier than it actually happened.

Might we fall into the trap that Rome avoided in the First Century BCE?

Late Republican Rome was tearing itself apart because first of all, the legions were attached to their generals rather than to the nation, a problem we have so far avoided. Second, that those generals, or at least two of them, ended up richer and more powerful than the official government. The equivalent today being certain corporations. So we have Problem Two - and many of those are headquartered elsewhere - but not Problem One.

History does not repeat; it rhymes. Or alliterates.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I put our equivalent of the Second Punic War back around the time when I was a toddler.

IMO WW1 and WW2 are comparable to the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, though they came earlier then the Punic Wars did, probably because of the shortening of the saeculum from 100 to 80 years has resulted in the West having a different pattern of war cycles then other civilizations had (with 80-year saeculae you can fit 5 cycles into the ToT instead of the normal 4).

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Late Republican Rome was tearing itself apart because first of all, the legions were attached to their generals rather than to the nation, a problem we have so far avoided. Second, that those generals, or at least two of them, ended up richer and more powerful than the official government. The equivalent today being certain corporations. So we have Problem Two - and many of those are headquartered elsewhere - but not Problem One.

History does not repeat; it rhymes. Or alliterates.

IMO there is an equivalence to how the Roman aristocrats drove free-holding farmers off their land and replaced the family farms with slave-powered Latifundia to the behavior of modern multinational corporations.

In an early edition of A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee listed Babylon as a daughter civilization of the Sumeric. He also listed the Neo-Babylonic Empire as the Universal Empire of Babylonic society.

Toynbee changed his mind. In a later edition he included Babylon as a late phase of Sumero-Akkadian civilization:

"This includes the Babylonic as well as the Sumeric Civilization of the original list. The Babylonic last phase of the distinctive civilization of the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin was still Sumeric in its inspiration...Since the Age of Hammurabi the Semitic Akkadian language had replaced the Sumerian language as the living vehicle of the Sumeric Civilization. Therefore, Sumero-Akkadian is a more illuminating label than 'Sumeric' for the whole span of a civilization that did not lose its identity till the first century of the Christian Era."

Implications:

Hammurabi's short-lived empire was a 'core' or 'preliminary' empire.

Quigley speculated that parts of a civilization might fight and fight each other down to lower and lower levels of public order, with no clear winner. In effect, skipping the Universal Empire stage and going directly to Decay. Apparently the Sumero-Akkadian civilization was approaching this situation-it was moribund before reaching the Universal Empire stage.

The Babylonic example indicates that a reformed?/transformed? society is possible before reaching the Universal Empire stage.

A reformed society can thereafter enter the Universal Empire stage as its last political form.

How much can a civilization change before losing its identity?

In the earlier edition of A Study of History, Toynbee listed the Mexic and Yucatec societies as daughter civilizations of the Mayan. Toynbee indicated that these daughter societies eventually fused to form yet another society, Central American. He changed his mind about those too. In the later edition:

"...archaeological discoveries lead to the conclusion that, in the history of civilization in Middle America, unity and continuity override discontinuity and diversity. this does not mean that there were no provincial idiosyncracies and no breaks in continuity. One such break was produced by the cumulative effects of the mysterious abandonment of the Classic sites and the subsequent irruption of waves of Chichimec barbarians-first a Toltec wave and later an Aztec one-from the northern hinterland of Middle America on to the Mexican plateau and then on, beyond that, into Yucatan. This particular break in continuity still looks considerable. At the same time, it now no longer looks considerable enough to justify the view that, at this point in Middle American history, an old civilization disappears and two new civilizations arise. On balance, it now seems more instructive to treat the whole of Middle American history as being the history of a single civilization."

Implications:

It may be possible for a civilization to survive a considerable break in continuity.

Two regional variants of the original civilization, rather than two daughter civilizations, appeared.

These two regional variants merged.

Quigley critiqued by Wilkinson.

Scroll down to Determinism and freedom.... Interesting comment that the interplay between reform and reaction may not necessarily be rigid. There may be minor reforms and circumventions [Perhaps this may buy time for a return to Stage Three-(Expansion)?] Also, a society may have more than one instrument of expansion (such as both socialism and capitalism).

Wilkinson also commented that civilizations now interact far more than in antiquity, and now experience "entrainment in a single macropolitical structure (state system) and process (struggle of and against Dominant Powers).


Though the state system may now/soon be challenged (see the Global Guerilla thread). What will the world be like if different civilizations are entrained in a mixed system of states and non-state actors?

Originally Posted by Odin

IMO WW1 and WW2 are comparable to the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, though they came earlier then the Punic Wars did, probably because of the shortening of the saeculum from 100 to 80 years has resulted in the West having a different pattern of war cycles then other civilizations had (with 80-year saeculae you can fit 5 cycles into the ToT instead of the normal 4).

I was a history major in college, and I don't remember reading where we deliberately went out of our way to start a third war with Germany, and upon defeating the Germans, razing Berlin to the ground, plowing the site under, and sowing the ground with salt.

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

I was a history major in college, and I don't remember reading where we deliberately went out of our way to start a third war with Germany, and upon defeating the Germans, razing Berlin to the ground, plowing the site under, and sowing the ground with salt.

Comparable is not identical. However, the analogy between the first and second world wars here and the Punic wars has been seen by many a first-year student of Roman history. Even down to Hannibal being reared in the shadow of their defeat in the first Punic war. The difference is, I believe, that our analogs to Cato the Elder turned their attentions to the Soviet Union instead of a totally defeated and occupied Germany. I don't think the Romans occupied the defeated Carthage, did they?

Originally Posted by Tim Walker '56

Charles Kupchan presented a civilizational theory at the end of his book in a chapter entitled "The Rebirth of History." To summarize, as a society changes its way of making a living its organization and source of communal identity change with it. As it does so old institutions become de-ligitamized.

#1 Nomadic. Hunter-gatherers. Approximate time-prior to 8000 BC. Organized as bands. Communal identity-animism.

#2 Early agriculture. Hunting-gathering plus the beginnings of agriculture. Approximate time 8000-3000 BC. Organization-tribe, chiefdom. Communal identity-nature worship.

#3 Agriculture. Approximate time 3000 BC-1700 AD. Organization in the form of kingdoms, coercive state. Communal identity-organized religion.

#4 Industrial Capitalism. Approximate time 1700-2000 AD. Organization in the form of republics. Communal identity-nationalism.

#5 Digital Capitalism. 2000? Organization? Communal identity?

Types of economies reviewed.

Industrial capitalism

A reform that comes to mind is the New Deal.

Dent wrote that the saeculum and the K-wave (the long economic cycle) were joined in a composite cycle. (With, in addition, the switch from Saeculum I to Saeculum II). This seems to have been a result of the Industrial Revolution.

Quigley's "Instrument of Expansion" is some type of economic system. So with the Industrial Revolution/Industrial Capitalism, the saeculum became directly entrained with Quigley's civilizational stages.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Industrial capitalism

A reform that comes to mind is the New Deal.

Dent wrote that the saeculum and the K-wave (the long economic cycle) were joined in a composite cycle. (With, in addition, the switch from Saeculum I to Saeculum II). This seems to have been a result of the Industrial Revolution.

Quigley's "Instrument of Expansion" is some type of economic system. So with the Industrial Revolution/Industrial Capitalism, the saeculum became directly entrained with Quigley's civilizational stages.

The way I see it, the advent of the railroads and especially the telegraph changed the western world by making life "faster" about 1850. The telegraph made communications including news instantainous about then. What's more, gold rushes made formerly exotic lands like California and Australia become reachable even before such technology made its impact in those areas.

PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly, Summer-1994


The Army and the Future of the International System by Steven Metz

"...There is a sophisticated and large analytical literature that argues that the nation-state, which is essentially an invention of the 17th century, is obsolete and incapable of dealing with modern, transnational problems. In fact, James N. Rosenau notes that the world is already 'bifurcated' as nation-states share power with a web of diverse, relatively autonomous non-state actors.Nonetheless, nation-states are likely to persist as an important (if not necessarily the only) element of the intenational system because of their monopoly on military power and the tradition of nationalism. People are accustomed to paying loyalty to nation-states, and this cannot change overnight. Few if any non-state actors can inspire the extent of support that nation-states can, and no non-state actors can mobilize, train, equip, and sustain a large military. But there is no question that increasing personal mobility, economic interdependence, and global communications will continue to erode traditional notions of sovereignty. The time when a nation such as Mao's China, Stalin's Soviet Union, or Hoxha's Albania can cut itself off from the rest of the world is rapidly passing. Those attempting it, such as North Korea and Myanmar (formerly Burma), will soon pay the price. This means that the importance of non-state actors-whether economic organizations such as cartels, corporations, and consortia, or political ones such as the UN-will also continue to grow.

The Army continued...

"...in the modern world, a sound argument can be made that unipolarity is temporary and abnormal because modernity has sped up the systemic cycles of the concentration and dispersion of power....

"...it appears that current trends favor the dispersion rather than the concentration of economic power. Wealth is now more information-intensive than production-intensive. The widespread use of microcomputers, facsimile machines, computer assisted design, and cellular communications disperses information where, in the past, large-scale industrialization concentrated wealth. This encourages the dispersion of economic power. During past periods of unipolarity the hegemon parlayed military preponderance into economic, political, and ideological superiority. Any future candidate hegemon would find this difficult to do given the global dispersion of information-based economic power."

I anticipate that fabbers will tend to disperse economic power even more.

Conventional warfare for agression has been rendered impractical because of WMD and asymetrical warfare. For offensive wars, it is no longer cost effective. [In th Gulf War and the Falkland Islands, the victors fought (at root) defensive wars].

James Bennett pointed out that a traditional power differntial between state and citizen-the greater command of information by rulers-is being eroded by the information revolution.

World Civilizations: The Global Experience by Stearns, Adas & Schwartz

To summarize, the 20th was one of those rare centuries which reshaped the larger world, inaugerating a new epoch in world history.

"...The 20th century has provided one of those relatively rare breaks in history, comparable in scope to the 15th century or 5th century."


There are three criteria at a minimum:

"They have included basic geographic rebalancing among major civilizations; they have measurably increased the intensity...of contact among civilizations; and they have, partly...result of new contacts, demonstrated some new and parallel patterns among many if not all of these civilizations.

"...the history of the 20th century allows us to see the forces overturning the old framework; it permits only glimpses of what the new one will be. We know that the new period will not be Western-dominated to the extent the previous one turned out to be, but we cannot be sure whether a successor will emerge, or what the successor will be....

"...there may be no single center of dominance-of the sort Arab and then Western civilization represented-in this emerging period in world history. The world of the future may continue the present pattern of several major centers of power and influence."

World Civilizations....

"...It seems clear that in the 1920s and 1930s a new phase in world history began to take shape by the ususal periodization criteria: parallel developments in major civilizations, reshuffling of geographic boundries including changes in the roster of particularly influential civilizations, and intensification of international contacts. More extensive trade, unprecedented worldwide alliance systems, and the new variety of cultureal exchanges readily illustrate the international intensification theme. Geographical changes include the loosening of Western dominanation through decolonization movement and the new sources of industrial competition; they also include realignments in the societies of East and Southeast Asia and new configurations of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Developments that cut across diverse societies include share technologies (despite continuing gaps in overall technological levels) new political forms, and a tendency toward cultural secularization. The patterns add up, as we have seen, to a break in world history at least as great as the one that occurred in the 15th century, as Arab dominance yielded and new empires and trade patterns emerged."

World Civilizations....

"...Many people in the world today argue that change has accelerated, and this may be true; nevertheless, most new periods in world history have taken at least two or more centuries to clarify...."

The late Samuel Huntington listed Islam and China as "challenger civilizations". These two cvilizations face two major obstacles to becoming top dog:

1. At this time power tends to disperse rather than concentrate.

2. Each other.

Military conquest is no longer cost effective.

If you try to expand (by other means) your sphere of influence beyond its traditional boundries, would be clients now tend to multi-align.

Imperialism has become a game for fools/suckers.


In the meantime states are losing power. This may be most evident in societies that never really endorsed conventional states. For example, the Middle East, where the Caliphate was the ideal.

Sometimes the result may be a mixed system. Jamainca, for example, where gangs are turning into a feudal system, wielding local authority within the shell of a conventional state. Concievably, this could become institutionalized as a kind of two-tiered political system.

In regions of some countries, government having only nominal control where a feudal(?) like system is emerging.

Proto-states inside the shell of weak states.

A general tendency for people to network because of the Information Revolution.

James Bennett noted that that civil society is beginning to link up across the breadth of the Anglosphere.

There may be a general tendency for a mulitiplication/diversification of subcultures; people with obscure interests can now find each other through the Internet.

The Internet as a catalyst for more political activism at a grassroots level.

Something of an industrial revolution. The fabber may cause a significant dispersal of manufacturing.

Western societies may retain an intra-civilizational state system. Such states may be linked into larger association; Bennet's Anglosphere Network Commonwealth (which he over-glorifies) is loosely based on what has been seen before-groupings for trade, defense/security, scientific/technological projects. (Constructive, but not too exciting).

The states themselves may themselves adopt unconventional forms. Northern Ireland, for example, has become a consociational unit within the UK, which itself has been described as a hybrid quasi-federal state.

Jamaica may be a relatively simple case-small island, homogenous population.

Mexico, though....

I posted that it seems on the verge of becoming a failed state.

Mexico, a country with significant regional ethnic/cultural differences.

Should the government survive in a weak form, could several different proto-states arise within the shell of a state?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Mexico, though....

I posted that it seems on the verge of becoming a failed state.

Mexico, a country with significant regional ethnic/cultural differences.

Should the government survive in a weak form, could several different proto-states arise within the shell of a state?

Could Mexico become a prototype for other similar countries (including us)? Robert Kaplan, in his books The Coming Anarchy and An Empire Wilderness, suggests that the United States could slowly fragment, over the next century, into a collection of city-states ever more loosely tied together by whatever's left of the Federal Government, as did the Holy Roman Empire during the late Medieval and early Modern periods. The CommonCensus Map Project (http://commoncensus.org/maps.php) displays a map of the continental US which shows one possible pattern of said city-state development. Needless to say, some of the 'city-states' shown on that map would not really be viable in such an environment, but many if not most would be, more or less. Of course, that which Kaplan says might take the better part of a century, could possibly take place during the course of this 4T.

Also, devolution into a pattern of feudal states (Mexico) and city-states (United States) could well slow other developments to a crawl, or even prevent them altogether, such as the Hispanicization of Anglo-America. Not only that, but it could also lead to a rebirth of a sort of patriotism, as, for example, a San Franciscan, Seattlite, or Bostonian who can no longer stomach old style red-white-and-blue Americanism might find that he or she feels great loyalty to San Francisco, Seattle, or Boston - loyalty strong enough to die for, if need be. Conversely, a Nashvillean or Salt Laker could well find it equally easy to shift the focus of their patriotism closer to home. (Hmmm,... how long would it take for the area dominated by Salt Lake City to revert to a more or less theocratic form of government in such an environment?)

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Quigley speculated that parts of a civilization might fight and fight each other down to lower and lower levels of public order, with no clear winner. In effect, skipping the Universal Empire stage and going directly to Decay.

I have sometimes wondered if geography might have imposed this fate upon the West, due to vast oceans separating various portions of the West from one another, and making the consolidation of a Universal Empire (or Federation) impossible. Of course, the pattern of oceans preventing the consolidation of a Universal Empire before decay can set in might be even more relevant if one takes the entire world as a single civilizational unit, as Joseph Tainter does in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies. If so, then Huntington's Clash of Civilizations could well be nothing more than just another symptom of the postmodern world's present decay and eventual collapse.

If Hammurabi's empire is considered to be a 'core' or 'preliminary' empire (as did Quigley), then Mesopotamia entered Decay before the Universal Empire stage. Mesopotamia was moribund after half a millenium of Conflict. However, it was possible for part of Mesopotamia-Babylon-to enjoy something of a revival. Eventually, according to Quigley, Mesopotamia entered the Universal Empire stage, entered Decay for a second time, and never recovered.