FishbellykanakaDude wrote:
> ..and war it shall be.
> But not for a few more years. We (the world) "just ain't ripe
> yet".
This is an interesting statement because you don't tell what
you mean by "ripe."
So I'm going to assume that you mean that some sequential process
has not yet occurred that leads to war in an "organized" way,
such as the steps that led to Britain's war on the Nazis.
But some wars start in a very "disorganized" way. I often point to
the 2006 was between Israel and Hezbollah which was completely
unexpected. Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and within four
hours, Israel attacked Hezbollah in a war with no plan and no
objective. The war was a total disaster for both Israel and Lebanon.
In my opinion, the only reason that it didn't lead to a full-scale war
is because Lebanon is in a generational Awakening era.
World War II in Europe may have started in an organized way, but World
War II in Asia began in a completely disorganized way.
I'm writing a book on China, and I wrote about this phenomenon. The
following is from the current draft:
> **** Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) - World War II in Asia
> Westerners think of World War II as having started in September
> 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Poland. But the early conflicts
> of World War II were well under way before Hitler invaded anyone.
> Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, and Italy invaded Ethiopia in
> 1935. World War II in Asia clearly began with the Sino-Japanese
> War (1937-45).
>
> **** Marco Polo Incident (July 7-9, 1937) and Sino-Japanese War
> The Marco Polo Incident is highly relevant to today's world,
> because it shows how a trivial misunderstanding could start World
> War III today.
> In 1937, both China and Japan were deep into generational Crisis
> eras, their previous crisis wars having climaxed in 73 and 69
> years, respectively. This isn't an abstract concept. What it
> means is that the traumatized people who had survived the horrors
> of the previous crisis war were all gone. They had spent their
> entire lives trying to make sure that nothing so horrible ever
> happens again, but now they were gone, and there was nobody left
> who felt the same way.
> Many of the details of the Marco Polo Incident are trivial, but
> these trivial details started World War II in Asia, so they're
> worth reviewing because of lessons that apply to today's world.
> The Marco Polo Bridge is located about 15 km southwest of Beijing,
> and has that name because the original bridge, constructed in
> 1192, is given that name because the 13th century Italian Silk
> Road trader, Marco Polo, praised the bridge.
> Japan had a small number of troops near the bridge to provide
> protection for a Japanese diplomatic legation. Late on July 7,
> 1937, the Japanese performed a roll call of their troops, and one
> soldier, Private Shimura Kikujiro, was missing. According to
> documents released by the Japanese in 2013, Kikujiro had snuck off
> into the woods during the training exercise for an unauthorized
> bathroom break, but got lost trying to find his way back. By the
> time he did get back, the roll call had been performed.
> The Japanese assumed the worst: That Kikujiro had been abducted by
> the Chinese from a small military camp in the town of Wanping, at
> the end of the Macro Polo Bridge. The Japanese requested
> permission from the local Chinese to enter Wanping and search for
> Kikujiro. The Chinese refused.
> It's worth noting in passing that abductions are a big part of the
> news today. The Chinese particularly perform abductions not only
> of their own people in China from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, but also
> of people from other countries. Abducted people in China have no
> rights, and are simply "disappeared" for long periods of times,
> during which time they're jailed without legal representation or
> outside contact, and often beaten, raped and tortured. Just as
> the assumed abduction of Kikujiro in a generational Crisis era led
> to World War II in Asia, and assumed or actual abduction today can
> lead to war.
> The Japanese entered the city of Wanping on July 8, and of course
> Kikujiro was not found, since he'd already reported back to his
> base. Low-level shooting occurred on both the Chinese and
> Japanese side, but both sides called for reinforcements. One
> hundred Chinese defenders fought to hold the bridge; only four of
> them survived. The Japanese overran the bridge, but Chinese
> reinforcements retook it the following morning, July 9.
> In Beijing, the two sides negotiated a settlement of the incident.
> That would have been the end of it any time except in a
> generational Crisis era. The Japanese Cabinet held a press
> conference to announce the settlement, in which it also announced
> the mobilization of three new army divisions, and harshly warned
> the Chinese government in Nanking not to interfere with the local
> solution to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. This incendiary
> cabinet statement caused Chiang Kai-shek's government to react by
> sending four divisions of additional Chinese troops to the area.
> Soon, both sides were violating the truce agreement. The Japanese
> shelled Wanping on July 20, and by the end of July the Imperial
> Army had surrounded Tianjin and Beijing. Even though neither side
> likely had planned to go into an all-out war, tensions were
> incredibly high. When a Japanese naval officer was assassinated
> in Shanghai on August 9, 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War broke
> out in earnest. It would transition in to the Second World War,
> ending only with Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945.
> A lot of people believe that World War III, if it begins, will
> begin in an "organized" way, similar to how WW II in Europe began:
> Hitler invades Sudetenland in order to "protect Germans," then
> promises Britain "Peace in our time." Britain warns Hitler not to
> invade Poland, Hitler invades Poland, Britain declares war. Very
> organized. And Winston Churchill foresaw it years earlier.
> But World War I began in a "disorganized" way. Austrian Archduke
> Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serb high school student,
> triggering a war that nobody saw coming.
> And now we see that even World War II began in a "disorganized"
> way, from a random event that was triggered because a Japanese
> soldier needed to pee. In "normal" times, the crisis would have
> ended quickly. But in a generational Crisis era, small conflicts
> trigger larger ones in a series of tit-for-tat escalations known
> in generational theory as "regeneracy events," referring to the
> regeneracy of civic unity for the first time since the climax of
> the preceding crisis war.
> Thus, a small event triggered tit-for-tat escalations that started
> a major World War in Asia, a war that soon spread to Europe.
> Today, some small event in the Mideast, in Kashmir, in the South
> China Sea or in the East China Sea, that would normally amount to
> nothing could, today, trigger a tit-for-tat series of escalations
> leading to a new world war. That's what happens in a generational
> Crisis era, just as happened with the Marco Polo Marco Polo
> Incident on July 7-9, 1937.
So you say that war can't start now because the world ain't ripe yet?
Well, I say it could start tomorrow because someone unexpectedly may
have to pee.