Nathan G wrote:
> That's incredible, John! I wonder if you could either explain how
> this lineup fits into Generational Dynamics or link us to your
> original article. I'm still very novice at the application of
> Generational Dynamics, so I'm excited to see that it can predict
> something very specific like the contenders in a conflict.
In a non-crisis war, politicians order armies into war. So in the
case of the Vietnam war and the two Iraq wars, American politicians
ordered the wars, but there was no visceral feeling of animosity of
Americans towards the Vietnamese or Iraqis. The wars ended without
any kind of explosive climax.
In a crisis war, mobs of people start killing each other without
being ordered to.
So what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was that there were two ethnic
groups -- the Hutus and the Tutsis. They had lived together for
decades, had intermarried, had their kids play games with each other
and so forth.
Then one day, a Hutu leader announced over the radio, "Cut down the
tall trees." That statement caused an explosion of visceral hatred.
On cue, each Hutu did something like the following: Picked up a
machete, went to the Tutsi home next door, or down the street,
murdered and dismembered the man and children, raped the wife and then
murdered and dismembered her. Close to a million Tutsis were
tortured, raped and murdered in a three month period. That was the
explosive climax.
So if you're trying to predict the timing and belligerents in
non-crisis wars, you have to make political predictions, which Chaos
theory tells you are unreliable. You can look at polls or other
political barometers, subject to the knowledge that they can change
overnight if the wrong butterfly flaps its wings.
But if you're trying to predict the timing and belligerents in crisis
wars, the rules are different. You have to look at long-term trends,
often going back centuries, to determine which ethnic groups "hate"
each other, and then match up the long-term trends with current events
to see who's going to be fighting whom in the next crisis war.
This is the concept of "long-term forecasting" and "short-term
forecasting" that I've written about descriptions of the Generational
Dynamics methodology, such as in my 2010 paper:
** International Business Forecasting Using System Dynamics With Generational Flows
**
http://GenerationalDynamics.com/gdgraph ... namics.pdf
However, you can't predict the timing of a crisis war, because you
don't when the appropriate trigger will occur (such as a high school
student shooting an Archduke to start World War I).
Similarly, there's no way to judge the significance of today's
massive stock market selloff. We know that a major panic and crash
is coming, but there's no way to tell whether today's selloff if
the first step of not.
I've written many times (mostly in bits and pieces) that in the
coming Clash of Civilizations world war, the "allies" will be
the United States, India, Russia and Iran, while the "axis" will
be China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim countries.
The summary behind the reasoning is as follows: China is very closely
allied with Pakistan, which is very closely allied with the Sunni
states. China and India are bitter enemies, as are Pakistan and
India. Russia and India are very closely allied, and India is very
closely allied with Iran, as Hindus have been allied with Shia Muslims
going back to the Battle of Karbala. So the US is going to be allied
with India, Russia and Iran, versus China, Pakistan, and the Sunni
Muslim states. Just remember that Russia was our bitter enemy before
WW II, was our ally during WW II, and was our bitter enemy after WW
II. You can't make judgments from today's fatuous political
alignments to how nations will act when they're forced to make hard
choices in the context of a generational crisis war. These major
decisions are made by the populations, large generations of people,
not by a few politicians when a nation and its way of life are
threatened.
Nathan G wrote:
> Just imagine the day that GD can be extended into the distant
> future, predicting the exact details of disasters decades or even
> whole generations before they happen.
I would urge a great deal of caution before reaching this kind of
conclusion.