Dynamics
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Generational Dynamics |
| Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's | |
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It's hard to overestimate how much the world has changed in the last ten years. In 1994, Americans felt confident and safe about their place in the world as the the overwhelming world leader, as we had just shown by winning the 1991 Gulf War so decisively. We were poised to help militarily anywhere in the world we were needed, as in fact we did in Bosnia a few months later.
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In 1994, the economy was growing robustly, having recovered from a 1991 recession.
In 1994 there were problems, but none seemed too serious. We had just suffered a major terrorist attack a year earlier -- a car bomb in the parking level of New York's World Trade Center had destroyed several lower floors -- but the damage was repaired and the perpetrators had been found and were facing trial. There was little to worry about.
Today, on the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, America is a different place.
Today, Americans are anxious about possible terrorist attacks on American soil, and it's affecting their attitudes towards the election, so much so that voters consider terrorism to be a more important issue than Iraq, despite the fact that over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq, and one or two more get killed every day.
The tempo and viciousness of terrorist acts is increasing from Morocco, into Europe and the Middle East, across Asia, down to Indonesia.
Insurgents in Iraq are realizing new car bombings on almost a daily basis.
Last week, a car bomb in Jakarta, Indonesia, appeared to be targeting Australia, like the bomb in Bali two years ago that killed hundreds, most Australian tourists.
Indonesians are now demanding that their government take whatever steps are necessary to halt the operations of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Islamic terrorist group considered responsible for both bombings.
The Indonesian bombing followed shortly after two horrendous terrorist acts in Russia: hijacking and bombing two passenger planes flying out of Moscow, and the hostage-taking in Beslan, North Ossetia, that killed hundreds, including many children.
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The most dangerous region in the world today is the Caucasus region. Russia's war with Chechnya is now ten years old.
The Beslan incident has raised terrorist acts to a new horrific level, because of its sheer brutality. It's clear that the terrorists wanted to murder women and children, and emphasized their point by using women suicide bombers as part of the team.
A similar message was sent in the airplane explosions. The perpetrators were "black widows," women who had lost their brothers to the Russians in Chechen fighting.
Meanwhile, Georgia is also challenging Russia and demanding the removal of Russian forces in two breakaway provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
An angry Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised revenge for the Beslan events. He's blaming "international terrorists," partly to avoid further inflaming the Ossetians. The citizens of Beslan themselves, who are mostly Orthodox Christian, are demanding revenge against the Ingushetians, who are mostly Muslim, like the Chechens. Ingushetia is the province adjoining North Ossetia.
There's a seeming paradox in the world today. There are "only" 19 wars going on in the world today, while there were 33 going on in 1991. What are we to make of this historic reduction in the number of wars? It apparently didn't happen prior to World War II, for example. Does it mean that the age of warfare is ending? Does it meant that the number of wars will continue to go down?
I think it would be hard to justify that claim, especially since the tempo of terrorism and desires for revenge are increasing. There's actually a Generational Dynamics explanation which seems pretty plausible to me.
We're at a unique time in history that's never occurred before, in the following way. Since the end of WW II, America has not only been policemen of the world, but has also been the great foreign aid dispenser of the world.
For example, why didn't Haiti have a major civil war in either 1994 or 2004? Because America poured money into Haiti. Poverty is a major fact of life in Haiti, but as long as foreign aid keeps everyone fed, there's no war.
The same is true in Palestine. The same is true in Bangladesh. In places around the world, where poverty might drive masses of people into war, the war is forestalled by foreign aid.
The interviews from the parents and friends at the Beslan site were highly emotional. One grandmother who was burying her grandchildren and their mother asked, "Why did they kill innocent children? The children never did anything to them."
In fact, women and children are being killed more and more by terrorists as time goes by, just as women are being used more and more as suicide bombers.
We see that in Iraq, where the terrorist insurgents are killing Iraqi civilians much more than they're killing American soldiers. The bombing of the Bali nightclub targeted Australian civilians, and Palestinian terrorists began targeted Israeli civilians in 1999.
Most people don't understand why they do this. President George Bush doesn't understand why they do it. In his address during this September 11 memorial, he said:
The idea that giving peoples of the region "new hope and lives of dignity" will cause people "let go of old hatreds" is competely wrong.
To the contrary, these kinds of hatreds are never extinguished by democracy or lives of dignity, or whatever. There is only one thing that extinguishes these hatreds: An extremely violent genocidal war.
It's the principal discovery of Generational Dynamics that these kinds of wars, called "crisis wars," occur in any society at regular intervals, roughly every 70-90 years. There have only been two such wars in America since the founding of the country: One was World War II, in which America firebombed and destroyed entire cities like Dresden and Tokyo, and even dropped two nuclear weapons on Japanese cities. The other was the Civil War, in which General Sherman marched through Georgia killing not only everyone in sight, but also destroyed all homes and crops so that any survivors starved to death. Every society has these kinds of wars.
These are wars that come "from the people," rather than from the politicians. Wars that come from politicians are never that ferocious; for America, the Gulf War, the Vietnam War and World War I came from the politicians, and were ill-supported by the people, resulting in enormous political controversy. But there was little political controversy for World War II or the Civil War.
It's the crisis wars, the ones that come from the people, that are embedded in human nature, that are part of the process of "survival of the fittest" of different tribes, religious, ethnic groups and nations. Like it or not, these are the wars that are as much part of being human as sex is.
That's why the Islamic terrorists kill women and children. Today they're feeling the fury, the anger, the hatred that only happens once every 70-90 years in any society. There's no government driving them to take these actions, but there doesn't have to be in crisis wars. And there's no way of stopping these terrorists. A crisis war is an elemental force of nature, like a raging typhoon, that no human being or government is able to control or stop.
America entered World War II in 1941, or 63 years ago, so America is just beginning to enter the early stages of a crisis period, the time when fury and anxiety begins to build. Americans have been hurtled into a crisis period a little early, thanks especially to the 9/11 attack that we're commemorating today. World War II began in Europe and Asia in the 1930s, so they're farther into a crisis period than America is.
But the Caucasus region is based more on a World War I timeline, than on World War II. Russia itself fought in World War I until the Bolshevik Revolution, and then had a ten year period of massive Civil War that killed tens of millions of people throughout the 1920s.
That's why the Caucasus region is the most dangerous region on earth. It's much farther into a generational crisis period than almost any other region on earth.
Putin doesn't understand these generational issues, but he does intuitively understand that the Caucasus is getting close to a major regional that will engulf Russia, and will spread down into the Mideast, and even further afield as Europe and China get involved.
Iraq is very poorly understood by the pundits and high-priced analysts, many of whom are still predicting that Iraq will soon break out into a massive civil war, any day now. They've been saying any day now for a year and a half. I've been saying for a year and a half that it can't happen and won't happen. Iraq had a crisis war when the Ottoman Empire was destroyed in the 1920s, but Iraq had another crisis war in the 1980s, with the Iran-Iraq war. There has never in history been a major civil war following less than 50 years after the end of another crisis war.
But there are other important criticisms related to Iraq. The one we hear the most is that the Iraq war has slowed down the war against terrorism, and has actually inflamed Islamic terrorists more than ever.
Taking the second criticism first, it's hard to justify that Islamic terrorists have been too much more inflamed than they would have been without the Iraq war. The 9/11 and the Bali bombings, for example, came before the Iraq war; and the Chechen war that created the climate for the Beslan hostage-taking started ten years ago.
Islamic terrorists give three reasons why they're so infuriated at the West: The support for Israel; the Westernization of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries; and the Iraq war. It's possible that the third reason has added to their fury, but the other two reasons would have been sufficient without the Iraq war.
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As we move toward a "clash of civilizations" world war, it will be at least ten years before historians can judge whether the Iraq war helped us or hurt us in the long run.
We can see that the Iraq war has cost us a lot -- a lot of money and a lot of soldiers. But it's only a very small part of the war that's coming, so we have to ask more strategic questions.
The Iraq War may turn out to be a disaster for America, because it caused us to station our forces there. One of the reasons we did relatively well in World War II is because we were the last major country to enter the war. But we're going to be in this world war from the beginning, and that might hurt us a great deal.
On the other hand, the Iraq War may turn out to reduce the severity of the world war, if only by getting rid of Saddam Hussein and whatever weapons he might have contributed. This is still a question for which answers are being sought.
My own gut reaction is mixed. The fact that America is so overextended today frightens me, and raises my concern that another major crisis anywhere could quickly bring a major crisis to America. On the other hand, the Islamic terrorists and their sponsors have time on their side, in the sense that they can keep building up stocks of weapons, and continue to gain converts to their cause, so that an earlier war might be less harmful to America than a later war.
One thing's for sure, on the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001: The world is becoming more anxious, more furious, more frightened, and much more ready for war. It's just about time for another turn of the wheel.