(01-30-2017, 09:31 PM)Mikebert Wrote:Quote:This is a very odd reading of history. The French Revolution was not a significant factor in the Napoleonic Wars, the Glorious Revolution not a significant factor in the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV? I disagree.You are reversing the direction of causation. A 4T outcome can play an important role in a subsequent Macrodecision phase (MDP) without the MDP playing a role in the 4T, particularly if the 4T occurs entirely before the MDP.
I anticipate a crisis climax setting in motion the macrodecision phase, with some overlap. How exactly that plays out remains to be seen.
No, no, this is my fault, I must have been unclear. I expect big things to happen starting in the 2020s on a foreign policy level, due to authors previously listed (S & H, M & T, Chase-Dunn and Pobodnik, etc.). I expect the climax of the S & H Crisis to begin and end in the 2020s. I expect the macrodecision phase to begin in the 2020s and continue on to the 2040s or so. Because of this overlap, and just by looking at the news (I know, I know, <science> blah blah blah), I think that the crisis climax will have a foreign policy component, IMO. I expect the outcome of that 4T to play an important role in the coming macrodecision phase, which I think will start before the crisis ends. How that plays out, I don't claim to know.
If the US has an internal crisis in the 4T, this could cause a vacuum in the international sphere that spurs a macrodecision period, as revisionist powers move to settle regional scores. The US could then become active in this during its 1T, and a new order would stabilize around mid-century.
The US could have an external crisis in the 4T, fight one war, which would end, disrupting the international order, there would be a lull, and then a new phase could begin with another way 15-20 years down the line. The analogue in this case being the previous macrodecision, which had two wars that lasted several years spaced 20 years apart.
It could be a combination of the two, it could be something different. I am only telling you the types of things I think should happen, operating under the distinct paradigms of M & T, S & H, et al. and how I think they should interact based on previous confluences of 4T/Macrodecision phases.
Quote:An example of an MDP playing a role in a 4T was the last 4T. Without involvement in WW II, the New Dealers could not solve the problem of the Depression, which was what triggered the crisis initially.
In contrast, the structural changes in state finance that occurred following the Glorious Revolution played a big role in England's willingness and ability to play a major role in the subsequent MDP. But the need to fight these conflicts was not the reason for the financial restructuring. This was the long-standing conflict with the monarchy over taxation and spending. The English Civil War had been precipitated by fiscal crisis over Parliaments unwillingness to vote funds to the King. Such issues had been a long standing problem dating back to the constitutional crisis of 1297. The Glorious Revolution finally solved them by establishing national accounting, a formal budget and a central bank for rationalizing government finance. That such things were very useful for prosecuting war was apparent to William of Orange, but this was not the reason they had been pursued.
You need to read Paul Kennedy again. Military expenditures were the overwhelming bulk of state spending and debts during the early modern period. Earlier, even. What did you think the state was spending money on? In this case, Britain and France and Holland had been fighting with each other for the entire second half of the 17th century, sometimes on one side, sometimes the other. There was also a significant religious component of both the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution that you're leaving out. The Macrodecision phase, which encompassed the 9 Year's war, a brief gap, and the WotSS, started immediately with the events of Louis crossing the Rhine and William the Channel, and conclusively set England on the side of the Dutch, as opposed to the French-speaking crypto-Catholic Stuarts. The English and Scots never would have joined the League of Augsburg (subsequently the Grand Alliance) without the Glorious Revolution.
Likewise with Revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic Wars. You don't get the one without the other.
Quote:My understanding of your views is you believe that foreign policy actions in the future will constitute a key element of the 4T (the climax I believe) after which it will come to an end.
I think that is likely to be true, if by it you mean the climax. The crisis of the post-WWII liberal order is a big part of the 4T here in the US and Europe. And US actions in the Middle East have helped create the refugee flows that are helping destabilize the European version of the liberal project, the EU. Similar crises in East and South Asia (whose big political realignments also date back to WWII and its immediate aftermath [Chinese Civil war, US occupation of Japan, Independence and Partition, etc.]) will also impact this. I don't expect things to stabilize at the global level till the end of the macrodecision phase, long after the 4T has ended. But I do expect for the way the 4Ts play out to play a big role in the macrodecision phase which will continue on through the 2030s and into the 2040s.
Quote:4Ts are not simply periods containing big events that occur at the right time. They are periods of significant restructuring of the political and economic order. If the first concept was valid then we would date the start of the 4T from 911. George Bush came into the White House with a plan to expand the GOP base by appealing to Latinos through a combination of pre-growth policies and a new set of programs branded "compassionate conservativism". At that time this era was mapping into a liberal era with the passage of things like No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D, and his push for immigration reform. The Iraq war derailed his program and the financial crisis put the final nail into Bushism.
There would be no 4T restructuring along the Bush lines, so the 4T date gets moved up to the next big event, the financial crisis in 2008. Like Bush, Obama had his own plan to inaugurate a liberal era. It now looks like this will go down, just like Bush's. The 2016 election was also big thing--a magnified version of the 2000 election. If a second 911 or 2008-scale event occurs, why shouldn't we move the date up yet again? Suppose its another financial crisis. If we have another crisis, why should the one in 2008 be more special than the new one? Shouldn't we judge which one is the trigger based one what happens after? Suppose a crisis happens, Trump deals with it successfully, gets relected and is succeed by another two-term president. This would make Trump greater than Reagan. Wouldn't it make sense for the crisis era to begin in 2016 and last (at least) until the second Republican leaves office?
As Emman pointed out, you are basically abandoning the S & H model of turnings. The 4T is not a collection of big events so much as it is a change in mood. The two big candidates for that were 2001 and 2008. The big protest movements which one would expect (Tea Party, Occupy, BLM, etc.) date from this period. Likewise for Western Europe the EU didn't seem to really go off the rails until the financial crisis, which due to the setup of the Euro and ECB has been much more of a rolling crisis over there than it is here. The whole crisis there dates from that point.
Here in the US we had an intensified period of political conflict that just saw one party seize the majority of offices, state and federal, under the aegis of the oldest and most outlandish presidential winner in US history, a living incarnation of 80s Boomerism. As far as the orthodox S & H model goes, I am satisfied that we are still following the model as predicted. Questions of what events occur in the future, and how we should interpret past events in light of them, should probably wait until said events have gone to the trouble of actually happening, you know?