Generational Dynamics World View

[Warren Dew]

(02-04-2017, 09:28 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(02-04-2017, 03:17 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   What?  Why?  Why wouldn't the US be allied with China, Pakistan,
>   and the Sunni states against India, Russia, and Iran instead?
>   None of the dots you mention say anything about the US.

That's an interesting question.  Could the US join China and
Pakistan against India and Britain?  I just don't see how that's
possible.

One thing that I've pointed to in the past is that Russia has invaded
and annexed parts of Georgia and Ukraine, and yet there hasn't been
even a hint of war between the US and Russia.  Basically, the Russian
people and Western people like each other, for the most part.

But I believe that we would be at war with China within six hours if
China invaded Taiwan (or Japan or Philippines).  Even though we saved
China's ass in WW II, they still hate us.

I think the explanation there is that the difference between Japan on the one hand and Ukraine on the other is required by geopolitical imperatives.  The US is a maritime power; our geography, as the only major nation with long coasts on both the Atlantic and the Pacific, dictates that.  Our geopolitical interest is in being a - preferably the - global maritime power; for that reason, we're interested primarily in other coastal nations, from whom we can benefit through favorable trade agreements.

Japan and Taiwan are island nations, the ultimate in coastal nations, so our interest in them is strong.  Ukraine and Georgia have little coast, and what coast they have is on the Black Sea, which we can access only by treaty with Turkey.  Our interest in them is weaker and mostly indirect, through NATO allies.  And of course it doesn't hurt that China is only a second tier nuclear power, while Russia is on a par with us.

This means that from a geopolitical interest standpoint, we have more potential for conflict with China than with Russia.  I'm not sure geopolitical interest necessarily coincides with your cultural imperatives, however, and potential for conflict doesn't necessarily make conflict inevitable.

I'd also note that from a geopolitical standpoint, one could have expected a war in the WWII time frame between the US and Japan, but not between the US and Germany, as Japan was a competing maritime power while Germany was a continental power.  We ended up getting dragged into the war with Germany - including lend lease even before the Pearl Harbor attack - by our cultural allies, in particular Britain.  If Russia's leader ends up on an expansionist path due to internal political imperatives, as happened with Germany in WWII, I could easily see us dragged into a war with them as well, through western European allies.

Nor do we necessarily have to be dragged into any war.  WWII never touched our shores, and Britain managed to stay out of the thick of the 1860 crisis, remaining on the periphery of the US civil war and the Taiping rebellion, participating directly only in the Second Opium War.  If we realize that our correct strategy is to improve our global maritime power to hegemonic status by playing balance of power politics with respect to Eurasia, we could restrict our intervention to tipping the balance of any conflicts in whatever direction favors us.  This is basically what Victorian England did.

If you think cultural concerns necessarily trump geopolitical concerns, the closest thing we have to cultural enemies are Iran and Russia, so it's hard to justify our being on their side.  As you note, though, our history doesn't show a clear cultural nemesis, having cycled through Britain, ourselves, and Germany and Japan.

And of course, we can't necessarily assume there's no civil war in the US, what with the California government studying ways to cut off funding flows to the federal government.  If the rest of the world breaks down the way you suggest, the East Coast could side with Russia while the West Coast sides with China.

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I'd also note a few details here:

First, I presume  you meant "Russia" rather than "Britain".  The "dots" you provided didn't cover Britain any more than they did the US.

I would point out  our interest in Japan is stronger than our interest in Taiwan; we have bases in Japan but not Taiwan.  I do think we would intervene in favor of Taiwan if they were invaded conventionally, but it's to be noted that we also sent planes to Georgia when Russia invaded, loaded with Georgian troops with fresh combat experience in Iraq.  The Russian invasion stopped advancing the instant our planes touched down in Georgia.  We obviously haven't intervened in, or even supplied arms to, Ukraine, as yet, so the big contrast is between Ukraine and Japan - though even there Obama may have thought sanctions were a form of intervention in favor of Ukraine.

Incidentally, while we helped get Japan off China's back, we spent the last four years of their crisis war, which didn't end until 1949, supporting the Nationalists.  The Nationalists love us still, and the Maoists no longer had reason to.  And the Soviet Communists, who did have reason for gratitude,  were as ungrateful as the Maoists.

Quote:

(02-04-2017, 03:17 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   Also, why isn't the EU included in this analysis?  What side will
>   they be on, or will they split up as tensions between the French
>   and Germans reassert themselves?

This is a question that I've been puzzling over for ten years.  There
are several historical fault lines -- Catholic vs Protestant, Western
vs Orthodox, Christian vs Jew, Greek vs German, and so forth.  How
these fault lines will align in the coming war is still to be
determined.

One hypothesis that I've considered is that "universal religions"
stick together, while "targeted religions" stick together.  The
universal religions are Catholic, Sunni Islam, and Buddhism, while the
targeted religions are Protestant Christianity, Orthodox Christianity,
Shia Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism.

I wrote about this hypothesis in the following article:

** 17-Aug-16 World View -- Russia-Iran airbase agreement further isolates Saudi Arabia
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...tm#e160817

and I've received nothing but ridicule for it.  But still, the
hypothesis has some historical significance, and might have some
relevance it predicting the alignment of the various European nations

An interesting idea.  Your reason not to apply it to Japan seems a bit of a rationalization, though, and the rationalization would be as valid for China, which would hurt your theory about how the rest of the world would break down.

Also to be noted is that most of Europe is at this point irreligious, including the UK, and their secular humanist atheism would qualify as a universalist faith.  This suggests that Europe would be more likely to be on the Arabia/Pakistan/China side and against the Russia/India/Iran side.  In that case your theory would then have us helping Russia take over Western Europe.  Could you see that?