Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 17-Nov-17 World View -- Cambodia dissolves the opposition political party so that Hun Sen can be reelected unopposed

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Cambodia dissolves the opposition political party so that Hun Sen can be reelected unopposed
  
• Comparing Awakening Eras in Cambodia, Syria, Zimbabwe and other countries
  

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**** Cambodia dissolves the opposition political party so that Hun Sen can be reelected unopposed
****


Phnom Penh exhibit commemorating the Cambodian killing fields war of 1975-79

Cambodia's Supreme Court, believed to be completely controlled by
prime minister Hun Sen, ruled on Thursday that Hun Sen's opposition
party should be dissolved, and that its members should be prohibited
from political activities:

<QUOTE>"The supreme court has decided to dissolve the
Cambodia National Rescue party [CNRP] and ban 118 individuals
... from doing political activities for five years starting from
the day of this verdict announcement."<END QUOTE>

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Cambodia is in a
generational Awakening era. The Buddhist society of the Khmer Rouge
in Cambodia in 1975-79, led by Pol Pot, perpetrated one of the top
mass genocides of the 20th century. The genocide killed something
like 1.7 to well over 2 million people, out of a population of 8
million. So around 20% of Cambodia's population were killed, making
it possibly the worst genocide, on a percentage basis, of the 20th
century.

This is exactly the same story that I've been writing about many times
recently. A country has a generational crisis civil war where ethnic
or tribal groups commit thousands of atrocities, tortures,
mutilations, rapes, and killings of each other. All the survivors are
traumatized for life, and when one side or the other takes power after
the war ends, they continue using some of the same techniques to stay
in power indefinitely. We've written about this in Zimbabwe,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Syria, Iran,
and elsewhere.

Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have controlled the
government since the end of the war, and Hun Sen himself has been the
country's leader since 1985. The crackdown began in 2013, when Hun
Sen was declared the winner of a close election whose results were
disputed by the opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party
(CNRP).

The CNRP has been gaining in popularity since 2013, and many people
thought that Hun Sen might be defeated in the 2018 elections,
something that he and his supporters would have to prevented at
all costs, by any means possible.

So Hun Sen began targeting CNRP leaders, arresting many of them. The
CNRP was particularly shocked on September 4 when 100 police showed up
at the home of the CNRP leader Kem Sokha and arrested him for treason.

Following the arrest, Hun Sen said:

<QUOTE>"The treason of colluding with foreigners to betray
the nation requires [us] to make an immediate arrest.

The third hand [the United States] used to use Lon Nol to conduct
a coup [in 1970], now the same problem happened.

The Americans used to do it, this problem, with Lon Nol and now
the American does this problem with Kem Sokha."<END QUOTE>

It's always fun to see how the United States get blamed for every
problem in the world. This charge of treason was based on a 2013
video in which Kem Sokha spoke of getting US assistance to plan his
political career. Hun Sen accused Sokha, his family, journalists,
foreign NGOs, the CIA, and the “extremist” ruling party of Taiwan of
orchestrating regime change in Cambodia.

If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because it sounds the
same as the delusional statement by Zimbabwe's Commander Chiwenga that
we reported yesterday
following
the Zimbabwe coup, that "our revolution [is] being hijacked by agents
of our erstwhile enemies who are now at the brink of returning our
country to foreign domination against which so many of our people
perished."

So Hun Sen has been arresting leaders in the opposition CNRP political
party, and now has arranged to have the entire party dissolved by the
court, so that he can win an election next year. Phnom Penh Post and Guardian (London) and ABS-CBN (Manila) and Phnom Penh Post (5-Sep)

Related Articles

• Zimbabwe coup splits ruling Zanu-pf party along generational lines (16-Nov-2017)
  
  
• Burma's (Myanmar's) leaders may be inspired by Pol Pot's Cambodian 'Killing Fields' genocide (29-Sep-2017)
  
  
• Cambodia bans all sales of sand to Singapore (20-Jul-2017)
  
  
• Thailand vs Cambodia border clash damages ancient Hindu temple (17-Feb-2011)
  

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**** Comparing Awakening Eras in Cambodia, Syria, Zimbabwe and other countries
****

Possibly the most significant finding from the development of
Generational Dynamics these last 15 years was the discovery of the
destructive role that generational Awakening eras play in country
after country. We've seen this destructive role in today's article on
Cambodia, and in previous articles on countries from Syria to Burundi
to Zimbabwe.

In any country, an Awakening era occurs after the Recovery Era that
follows a generational crisis war. A generational crisis war is the
worst kind of war, because the value of a human life goes to zero at
the war's climax, and the only thing that matters is survival of the
country or society and its way of life.

Western nations are not immune from the atrocities of a crisis war.
In World War II, American troops were sent onto the beaches of
Normandy, even though it was known that tens of thousands of them
would be slaughtered. Later, the reverse happened as the Allies
firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, and then nuked Japanese cities. These
events fit the definitions of "war crime" because they targeted large
numbers of innocent civilians, and would be described as such if it
weren't for the fact that Western nations won the war.

All nations and societies perform these atrocities during a
generational crisis war, especially as the climax of the war
approaches. But there are two distinctly different kinds of
generational crisis wars, and it's important to treat them separately,
because their behaviors during the following Awakening eras are
completely different.

In an external war, one nation's army invades another nation, with the
intent to capture territory or resources. There may be atrocities,
including torture, rape, and mass slaughter, but in the typical case,
when the war ends, the invading army leaves the country that it
invaded, and future relations between the two countries can be
negotiated through international diplomacy, such as in the United
Nations. The two sides do not have to "live with" one another.

But that's very different from an internal civil war, where one tribe
or ethnic group fights another within the same country. Typically,
the two tribes live in the same cities, neighborhoods and streets,
work in the same businesses, intermarry and allow their children to
play with one another.

So for example in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Hutus and Tutsis 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." The radio
announcement, which was heard all over the country, was some sort of
visceral signal. 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.

So when the war ends, the situation is quite different than in the
external war, since these two tribes or ethnic groups still have to
live with one another, in the same cities, streets and neighborhoods.
There are always calls for reconciliation and little feel-good news
stories, but the horrific atrocities are never forgotten. Even worse,
each tribe remembers the atrocities that the other side committed, but
develops amnesia about the atrocities that its own side committed.
And those partial memories are passed down to the children, who come
of age during the generational Awakening era.

Generational Dynamics is based on the foundational work on
generational theory developed by Strauss and Howe and published in
their book The Fourth Turning. That book was brilliant at the time
that it was published, but the research is now 25 years old, is badly
out of date, and has been shown to contain a number of serious errors.

The core error is the assumption that all generational timelines of
all nations are synchronized with each other, and in particular are
synchronized with "Anglo-American timeline" of Britain and North
America since the 1400s. The book doesn't even recognize the concept
of Awakening eras in other countries, since they are a time of
spiritual awakening and new ideas that are only possible in the
atmosphere of freedom that occurred in Britain and America. If they
exist at all in other countries, then they're synchronized with
Britain and America, which doesn't even make sense since there's no
reason why a tribe in mid-Africa should be following the timeline of
medieval England.

This core assumption is discarded in Generational Dynamics in favor of
the "Principle of Localization," which says that each society and
nation has a separate and distinct generational timeline throughout
history, although timelines of two countries can merge at times of
massive invasions and genocide.

So now returning to the distinction between external and internal
wars, the Awakening eras of different countries are quite different.
The spiritual awakening described by the Fourth Turning may occur in
America and Britain, but it certainly does not occur in the other
countries we've been discussing, the ones that fought tribal or ethnic
internal civil wars. In those countries, an Awakening era is a time
of government oppression, jailings and torture, in order to suppress
the other tribe or ethnic group.

There is some commonality between the two kinds of Awakening eras. In
both cases, they begin 15-20 years after the climax of the preceding
crisis war, when the new generation growing up after the war comes of
age and can make its voice heard -- and does so in riots and youth
demonstrations protesting government policies.

In the case of an Awakening era following an external war, these
anti-government protests do have a flavor of spiritual awakening, as
they did in America in the 1960s. But in countries where the
Awakening era follows a tribal or ethnic civil war, these protests are
seen by the government leaders as a threat being posed by the tribe or
ethnic group on the other side in the war. For that reason, the
government leaders suppress them, often violently.

This was true in all the countries that we've been discussing recently
and comparing with one another -- Cambodia, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe,
Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, DRC, and so forth. All of these
countries are currently in generational Awakening eras following a
tribal or ethnic crisis civil war in the 1960s-80s, and they're on
completely different timelines than America and Britain. And yet,
they're all very similar in that the leaders are doing everything
possible to stay in power for decades.

One question that I'm asked frequently is why this analysis doesn't
apply to the American Civil War of the 1860s.

The American civil war was not a war between two tribes or ethnic
groups, as the black slaves generally supported the South. The fault
line was geographical (North vs South), and so it had the
characteristics of an external war. The tribal and ethnic civil wars
that I've been talking about occur when two ethnic groups live
together, often in the same villages and neighborhoods, and people
start raping, torturing and slaughtering their next door neighbors.
This is a highly personal kind of war, very different from an external
war, where one country raises an army and invades another country, and
then the army withdraws when the war ends. The American North and
South were like two separate countries, with very different economies
and lifestyles, not like Hutus and Tutsis living next door to each
other. That's why that kind of personal civil war could not have
occurred, and the two were really more like two separate countries.
If the black slaves had risen up and fought against the southern
whites, then the Awakening era would have been far bloodier.

There are many events and actions in history that seem completely
inexplicable. How could anyone have been so delusional and so stupid
as to do X? The Generational Dynamics discovery of the significance
of generational Awakening eras in countries after a tribal or ethnic
civil war provides answers to many questions that have puzzled
historians for decades or even centuries.

Related Mainstream media frets over Steve Bannon, the Fourth Turning, and Donald Trump (09-Feb-2017)


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Cambodia, Killing fields, Hun Sen,
Cambodia National Rescue party, CNRP, Kem Sokha,
Cambodian People's Party (CPP, Lon Nol,
Zimbabwe, Constantino Guvheya Nyikadzino Chiwenga,
Syria, Burundi, Cameroon, Rwanda, Hutus, Tutsis,
Principle of Localization, Steve Bannon

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John J. Xenakis
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