12-15-2019, 10:49 AM
** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Chaos Theory and World War
I agree, but that didn't stop the two sides from THINKING that they
were mutual existential threats.
That's an interesting way of looking at, and it seems to be valid.
Now you've REALLY hit on something extremely complicated that I've
been writing on the edges of, but never fully developed. I love
dangling prepositions. Don't you?
Anyway, I'll start with one of my favorite examples, that I mention
frequently: The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Arguably, everybody already "knew" that a war between Israel and
Lebanon would be coming some day, but didn't know when. Various
diplomatic steps were being taken all the time -- by the Lebanese, the
Israelis, the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and other
interested parties to prevent such a war, or at least to postpone it
as long as possible.
However, as it turned out, all those massive diplomatic steps were
100% USELESS. Here's what happened on or around July 12, 2006:
So all that multi-national diplomacy was for nothing, because of a
chaotic event that could not be predicted: That Israel's government
went into a state of total panic.
So, that brings us back to your question: Can you speed up or delay an
inevitable war? If it's a war triggered by a chaotic event during a
generational Crisis era, then the answer is NO. There's no action
that you can take that will either cause or prevent such a war, or
that will speed up or delay such a war.
This takes us to the concepts of Chaos Theory. You cannot predict,
cause, delay or speed up a chaotic event.
The iconic example is that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China,
then it will trigger a chain of events that could cause a hurricane in
North America.
So you might say, "Gee, it would be fun to take a trip to Beijing, and
while I'm there I'll get a butterfly to flap its wings and cause a
hurricane in North America."
Obviously that won't work, because there's more to the iconic example.
A butterfly flapping its wings in China will almost certainly have no
effect at all, but it MIGHT cause a hurricane in North America, or it
MIGHT prevent a hurricane from occurring that otherwise would have
occurred, or it MIGHT speed up or delay such a hurricane. It's
impossible to predict.
So all those diplomatic efforts to prevent a war between Israel and
Hezbollah might actually have CAUSED the war. For example, maybe it
was because of all those diplomatic efforts that both Israel's
military and Hezbollah's militia were patrolling on opposite sides of
the border on July 12, 2006, resulting in the abduction and the war.
Maybe if there hadn't been any diplomatic efforts, there wouldn't have
been a war at all. It's impossible to say, one way or the other.
However, there's another important side to all this: Preparation.
You can't take steps to cause, prevent, speed up or delay a chaotic
event that triggers a war, but if you know that the war is inevitable,
then you can prepare for the war, and you can try to prevent your
enemy from preparing.
So China's military is preparing for war by heavily subsidizing Huawei
and TikTok, and both are wildly successful at collecting massive
amounts of information to be stored in China's massive big data social
database. This will give China the information it needs to bribe or
threaten any Western politician or soldier at any time, or to take
complete control of foreign networks at time of war.
Trump is preparing for war by increasing the defense budget.
Trump is using the trade dispute as a means to cripple the Chinese
military's supply chain, in order to weaken it. Trump is also
blocking use of Huawei in the networks of America and its allies.
None of these steps will prevent a war. In fact, as I've pointed out
many times, the US established an embargo on oil and gasoline exports
to Japan on August 1, 1941, and on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor. A lot of people have said (and I've said) that the US embargo
resulted in the Pearl Harbor bombing, but in fact it's far from clear
whether the Pearl Harbor bombing would have occurred anyway.
So will Trump's US-China trade sanctions cause a war with China? I
happen to believe not. I still expect the war to be triggered by some
trivial event, the equivalent of the abduction of two soldiers,
occurring in Kashmir, the Mideast, the South China Sea, Central Asia,
or anywhere else.
This brings us back to the statement by Carlos Gutierrez that I was
criticizing on Friday, the implication that by merely calling China a
strategic threat, then you will cause a war with China. As I've said,
there is no way to cause, prevent, speed up or delay an inevitable war
with China, least of all by calling China a strategic threat.
FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> Apparently, the US and USSR actually WEREN'T truly existential
> threats to one another!
> ..how wacky is that to discover after all this time,.. and
> expense!?<chuckle, chuckle, chuckle!>
I agree, but that didn't stop the two sides from THINKING that they
were mutual existential threats.
FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> As you've said, the REALLY REAL existential threat to China is
> CHINA! China is most worried about the internal threat of their
> own population who seem addicted to regular-ish rebellion.
> ..but they try to maintain their "stability" through demonizing
> "outside powers".
> I suppose that one could surmise that we should have known that
> Russia and the US weren't really existential threats to one
> another long long ago simple by the fact that we hadn't
> "exponentially heightened" our mutual antagonisms into war
> somewhere in the 1970's or 1980's,.. or more likely the
> 1960's.
That's an interesting way of looking at, and it seems to be valid.
FishbellykanakaDude Wrote:> So, how do we decide that there will be war between antagonists,
> if not by their mutual level of antagonism?
> ..we "know" there will be war because their generational
> condition(s) "matches" the "gotta have a WAR!" template for (one
> or both of) the belligerents.
> BUT,.. it is possible to speed up or slow down the commencement of
> a war by being "naughty or nice" to "the enemy", while the
> inevitability of said war is not effected at all.
Now you've REALLY hit on something extremely complicated that I've
been writing on the edges of, but never fully developed. I love
dangling prepositions. Don't you?
Anyway, I'll start with one of my favorite examples, that I mention
frequently: The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Arguably, everybody already "knew" that a war between Israel and
Lebanon would be coming some day, but didn't know when. Various
diplomatic steps were being taken all the time -- by the Lebanese, the
Israelis, the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and other
interested parties to prevent such a war, or at least to postpone it
as long as possible.
However, as it turned out, all those massive diplomatic steps were
100% USELESS. Here's what happened on or around July 12, 2006:
- Two Israeli soldiers just happened to be patrolling near the
border with Lebanon.
- Some members of the Hezbollah militia just happened to see them,
and decided to cross the border and abduct them.
- Israel's government went into a state of total panic.
- Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called this "an act of war,"
and within a few hours, Israel was mobilized for war.
- Israel launched the war with no plan and no objective. Each day,
Israel lurched from one plan and objective to the next, as the
previous one failed. In the end, the war was a disaster for both
Israel and Lebanon, and accomplished nothing except the destruction of
a lot of Lebanon's infrastructure. The war fizzled quickly because
Lebanon and Hezbollah were in a generational Awakening era.
So all that multi-national diplomacy was for nothing, because of a
chaotic event that could not be predicted: That Israel's government
went into a state of total panic.
So, that brings us back to your question: Can you speed up or delay an
inevitable war? If it's a war triggered by a chaotic event during a
generational Crisis era, then the answer is NO. There's no action
that you can take that will either cause or prevent such a war, or
that will speed up or delay such a war.
This takes us to the concepts of Chaos Theory. You cannot predict,
cause, delay or speed up a chaotic event.
The iconic example is that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China,
then it will trigger a chain of events that could cause a hurricane in
North America.
So you might say, "Gee, it would be fun to take a trip to Beijing, and
while I'm there I'll get a butterfly to flap its wings and cause a
hurricane in North America."
Obviously that won't work, because there's more to the iconic example.
A butterfly flapping its wings in China will almost certainly have no
effect at all, but it MIGHT cause a hurricane in North America, or it
MIGHT prevent a hurricane from occurring that otherwise would have
occurred, or it MIGHT speed up or delay such a hurricane. It's
impossible to predict.
So all those diplomatic efforts to prevent a war between Israel and
Hezbollah might actually have CAUSED the war. For example, maybe it
was because of all those diplomatic efforts that both Israel's
military and Hezbollah's militia were patrolling on opposite sides of
the border on July 12, 2006, resulting in the abduction and the war.
Maybe if there hadn't been any diplomatic efforts, there wouldn't have
been a war at all. It's impossible to say, one way or the other.
However, there's another important side to all this: Preparation.
You can't take steps to cause, prevent, speed up or delay a chaotic
event that triggers a war, but if you know that the war is inevitable,
then you can prepare for the war, and you can try to prevent your
enemy from preparing.
So China's military is preparing for war by heavily subsidizing Huawei
and TikTok, and both are wildly successful at collecting massive
amounts of information to be stored in China's massive big data social
database. This will give China the information it needs to bribe or
threaten any Western politician or soldier at any time, or to take
complete control of foreign networks at time of war.
Trump is preparing for war by increasing the defense budget.
Trump is using the trade dispute as a means to cripple the Chinese
military's supply chain, in order to weaken it. Trump is also
blocking use of Huawei in the networks of America and its allies.
None of these steps will prevent a war. In fact, as I've pointed out
many times, the US established an embargo on oil and gasoline exports
to Japan on August 1, 1941, and on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor. A lot of people have said (and I've said) that the US embargo
resulted in the Pearl Harbor bombing, but in fact it's far from clear
whether the Pearl Harbor bombing would have occurred anyway.
So will Trump's US-China trade sanctions cause a war with China? I
happen to believe not. I still expect the war to be triggered by some
trivial event, the equivalent of the abduction of two soldiers,
occurring in Kashmir, the Mideast, the South China Sea, Central Asia,
or anywhere else.
This brings us back to the statement by Carlos Gutierrez that I was
criticizing on Friday, the implication that by merely calling China a
strategic threat, then you will cause a war with China. As I've said,
there is no way to cause, prevent, speed up or delay an inevitable war
with China, least of all by calling China a strategic threat.
