05-14-2020, 12:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-14-2020, 12:53 PM by Bob Butler 54.)
[understatement] Since World War II, Japan did a cultural reboot. [/understatement] Japan is not what it once was. Back in the 1930s, I would go along with xenophobic and aggressive evaluation and in no way nominate them as exemplars of the Enlightenment virtues. Today? After being nuked? After an occupation by America? In observing their behavior since? If you didn’t notice the change, it is time to abandon your predictor license.
China is harder to read. Still, when Mao first took over, and there was a conflict between the revolutionaries and the servants of the Robber Barons, between the Reds and the Experts, you know who Mao would firmly side with. With an ideological mind set and too many people telling him what he wanted to hear, he botched it. He wound up selling food during a famine and killing a good number of his people. He wound up killing a lot of birds that kept the farm ecology in balance, exasperating things.
These days, the oligarchs are the experts while the Reds in the government keep their hands off if the oligarchs keep it vaguely reasonable. They learned. They changed.
Today (or until recently) China was expanding financially, notably in the Middle East and Africa. They were using their large and robust economy to sink their influence into distant parts of the world. They did what they could, but the coronavirus gave rise to the old xenophobic response. They took a few steps back, nothing that couldn’t be overcome. I wager they will, and the xenophobia would further fade, attacked by both the Reds and the Experts.
I would put their interest in invading Japan as Nil. The Japanese were just one of the many foreign powers exploiting the country through their robber baron puppets. More real is their old enemy in Taiwan, if they want to start a sea war with the United States. As the have recently canceled their 5th and 6th carriers for want of an aircraft that could launch at sea with a full fuel load and payload, it is back to the drawing board. As an old Cold War treaty just expired, their advantage in missile ranges is going away. As an autocratic power it is not surprising that they want to expand in the East China Sea, but this would not be a crisis war. It would be a land grab which would again involve a sea war with the United States. This is about as likely as the US starting a land war in Asia.
Yes, the old mentality was one of aggression. The low level officers were looking for any excuse for an incident. The men used this as a license to be aggressive. Not clear that this mentality is as pervasive today as it once was.
I am tempted to say a Vulcan would raise an eyebrow at your analyses. “Interesting.” A Romulan might leap forward, grab you by the throat, say something like “You called me what?” and drop you from his social calendar. Well. Maybe he would plot something more drastic.
In short, you are minimizing the fact that there has been a change of ages. You are assuming Industrial Age cultures will continue unchanged, that cultures will not shift to an Information Age pattern. You are going with a vision in S&H that exists outside academia, and ignoring one that is more accepted by main line historians.
We will just have to see how many crisis wars occur among nuclear powers in the World War II crisis window during this line up of the prophet-nomad-hero generations. I suspect you will come up with nothing. This will not lessen the accuracy of Generational Dynamics among cultures who have not advanced as far.
I thought the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand was a rational act by Serbia? The way I heard it, there had been a decision made that the motorcade would avoid the Serbian part of town, but they forgot to tell the driver. That would put it on the accident side.
China is harder to read. Still, when Mao first took over, and there was a conflict between the revolutionaries and the servants of the Robber Barons, between the Reds and the Experts, you know who Mao would firmly side with. With an ideological mind set and too many people telling him what he wanted to hear, he botched it. He wound up selling food during a famine and killing a good number of his people. He wound up killing a lot of birds that kept the farm ecology in balance, exasperating things.
These days, the oligarchs are the experts while the Reds in the government keep their hands off if the oligarchs keep it vaguely reasonable. They learned. They changed.
Today (or until recently) China was expanding financially, notably in the Middle East and Africa. They were using their large and robust economy to sink their influence into distant parts of the world. They did what they could, but the coronavirus gave rise to the old xenophobic response. They took a few steps back, nothing that couldn’t be overcome. I wager they will, and the xenophobia would further fade, attacked by both the Reds and the Experts.
I would put their interest in invading Japan as Nil. The Japanese were just one of the many foreign powers exploiting the country through their robber baron puppets. More real is their old enemy in Taiwan, if they want to start a sea war with the United States. As the have recently canceled their 5th and 6th carriers for want of an aircraft that could launch at sea with a full fuel load and payload, it is back to the drawing board. As an old Cold War treaty just expired, their advantage in missile ranges is going away. As an autocratic power it is not surprising that they want to expand in the East China Sea, but this would not be a crisis war. It would be a land grab which would again involve a sea war with the United States. This is about as likely as the US starting a land war in Asia.
Yes, the old mentality was one of aggression. The low level officers were looking for any excuse for an incident. The men used this as a license to be aggressive. Not clear that this mentality is as pervasive today as it once was.
I am tempted to say a Vulcan would raise an eyebrow at your analyses. “Interesting.” A Romulan might leap forward, grab you by the throat, say something like “You called me what?” and drop you from his social calendar. Well. Maybe he would plot something more drastic.
In short, you are minimizing the fact that there has been a change of ages. You are assuming Industrial Age cultures will continue unchanged, that cultures will not shift to an Information Age pattern. You are going with a vision in S&H that exists outside academia, and ignoring one that is more accepted by main line historians.
We will just have to see how many crisis wars occur among nuclear powers in the World War II crisis window during this line up of the prophet-nomad-hero generations. I suspect you will come up with nothing. This will not lessen the accuracy of Generational Dynamics among cultures who have not advanced as far.
***
I thought the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand was a rational act by Serbia? The way I heard it, there had been a decision made that the motorcade would avoid the Serbian part of town, but they forgot to tell the driver. That would put it on the accident side.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
