Is it just me or is the 21st century....rather boring?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-16-2020, 09:16 AM)Isoko Wrote: Bob,

I would inherently argue that it is only nuclear weapons and other WMDs that have kept the peace. Had they not existed, I think you would have found another world war by now with millions of millennial and zoomer men be drafted in to fight. I think many would have happily answered the call.

So yes, nukes have kept the peace, for now. However I'd argue that in essence, it is only being kept peaceful because of largely secular governments in power. If ever a radical party with strong religious inclinations ever took power, the nukes would fly. 

Even still, the reason, in my opinions, this 4T keeps on going is because of the lack of war. Naturally the revival comes when one generation goes off to fight, the survivors come home, they have plenty of sex, it creates a baby boom and then you have an economic revival. But this has not been allowed to naturally happen this time around which either leads me to two conclusions:

1) The status quo will continue to remain with Western countries continuing a long ward decline over the decades with few changes.

2) People get revolutionary and civil wars happen all over the place, filling that void for war and leading to a faster revival.

It is cold, hard thinking, but looking back at history, this seems to be the pattern.

Of course maybe just maybe peace can win out and a revival can happen naturally but it'll be a much slower process compared to say 1945 - 1960.

Nukes are a definite factor, but not the only one.  The other is insurgency.  In the old days only the mother country sized control of a colony, and other major powers generally kept hands off.  Of late, somebody who doesn’t care for the mother country will support an insurrection.  In such a case, war becomes not cost effective.  It is very hard to make a profit out of a permanently destabilized area.

OK if I borrow Smedley Butler’s claim that war is a racket?  If a major power sees war is likely to either end in a nuclear hailstorm or a perpetual insurrection, where is the profit?  Is it wiser to seek a more profitable racket?

The natural result of a crisis war in the Industrial Age was rejection of war.  For as long as people remembered the crisis war, they avoided letting themselves care deeply enough for an issue to fight that hard again.  These days, perhaps the thought of a nuclear hellstorm is the equivalent of a crisis war.  Those in the shadow of nukes have a healthy dislike for conflict and will not support a leader who leads towards a conflict between nuclear powers.  Perhaps Bush 43’s wars were in a part a war for oil.  Perhaps the American people looked at the result and decided the gain from the racket was not worth putting boots on the ground.  The result again is a reluctance to engage in war.

So that is two reasons to not believe in war rackets in the Information Age.  That is quite enough.

The problem is the pattern of history changing.  We just entered the Information Age, but people are still applying the lessons of the Industrial Age as if the pattern of civilization has not changed.  Especially if the problem involves nukes, insurrection, computer networks or renewable energy, I am not impressed by the lessons of history.  They are all tentative.  You have to assume they will not hold until you see them repeating.  You have to depend far more on recent observation and analysis than history of the prior ages.

Think of this as the first crisis of the new age.  War triggers are much more rare.  The turnings that we are apt to eventually fall into have not established themselves.  Historians who predict the old age’s pattern will continue to exist in a new age should open their eyes to the possibility that they might not.