Generational Dynamics World View News

[Navigator]

In further reply to Tim:

In my original message about Nuclear war, I pointed out that Germany had the means to spread Nerve Gas across the entirety of Great Britain in WW2.

The could have done so with submarines, even late in the war. The could also have put nerve gas into V1s and V2s. This would have dramatically increased their effect on the civilian population. But they didn't. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is the reason. They thought the Allies also had nerve agents.

Hitler of course would have nuked London had he had the capability. But he would not have had the capability to do a superpower nuclear exchange of the magnitude that is now possible. Not even 1/100 of 1%. USA use of nuclear weapons in the war was not going to end life on Earth. this capability was only achieved with the advent of thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs).

I agree that WW3 will be a population vs population war, that casualties, military and civilian will be horrific. Every time mankind enters this part of the cycle it far outdoes what happened in the past (US Civil War vs Napoleonic Wars; WW1 vs US Civil War; WW2 vs WW1) .

[Guest]

** 21-May-2021 World View: Modern Barbarism


Barbarism means "extreme cruelty or brutality." This is the way
people are today and always have been. Torture and beatings are
common in many countries today. I cannot fathom why you believe
otherwise.

That is one definition but I'm using the more common one; backward or uncivilized.

I am very much aware of the brutality that exists in many countries.

That's how I use it too. Barbarism that reduces countries to failed states.

[DaKardii]

I would estimate about 3-5 years after WW3. WW3 will accelerate everything.

Such an outcome could be enough to reconcile your prediction and John's. If the interwar period is short enough, one might as well consider the two wars to be part of a larger war that happened to have a few-years-long ceasefire.

Some historians view the first two World Wars that way, but because the "ceasefire" was around 20 years long most historians disagree with that analysis.

So anyway, I don't know if a bifurcated World War could occur in the
current era. I guess the candidates would be a Mideast World War,
followed some time later by a completely separate Asian World War. I
don't think that's possible, but who knows? Of course, if these two
"separate" World Wars occur too close together, then they'll just be
combined into World War III.

IF the two wars happen separately, I can't see the interwar period being longer than a decade. Otherwise, the entire "extended" conflict will play out over the course of longer than a single generation.

But then again, preparation for a world war takes time. So the interwar period will probably be closer to ten years than it will be to five. Think of the original interwar period, playing out at twice the speed:

1) Two to three years of post-war chaos. Eastern Europe and the Middle East descend into anarchy and civil war as old regional powers fall and new regional powers rise. Borders are completely re-drawn, while large-scale genocides take place. The rest of the world will fare significantly better, but will also experience a post-war malaise that is driven largely by dissatisfaction with the first war's outcome. Meanwhile, the global economy will experience a major recession due to post-war demobilization. It will be during this period that the new totalitarian movements Navigator and I have been talking about will begin to emerge.

2) Three to four years of prosperity, driven by the desire to "return to normalcy" and the major technological advances made during the first war.

3) Five to six years of further destabilization, as the global economy experiences a depression and the new totalitarian movements finally come to power.

4) The second war begins.

[DaKardii]

For a story I plan to write, I postulate one several seculae ahead as "The Transcension", based on memetics as Communism was based on economics. It postulates controlling the growth of memes to create a world society (Mars in this case) in which each individual ends up linked to all others by superadvanced communication technology (such as BMI) to become effectively neurons in a group mind which will transcend the individual as the person transcends a neuron, producing a "Phase Change" into a Hyperintelligent entity (since I assume that AGI is impossible).

To a certain extent we're already seeing a precursor to that today, in the alt-left and especially the alt-right. However, it will be decades before a true, non-satire "meme ideology" actually becomes a thing.

For comparison, 62 years passed between the introduction of Enlightenment works to the American academia and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

74 years passed between the beginning of the French Enlightenment and the storming of the Bastille.

Approximately 55 years passed between the publishing of The Wealth of Nations and the emergence of modern capitalism.

69 years passed between the publishing of The Communist Manifesto and the Bolshevik Revolution.

74 years passed between the emergence of modern nationalism and the March on Rome.

79 years passed between the first serious attempt to fuse communism and fascism by the Strasserist movement and the founding of Fourth Theory.

And speaking of Fourth Theory, do not underestimate its appeal to both the far-left and the far-right. Its ideas will be a force to reckon with, especially after "Part I" of the next World War.

[Tom Mazanec]

This phase of my story is ~23rd Century, DaKardii.

[tim]

In further reply to Tim:

In my original message about Nuclear war, I pointed out that Germany had the means to spread Nerve Gas across the entirety of Great Britain in WW2.

The could have done so with submarines, even late in the war. The could also have put nerve gas into V1s and V2s. This would have dramatically increased their effect on the civilian population. But they didn't. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is the reason. They thought the Allies also had nerve agents.

Hitler of course would have nuked London had he had the capability. But he would not have had the capability to do a superpower nuclear exchange of the magnitude that is now possible. Not even 1/100 of 1%. USA use of nuclear weapons in the war was not going to end life on Earth. this capability was only achieved with the advent of thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs).

I agree that WW3 will be a population vs population war, that casualties, military and civilian will be horrific. Every time mankind enters this part of the cycle it far outdoes what happened in the past (US Civil War vs Napoleonic Wars; WW1 vs US Civil War; WW2 vs WW1) .

This is a subject I am going to look into. I'm also not that familiar with the chemical attacks used in the Iran-Iraq War or their use in Syria.

In his book, “Of Spies and Stratagems,” Stanley P. Lovell, the head of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services during the war, says historians would be wise to dismiss the notion that nerve gas munitions were not used in World War II for humanitarian reasons.

At the war trials at Nuremberg, Nazi leader Hermann Göring was asked why the Germans did not use “Gas Blau” to stop the Normandy invasion. Lovell paraphrases Göring’s explanation that it was because they could not create suitable gas masks for horses, which were critical for transporting supplies.

From “Of Spies and Stratagems,” by Stanley Lovell:

Q. We know you had Gas Blau [a name used for nerve gas] which would have stopped the Normandy invasion. Why didn’t you use it?

A. Die Pferde (the horses).

Q. What have horses to do with it?

A. Everything. A horse lies down in the shafts or between the thills as soon as his breathing is restricted. We never have had a gas mask a horse would tolerate.

Q. What has that to do with Normandy?

A. We did not have enough gasoline to adequately supply the German Air Force and the Panzer Divisions, so we used horse transport in all operations. You must have known that the first thing we did in Poland, France, everywhere, was to seize the horses. All our material was horse-drawn. Had we used gas you would have retaliated and you would have instantly immobilized us.

Q. Was it that serious, Marshal?

A. I tell you, you would have won the war years ago if you had used gas – not on our soldiers, but on our transportation system. Your intelligence men are asses!

Iraq chemical attacks against Iran refers to chemical attacks used by the Iraqi armed forces against Iranian combatants and non-combatants. The Iraqi armed forces employed chemical weapons against combatants and non-combatants in border cities and villages and more than 30 attacks against Iranian civilians were reported. There were chemical attacks against some medical centers and hospitals by the Iraqi army.[1] According to a 2002 article in the Star-Ledger, 20,000 Iranian combatants and combat medics were killed on the spot by nerve gas. As of 2002, 5,000 of the 80,000 survivors continue to seek regular medical treatment, while 1,000 are hospital inpatients.[2][3] According to the Geneva Protocol, chemical attacks were banned, but in practice, to prevent an Iranian victory, the United States supported the Iraqi army in their use of chemical weapons

[Navigator]

Tim,

This is good info. Didn't know about the Goering quote, so I learned something interesting there.

My point though is that current leaders, even though the bad ones are literally mass murderers (Putin / Xi) is that I dont think either is going to use full out nuclear exchange. Even when they are losing. First off, they don't want the result to be that the earth is uninhabitable (which is what would happen if massive numbers/yields of nukes are used), as this would mean that it isn't habitable for them personally either. And second, if it looked like they were losing, they would want a "Kaiser Wilhelm" result, where they get a cushy protected retirement.

I used the nerve gas non-use in WW2 as an example of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) preventing either side from using such weapons. Note that when one side couldn't respond, the other side was planning to use them (the USA was going to use poison gas in the anticipated invasion of Japan. This is because at that point, fall 1945, the Japanese were utterly incapable of responding in kind).

This does not mean that I don't think nukes will be used in WW3. In the case of India/Pakistan, I can certainly see them using their entire inventory of A-bombs on each other. Also, I think that China/US/Russia would use nukes at sea, or against areas of almost purely military nature (isolated airbases and missile sites).

But when a new generation of leaders emerges out of the WW3 ashes, modern day Hitler/Stalin types, all such rationale ends. Such people are not necessarily swayed by MAD, and may even want the planet to become uninhabitable.

[John]

26-May-21 World View -- The aftermath of the Israel - Gaza war

What did the Israelis accomplish? Mowing the lawn


** 26-May-21 World View -- The aftermath of the Israel - Gaza war
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e210526



Contents:
The Gaza-Israel war by the numbers
What did the Gaza Palestinians accomplish? International attention
What did the Israelis accomplish? Mowing the lawn
The Biden Administration plans
The future of the Mideast


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Israel, Gaza, West Bank, Palestine,
Hamas, Fatah, Yassir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Iran, Hamed Abdel-Samad, Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh, Sa'ud Al-Fawzan,
Ashkelon, Sderot, Tel Aviv, Alon Davidi, Egypt,
Iron Dome, two-state solution

[DaKardii]

But when a new generation of leaders emerges out of the WW3 ashes, modern day Hitler/Stalin types, all such rationale ends. Such people are not necessarily swayed by MAD, and may even want the planet to become uninhabitable.

Even Hitler was swayed by MAD, as you stated earlier. So if these future leaders won't be, then objectively they will be even more evil than Hitler (and Stalin).

[DaKardii]

The sooner Biden and Putin meet, the better.

https://news.trust.org/item/20210525125506-hzi40