Subject: RE: The US today From: "Bill Howell. Retired from NRCan. now in Alberta Canada" Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2015 10:01:35 -0700 To: "Gordon Ball. PEng Aircraft Landing Nav Systems. Ottawa" Cc: I don't know if the message below went through a minute ago - a glitch happened, so I am re-sending. On last point, a favourite saying I have based on history : "Fools and cowards SHOULD be conquered, it is unethical and immoral NOT to do so." Note that I said SHOULD - not "might be" or "deserve to be". -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: FRE: The US today Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2015 09:51:54 -0700 From: Bill Howell. Retired from NRCan. now in Alberta Canada <> To: Gordon Ball. PEng Aircraft Landing Nav Systems. Ottawa <> I no longer read the news everyday (something I did all of my life!), so on many things I am out of the loop. I tend to read deep analysis that catches my eye, but kind of on a [sparse, random] sampling basis, and I miss a lot. So here goes a lot of guesswork - random, scattered thoughts, most of which will be wrong. Our perceptions always lag reality by about a generation or so, and often for much longer than that. The way I see it, most commentary is seriously anachronistic. While the americans NEVER counted for much within the Soviet and Chinese blocs (with a big change for the "freed ex-Soviet states, to a limit), they now account for very little in many key regions of the world. +-----+ USA The USA is still a great nation, but there has been a complete readjustment in the relative [economic, political,military] power balances in the world, and they account for far less weight now than even in 2000. Their relative decline (not collapse!) will greatly accelerate with the rise of the democrats and "Government of the parasites, by the parasites, and for the parasites", their inability to deal with their debt addiction. I don't see this as a bad thing, just normal history in development. The Americans (Franklin Delano Roosevelt leading) intentionally destroyed the British power, and others will now do the same to the USA. None of the rising powers (with a partial exception of India) hold Western beliefs such as individual initiative (just about suffocated in the USA now and groupthink dominates), freedom, freedom from torture, indepenent thinking. So that is the direction that I see for that one dimension (of many). - [Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Philippines] now must toe the Chinese line more and more (still with American influence, but for many the dominance is now Chinese except for exports). What Americans say there can politly be disregarded to some extent. - Middle East - The USA military operations in [Afganistan, Iraq, Syria] have been a route, and it's a bit of a free-for-all, but my sense is that the region is "returning to normal" and will eject foreign powers within a generation, maybe two. I suspect several (besides longstanding Pakistan) have nuclear weapons, and will use them if necessary. Furthermore, even Iran's missles can reach Turkey by admission, and I suspect they can now hit Europe. Their economic power will broaden from oil, perhaps slowly as oil wealth is a huge disincentive to becoming agressively competitive. - The Americans are now soft and too politically correct to be effective. The worlds greatest fighters are now Muslim - overwhelmingly, but they have much catchup to do with weapons systems. Being saddled with the responsibilities for a lot of the world's problems, and because of their PAST wealth and power, the USA continues to be everybody's flogging horse - notably by Canadians as well. Canda's marching orders from foreign powers will predictably increase in importance (Roberts misses this point, as it also applies to the USA, and the "corporations" have no say in this at all). +-----+ China For now, China is the "USA of the 21st century, as Britain was for the 19th century to a lesser extent. The Chinese are capable of launching a [major,rapid] military buildup for WWIII, whereas my guess is that the Americans can no longer do that (at the least it will be difficult). The Chinese now overwhelm the USA in the most advanced areas of fundamental scientific and engineering research, they are now the manufacturing innovators (still lag in some things, but that will come very soon - just as with the Japanes did from being Post WWII "cheap mas producers of junk" to the premium quality global manufactures several decades ago (then to decline in impact follow the 1989 crash). +-----+ India Many say that demographics will lead to a roll-over of influence from China to India in the 2030-2050 timeframe, but that depends on whether strong leadership is possible. If not they may be conquered - which is their "normal" historical situation, just as it was for ancient Egypt (in spite of essentially all hisorians saying differently). I really question whether India can become a "Roman Empire", and that doubt does apply to China as well, but not to the same degree. +-----+ Poland, Turkey, Persia, Arab It's easy to forget these areas, but as an example, both Churchill (1900) and Toynbee (1920's or 1930's?) both thought that, while history is impossible to predict, if they had to guess, Islam would win. You ignore regions like this at your peril - history shows the consequences for those who did (as an example - Rome would speak loudly to that). +-----+ RUSSIA I suspect you may be most interested in comments about Russia, and this is a big weakness for me. But a great advantage of the Russians is their exposure to "wars on all fronts". This is far worse than the german situation!, and something [Great Britain, France, Spain] never really knew (at least from the perspective of land invasions). While the the Russians went through WWII, those generations and their lessons are mostly gone (eg - Ibn Kaldun below). The Americans went through that 1861-1865 in the civil war, but not since. Still, among the major powers the Russians have the riskiest and most dangerous exposure, and that position may be the best [teacher, motivator]. To me, the most interesting question is Russian leadership. For some time, I didn't think Putin had much going for him on the scale of [Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin], and while I still don't think he is a leader of that scale, I am more impressed with him all the time (impressed doesn't mean that I like him or what he represents, but my likes are irrelevant), and I see him as the top leader in the world today (with the possible exception of the Chinese leader whose name I don't remember - but they are very difficult to read. I now strongly feel (not believe) that Joseph Stalin was the overwhelmingly dominant figure of the 20th century, and his influence is easily seen today in Crimea, Ukraine, Middle East. But Putin doesn't have to be at that scale of leadership - the IQ of the USA and European leaders today is the lowest that it has ever been. And if Putin isn't at that level, history suggests that there is likely another Stalin waiting in the shadows... +-----+ Historians Arnold J Toynbee and Ibn Kaldun (?spelling?) For a long time, Toynbee was my favorite historian (I read almost all of his massive volumes of "the "Study of History". Toynbee often cited Ibn Kaldun, whose work "The Muqqadima" (?spelling?) I've partially read - and man am I impressed! For the short term, Kaldun's thoughts seem very appropriate when looking at the relative decline of the USA, whereas it's harder to see Toynbee's longer-term thinking (espeically challenge and response, and military brightness during the stages of advancing decline). Toynbee's concept of "challenge and response" does state that in order to successfully survive, civilisations must reject and replace their core beliefs. Can Westenr civilisation rject [democracy, freedom, freedom from torture]? I really doubt that, as we are far to gone, far too "politically correct", far too influence by university profs and other "loveable idiots". +-----+ Historians Immanuel Velikovsky, Robert ?Schoch?, Stephen Puetz Actually, neither Velikovsky (deceased), nor Schock, nor Puetz [was, is] an historian, but in my eyes they are possibly the greatest historians in terms of "history's greatest killers", whatever the unknown natural event(s) may be. In light of those concepts, depending on whether we happen to live in "one of those times", nothing I say in sections above is relevant. By the way : this AWESOME, beautiful paper gives food for BIG thought (download the link) : Puetz, Stephen J., Prokoph, Andreas, Borchardt, Glenn, and Mason, Edward W., 2014, Evidence of Synchronous, Decadal to Billion Year Cycles in Geological, Genetic, and Astronomical Events: Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, v. 62–63, p. 55-75 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2014.04.001 Bill Howell -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: The US today Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2015 15:26:19 +0000 From: Gordon Ball <> To: Bill Howell. Retired from NRCan. now in Alberta Canada <> Dear Bill, You are an educated man who has definite views on the world. How do you see the US today? Gordon Sent from Windows Mail