There has not been one war between the major powers in over 60 years. Historians say this is unprecedented and call it the “the Long Peace.” It seems to suggest that we have entered a new era of declining war and more peace. If your view of looking into the future is through a rear-view mirror, then this historical analysis is great. But what about the rest of us?
Please watch this video titled, “The Mathematics of War”:
There is a mathematical process underlying conflicts and war. Attacks and wars precisely follow a power-law distribtion process. So what?
Well, power-law processes work through a feedback loop mechanism and exhibit self-organizing criticality. Periods of peace represent the time that tension can build. Longer periods of peace mean more tension can build. Eventually, the tension builds to the point where the system undergoes a phase change – collapse (war). What that means is that if one suppresses conflict and war, then eventually you will get one that is orders of magnitude (powers of 10) larger. So a period of unprecedented peace MUST be followed by a period of unprecedented war.
The Human Security Report, an annual study compiled by researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada, spells out the changes since the end of World War II. In the 1950s, there was an average of just over six international wars being fought every year. In the new millennium, there has been an average of less than one. Even more remarkable, there has not been a single war between the major powers in more than 60 years. This is unprecedented. Historians call it “the Long Peace”.
Not only are there fewer international wars, they have become less deadly. The average war of the 1950s caused 20,000 battle deaths a year. In the past decade it’s fewer than 3000 per war.
But what of civil wars? The trend was ugly from the 1960s to the 1990s, when they trebled. A great many were proxy struggles by the superpowers. As soon as the Soviet Union gave up the fight, the Cold War ended and so did many civil wars. Their number halved from 1992 to 2003, when it reached 29. Last year there were 30 being waged.
What other human behavior may be mapped or extrapolated by this?
Let me get back to you on that.
Matt
”So a period of unprecedented peace MUST be followed by a period of unprecedented war”.
Why is this true?
Because tension is always building. The longer it takes to release it, then the bigger it will become. In this case, the size of war is directly influenced by the period of peace.
Imagine a fault in the Earth having earthquakes about every 100 years. Then the fault gets caught up so there is no earthquake for 1000 years. When it finally breaks free there is going to be a massive earthquake.
We know that clustering occurs. So a smaller earthquake can cause bigger earthquakes. This gives us a clue about war.
What will cause World War III?
A smaller nuclear war (even one nuclear explosion in an attack) could very well cause a much bigger nuclear war – World War III. This is due to clustering.
War follows a power law distribution. Here is why this is important:
Line up a group of people sorted by height. They have a normal distribution. Perhaps the tallest is 7 feet and the smallest is 4 feet.
Now take the same group and give them a power law distribution. One person might be 150 feet tall.
So a power law distribution means that rare tail events are much more common than thought. Also, they can be much bigger.
I’m going to post some videos by Nassim Taleb who is the author of The Black Swan. He might help clarify what is going on.
“What other human behavior may be mapped or extrapolated by this?”
Two implication of this is revolutions, bubbles and disease.
Since I am talking about a feedback process, anything that affects this feedback will also affect system collapse. For example, the ability to influence other people through social networks and the web means that collapse – revolution – is easier.
The feedback process means that you look around your world and that affects you the next day. You make decisions based on what you see – system feedback. The decisions you make in turn affect other people around you. People are the system, and going forward in time is a constant loop of decisions and feedback. Because the feedback is positive, you will pile on interesting trends. This leads to bubbles which then can crash. Try to be more of a contrarian in order to avoid constantly forming bubbles.
Positive feedback systems will always crash at some point. Living organisms are a positive feedback system. They will always crash unless negative feedback is injected – disease. Disease is very important to keep things under control in living organisms. That means the introduction of antivirus (vaccinations) and antibiotic medicines will at some point cause a massive crash in humans.
I happen to like vaccinations. I couldn’t possibly tell anyone not to get a vaccination. However, it appears that in the future these may cause major problems – like mass death. That might be hundreds of years into the future, or it might be sooner.
Some interesting things with a power law distribution:
Serial murder, riots, attacks within war, war, financial markets, city size, forest fires, sandpile collapses, earthquakes and more.
“Two implication of this is revolutions, bubbles and disease.”
I meant to say three implications of this are – x,y and z.
This is the Calm before the Great Tsunamai that will usher in World War III. The Human destiny lies in Annhilation for that is the path we have chosen to walk since our ancestors.
Humans have always been at war and the only period in history in which no conflict has ever occurred happened over a ‘Two week’ period meaning that Humanity has always been at war.
This time however if you have ever played or watched Fallout 3 you will see the realizations of ‘Humanity’s greatest destructive instinct can no longer hold itself back’.
Think of a pressure point being built with World War III. The longer it takes to relieve pressure the worse it will be.
Some consider World War III to be that of the Cold War but only in a DE-Facto sense due to the Proxy nature of the battles never directly involving the Proxy controllers.