Perspective on the Western Wars

Cruise Scientific Visual Statistics Studio Visual Statistics Illustrated

Perspective on Wars
of the Western Civilization
Era that started with Columbus sailing to America in 1492 and sometimes called the Century of Spain, was punctuated by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) when the Protestant States of Europe (England, Scandinavian states, some German principalities and others) were at war with the Empire of Spain. In the series of wars between the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars (1701-11763) Britain's main adversaries were Spain and France. During the Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815) the principal adversary of Britain was France and it was the British-Russian alliance that defeated Napoleon.

The British-Russian alliance which in its final phases also included the United States as a principal combatant also won the World Wars. The war cycles of the Western Civilization shows that these wars followed a cycle with average amplitude of about 50 years. The principal combatants in these wars were Empires of Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Austria.

Following the Second World War, the victorious British Empire mutated into an alliance of countries united to a degree by the common language, common ideology, common economic interests, and, at the innermost level, by the Protestant religion with its focus on the Old Testament. Inspection of the above visualization of the expansion of the British Empire indicates that this new alliance, centered on the United States and the Great Britain, will continue its expansion eastward.

Extrapolation of the East-West economic trends

Observed East-West economic trends

Linear projection of the deflected trends

Economic trends Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, interest in economic determinants of warfare was reflected in the widespread attention paid to Paul Kennedy's (1987) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Kennedy convincingly argued that the outcomes of major wars are determined by the economic potential of the adversaries. Within this context arises the question of the mutual interrelatedness of wars and the economic trends.

On a global scale, no division among civilizations is more marked than that between the civilizations of the East and the West. Following the decline of the Roman Empire, the economies of the Eastern countries outperformed the economies of the West. After the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, the economic trends of the East and West began to converge. The First World War marks the beginning of the decline of the West. If that trend would continue, the East and West economic trends would likely intersect around the turn of the centuries.

However, following the World War II, the slope of these economic trends flattened and a linear projection of these flattened trends
shows that they are likely to intersect around the fourth decade of the 21st century. As the 1941-1945 war with Japan delayed the projected intersection of the economic trends of the East and West economies, it is likely that the Western countries will try to postpone the gradual disappearance of their superiority by initiating a war, this time not against Japan, but against China.

As contrasted with the decline of Russia as the world power following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, China experienced phenomenal economic growth. As early as 1996, De Mente estimated that "some time before the middle of the 21st century China will be the most powerful nation on Earth."

China Pincers (U.S. military bases in Afghanistan,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Japan)

Opening the China pincers The disintegration of the Soviet Union, precipitated by the fall of Berlin wall in 1989, was followed by a rapid succession of wars initiated by the United States and Great Britain, resulting in encircling Russia by the NATO armies, military operations against the Islamic countries of the Middle East, and opening the China pincers. It is likely that the pincers will close, possibly using the Taiwan-China conflict as a trigger, before the economic trends intercept.

Chinese Dragon

Dragon slayers
China is one of the main enemies of the evangelists. Joseph Lam in his (1997) book China: The Last Superpower maintains that China is readying herself for a global contest. The main tenets of the Lam's book approximate that of Samuel Huntington's (1997) national bestseller The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Among the principal statements of the Lam's book are the following assertions:

Antichrist provided Chinese race with clever substitutes for the Mosaic Law through religious teachers such as Confucius, Lao Zi, and Buddhism. The Great Dragon that has ruled China for 3,000 years is none other then the anti-Christ spirit of Lucifer himself. The Great Dragon chose China as it was as far from Israel as one could get and as the Himalayan Mountains gave Lucifer the high ground he adores (Isaiah 14:13-14). Thus it is no surprise that so many forms of animism, demon worship, Hinduism, and Buddhism have been born in the Himalayan Mountains.

Valley of Megiddo

Armageddon, Armageddon
Lam maintains that it is no accident that Chinese-style Marxism and Islamic fundamentalists are allies against the United States. During the Armageddon, the Pan-Islamic forces, African forces, Russia's expeditionary forces and the Chinese People's Army will move toward Israel. United States, Great Britain, and Israel will fight these forces of evil in the Megiddo valley.

Biblical gauge of severity of military conflicts

Biblical gauge of severity of military conflicts
Religion-related narratives seem to measure the intensity of a massacre by the level of the spilled blood. Descriptions of taking of the Jerusalem Temple by the Crusaders indicate that the spilled blood reached to the ankles of the invaders. Another narrative of a carnage, this time by the Roman Army, again in Judea, asserts that the resulting blood level carried big boulders to the sea. The prediction of the severity of the military encounter in the Megiddo valley claims that a river of blood flowing from this confrontation will be so deep that it will reach up to horses' bridles.