No freedom to protest for YUO!

[Elder Iptuous]

Oh.  Well, twenty or thirty years, maybe.  These things need time to properly boil up.

On the other hand, 4GW and 5GW groups might do in the entire state system first.  Everyone assumes a systemic war will be an intra-state affair, but the way things are going, transnational groups might be the ones to start changing the system.  From that point of view, the war started eight years ago, and this is just a switch to the second phase.

i don't know about that.
if the nation-state as a model starts failing, they will do what is in their power to maintain themselves, and that means using force.  if they start failing en masse, they will start using force en masse...

that can happen sooner rather than later.
i don't know that we need any more wind-up than we already have...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Oh.  Well, twenty or thirty years, maybe.  These things need time to properly boil up.

On the other hand, 4GW and 5GW groups might do in the entire state system first.  Everyone assumes a systemic war will be an intra-state affair, but the way things are going, transnational groups might be the ones to start changing the system.  From that point of view, the war started eight years ago, and this is just a switch to the second phase.

i don't know about that.
if the nation-state as a model starts failing, they will do what is in their power to maintain themselves, and that means using force.  if they start failing en masse, they will start using force en masse...

that can happen sooner rather than later.
i don't know that we need any more wind-up than we already have...

Fact:  If monkeys didn't need the nation-state mentality, they'd have done away with the state and gone over to corporate rule in the early 20th century, when the idea became practical.

[Template]

Since when have people done away with obsolete things swiftly, cleanly, efficiently?  I'd expect the timing to depend on corporate leaderships' willingness to run state-sized bits of territory.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Since when have people done away with obsolete things swiftly, cleanly, efficiently?  I'd expect the timing to depend on corporate leaderships' willingness to run state-sized bits of territory.

They already do that.  They have since Standard Oil and United Fruit.  But why raise your own army when you can use the US Marines?

Don't BE the government, BUY the government.

[Elder Iptuous]

i think current technology allows monkeyspheres to operate without the nation-state more easily now than in the last century.  it's different.
things are stickier and smaller.
besides, why do you think monkeys need the nationstate mentality?  they just need some form of tribe...
we also have groups with global reach that are neither working under the assumption that the nation-state has a monopoly on sovereignty, nor do they feel the need to clothe themselves in the legitimacy that purchasing the states' sponsorship affords.

[Requia ☣]

Iptuous: If you turn out to be right on this I *will* shoot you.

Then myself.

[Elder Iptuous]

Iptuous: If you turn out to be right on this I *will* shoot you.

Then myself.

Oh, c'mon...
it'll be fun.
a real scream.

[BabylonHoruv]

Traditionally there's a war in the teen period of a century.  WWI, The napoleanic wars, I'm not sure what was going on in the 17 teens but I am sure there were some big fights.

[Elder Iptuous]

There was that war about the fucked up, inbred Spanish prince, right?
wasn't that pretty big?  like a good amount of Europe?

[BabylonHoruv]

wow, according to Wikipedia nothing happened in Europe at all between 1709 and 1720.

[LMNO]

That's why Wikipedia should not be your only source.

http://www.worldstatesmen.org/WARS.html

First and Second Northern Wars (Aug 1700 - 30 Aug 1721)

Sweden

vs.

Russia
    Denmark-Norway
    Poland



War of the Spanish Succession,  ( 7 Sep 1701 - 7 Mar 1714)
(in North America called Queen Anne's War)

War of the Quadruple Alliance (2 Aug 1718 - 17 Feb 1720)

Spain

vs.

United Kingdom
    France
    Netherlands
    Holy Roman Empire
Savoy
  Sicily

[Cain]

Since when did every third politics thread of mine turn into "hey, lets discuss systemic war (based on shallow datasets)" thread, anyway?  I must've missed that memo.

Fuck this, I'm going to bed.

[LMNO]

Whoops.  Sorry about that, Cain.

[Elder Iptuous]

I blame Iptuous

[Cain]

OK, that was a little pissy, even by my standards.

But seriously.  Look, there was a massive project about, oh, 20 years ago now, to systematically study war in its entirety.  It was pretty big, had lots of money behind it and lots of smart people working on it.  They studied every war of the past 500 years in Europe (hardly a small sample), collected every piece of data possible, every single available metric, and analysed it to hell and back.  The analysis alone took nearly a decade to do, and the conclusions had to be written up in a book.  A heavy book.  You know what those conclusions were?

There were none.

The study showed that war was essentially impossible to predict.  And we're talking things like economic interdependence, population booms, depopulation, disease, famine, refugees, religious conflict, alliance systems, technological imbalances and a whole host of other factors.  Every single possible rule had several counterexamples, none of which matched the other in terms of what factor differed.  This was the most rigorous study of the causes of war to date, and the only firm conclusion they came to was that you can't come to a firm conclusion about war. 

They couldn't figure anything out, so I wouldn't expect anyone here to do any better.