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Old 12-17-2007, 14:41 PM   #51 (permalink)
Ironduke
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Join Date: 08-02-03
Location: Minneapolis
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Please don't take this map as an 100% correct version of upcoming events. It is wrong in few details but it is right in general.
Have you read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations? I'd recommend doing a full read before making an argument on behalf of his analysis. Standing opposite of Huntington is Fukuyama's The End of History.

Fukuyama argues that liberal democracy will eventually triumph throughout the world, while Huntington maintains that the main source of conflict will be among different civilizations lead by their respective core states (of which Latin America, Africa, and Islam are completely lacking).

I've thoroughly read Huntington's work, and there are a lot gross cultural generalizations, the type of which have been consistently disproved by future course of events. For example, Latin America and Iberia were seen to be corporatist, authoritarian, devoutly religious, etc., as late as 1970, that these were intrinsic flaws in the cultures that were unlikely to be overcome. And yet within 15 years, liberal democracy was established in virtually every one of those countries. There are many parallels between Latin America/Iberia of then and the Islamic world of now... I see the Islamic world of potentially following the same course.

Instead of Russia being a core state of the Orthodox civilization with other Orthodox states bandwagoning around it as Huntington predicted was likely, we have seen that Greece has remained in the EU, Romania and Bulgaria have joined, Ukraine has liberalized and is negotiating a path towards the EU and away from Russia, Georgia as well. Russia plays what cards it can, but it only has a few hands with which it can play.

At any rate, in the 14 years since his article was published, 11 years since the book, their really hasn't been much in the course of events to validate his hypothesis.

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Tibet is going to be a small concern for China and India and will be one of the minor reasons I think India will be more Western Oriented than Chinese oriented. It will not be a major point of rivalry.
This isn't anything civilization-related, its balancing, plain and simple. The US and India will align themselves together to balance growing Chinese power in the region. Nothing new, China aligned itself with the United States in the 1970s to balance to the Soviet Union, as India aligned itself with the USSR to balance the West in the 1950s.
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Russia - Is a sick man of Europe and world: politically, population wise, disease wise and military wise. Russia is also dying demographically. It has the fastest in the world AIDS epidemic (faster than in Africa). Men have an average life expectancy 58.6 years. Country has 70% abortion rate. It's fertility rate is 1,2
Russia's been on the rebound recently if you hadn't noticed -- it has recovered from the economic shocks of the 1990s. GDP per capita has moved into the higher end of the middle-income countries. The fertility rate has rebounded to 1.4 children/woman and shows signs of growing more. There were 1 million live births in Russia last year. The death rate has fallen drastically. Its population shows signs it will stabilize in the near future.
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On top of everything Russia's neighbors are dreaming of a day when they will be able to claim it's resources. It's military is ridden with problems and is not considered any serious threat by any means. Even nuclear forces are slowly rusting away. One other "small" thing. The only regions in Russia which show demographic growth are Islamic regions. So we can see an Islamic Power instead of Christian over there in 40 years time.
With Putin's rebuilding, the Russian military is a potent threat, and even if it wasn't, Russia has enough nukes to deter acts of aggression by its neighbors. The only "neighbors" who may covet Russian territory is China, who wouldn't dream of it after they had their asses handed to them in the 70s.
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