Pax Ame vs Pax Brit

A pattern wall painter is hired to complete a design. The video examines the similarities between the period of 1815-1914 and the modern post-war world to predict the future. The Pax Britannia and Pax Americana periods are similar due to wars, power dynamics, and nationalistic conflicts. The peace following these conflicts led to the creation of international organizations and alliances. Birth rate drops, technological advancements, and economic changes also resemble each other. Both eras saw fast technological growth and changes in art styles. Concerns about job loss and unemployment were present in both time periods. Imagine this. You're a wall painter and you've just been hired to complete a pattern wall that was half-completed before the former painter slipped and fell off his step ladder, resulting in him entering into a coma. You have to figure out how the rest of the wall should be painted to match the rest of his intended design. What is the first thing you should do? Look at the already-completed part of the pattern. In this video, I will be examining the similarity between the time period of 1815-1914 and the modern post-war world in order to predict the future. Perhaps this will prove to us that history does repeat itself. The 19th century to early 20th century period of Pax Britannia, or British Peace, is eerily similar to the current Long Peace, also known as Pax Americana. Pax Britannia started with the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and ended with the start of the Great War. Pax Americana started with the end of World War II and still continues to this day. By looking at the strangely alike wars before the peaces, the similar power dynamics of global superpowers, and similarly devastating nationalistic wars, we can see how the two fragile pieces are similar. Let's start by comparing the war that led to both periods of peace. The following statements apply both to the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War. After country A experiences an economically devastating war against their main rival, there is upheaval in country A, which leads to a radical change in government. This government was inspired by country B, who created their new radical government form in the prior decade. Back to country A, the government initially has great popular support from promising the people a stronger economy and playing on patriotism, but loses this support after the government starts executing and limiting citizen rights. This radical new government grained the importance of the state, leading to new ideologies. This new state commanded intense loyalty from its constituents, with many men being drafted in order to support the effort of the state. At the head of the government is a war-experienced, ambitious, charismatic, but egotistical and evil young man, who espouses dangerous radical beliefs. This man becomes a dictator after coercing the existing government into making changes to the country's constitution, and he ends up with absolute power. He creates a cult of personality around himself, which makes soldiers and civilians alike loyal to his violent cause. His country invades and conquers most of continental Europe using new, brilliant military tactics. However, they were always unable to conquer Britain, the thorn in their side, due to lacking naval supremacy. His attempts to gain naval supremacy only hurt him. He and his country lose everything when they decide to invade Russia because they were unprepared to deal with scorched-earth tactics and the horrible Russian winter. While basically the entire world is coming to destroy them, he loses his sanity and begins seeing delusions of an ultimate victory that is soon dashed. He met his fate depressed and defeated. The price of his war cost millions of lives, both military and civilian. Do you see how similar the Napoleonic Wars are to the Second World War? Now, let's look at the peace following the devastating conflicts. The whole world hopes to never allow a travesty like this to repeat. An international organization with five major powers are created to prevent major wars and preserve the balance of power. In this time period, there was certainly no war as disastrous as the one that they were recovering from. But there were some wars involving a couple major powers fighting each other. The two most notable of these wars were the wars fought in Crimea and Korea, which had the Russians fight Western-ish powers. Russia failed to accomplish their initial goals in both of these wars. However, to this all, the great powers of the world still collaborated and ganged up on nations who they all sought to be in the wrong. More cooperation can be seen in European conventions and conferences that preserved peace in times where it looked unlikely for the doves to prevail. Power dynamics were both eerily similar, too. Old, established powers were being increasingly challenged by new powers, emerging onto the scene. Most notably of these were newly industrialized, highly nationalistic countries seeking to unite their peoples. These powers looked to use military force in order to see these goals through. The strongest of these powers challenged the previous global hegemons without competing them industrially. These two powers created a bipolar world order, where most major powers allied with one side or the other. This arrangement led to uneasiness amongst the global population, with many fearing a disastrous war, a war that would surely be the war to end all wars, to be inevitable. However, optimistically that new, horribly lethal military technology would prevent any future major wars from happening. These optimistic hopes were dashed once with the end of Pax Britannia. Let us hope that they will not be dashed again with the inevitable demise of Pax Americana. While the end of Pax Americana is yet to be seen, we can recount the end of Pax Britannia. The heavily nationalist and expansionist Austria and Russia were competing for power in the Balkans, which had recently become a power vacuum following the further weakening of the Ottoman Empire. Serbia, a nationalist Russian ally, had been accused by Austria of assassinating the Austrian crown prince. Serbia refused an Austrian ultimatum, which led to war between Austria and Serbia. Germany, now confident after surpassing Great Britain as the world's strongest industrial and military power, was emboldened to give Austria a quote-unquote blank check to do what they pleased. Germany gave this blank check because they were hoping to enter into a conflict with Russia before 1916, the last year where they projected that Germany would be able to defeat Russia. Could we see rigid nationalism, a system of alliances, and desperation for time bring the end of Pax Americana? A patternist might believe so. After all, nationalism seems to be rising in Western states, as seen through hungry shifts to the right, and American foreign policy increasingly turning America first. Alliances today, such as NATO, also threaten making smaller local conflicts into devastating global wars. China looks to be similarly desperate for time as Germany was, because their time for conquering Taiwan is ticking. Their population is slowly declining, and may have theoretically reached peak power. Chinese warthogs wish to start the war against Taiwan before they project that they will no longer be able to project enough power to do so, because of depopulation. Every similarity I've listed is political, but the resemblance doesn't stop at politics. Socially, similar developments influence European society in similar ways. Birth rate drops shocked industrial nations, as new methods of preventing births became more prevalent and widely accepted. However, the nations of the world were not to worry, because brilliant technological advances made it so that populations would keep growing. One key difference is that today, the drop in birth rates threaten many nations' continuity, as soon, many nations face demographic collapse that will devastate their nations unless they can rapidly increase birth rates. This was not a concern in the time of Sax Britannia. Technologically, both eras saw unusually fast technological growth, which revolutionized every aspect of life. Increase in military spending and research following both major wars led to the creation of a new lethal weapon. The lethal weapon had killing capabilities that were never seen before. The weapon had scared some of the people of the time so much that they believed that it would prevent war from ever happening again. Popular culture became revolutionized when communications between sides of the globe became quick enough to allow information to disseminate at rates never seen before. International celebrities were formed using new platforms that were just embedded, and were suddenly able to make a great income. The world became much smaller, and people were able to communicate with each other so much more easily. Economically, the industrial machinery in the first and second industrial revolutions took many jobs away from the population of Europe and America, and this caused many to riot and protest the creation and incorporation of new machines and technologies. This resembles artificial intelligence taking away jobs from many unskilled workers today. Concerns about this are widespread and serious, and many fear that billions of people will be left unemployed. However, when we look at the past, we will see that while there were temporary job losses, these jobs were all recreated in different newly created sectors. As the farmers became factory workers in the 1800s, perhaps so too will the cashiers become coders in our near future. New technology and developments influenced the critical art styles of both time periods. The grimy, gritty, and gross conditions of the industrial revolutions led to realism, the realistic and pessimistic reaction to romanticism, which displayed the everyday lives of those marginalized by the revolutions. At this time, these pieces of art were criticized as meaningless and pointless by the establishment. This is closely similar to supposedly meaningless pieces of art we see entering museums today. Consider paintings that are made to shred themselves, quote-unquote art, that is made through mere tinkering and uninspired sorry statues that we seem to want to put everywhere. Sorry, I have a little bit of bias. These pieces of art were developed because of the depression and lack of human connection that we have experienced since the advent of the Internet. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Heisenberg and Einstein challenged the Enlightenment and scientific revolution beliefs of the Newtonian world machine, which is based in causality. In the previous worldview, everything is objective and everything can be determined through proper experimentation. Einstein's relativism changed this belief into the idea that everything is relative and that nothing is objectively true. These pieces influence art through Dali's surrealism, which specifically encapsulates the thought of no objectivity. Today, we see magnificent and fascinating scientific discoveries influence our art. This is best seen through the media that theorizes about alternate universes, time loops, and other mind-bending physics concepts. As Dr. Tierney, a political science professor and thinker at Swarthmore College, has told me, the one thing that no one can do is predict the geopolitical future of the world, but it's fun, so let's do it anyway. If we were to trust that history does repeat itself, then we would find that we are approaching a catastrophic global war in the next couple of decades caused by rising nationalism, economic turmoil, and social unrest. This war will most likely be the result out of aggression from Russia or China at the anti-establishment bloc, which they have taken the mantle of, who were the first to start the last three global wars. Possible targets of this aggression could be Taiwan, South Korea, or an Eastern European country under the protection of the Western powers. China may look to start this offensive action before it's too late for them due to falling population. Chances are that this offensive action will be justified by supposed aggressive actions from the target nation. After making great gains initially from brilliant planning and strategy, China and Russia will find themselves halted by NATO. As resources diminish and war support lessens, a state of total war will be reached. The entire populations of the major countries will wholeheartedly devote themselves to winning the war. China will all but puppet Russia as they begin losing a vast amount of territories. This measure only delays the inevitable for China as they will soon fall under the might of a global coalition. Sheer industrial capability combined with blockades from the superior NATO bloc would win them this war. Regime changes to the liberal democracies are expected in the loser countries. Let's take a look at the war from a different angle, one of a person living at the time. Although optimists believe that nukes were too powerful of a weapon to ever allow a global war to take place again, nuclear weapons will still be used for military purposes in this world war. New strategies, tactics, and technological advances heavily increase the speed and lethalness of the war. New attacks on civilian life like cyber attacks and bioweapons strike fear and economic collapse onto the home fronts. We could see crippled home lives with now internet-dependent civilians being unable to find work. Countries using new administrative technology would make planned economies and employ all citizens for the purpose of winning the war. Women will see greater involvement in both heavy industry as well as military service. Due to the prior five-power system failure, a new five-power system will be established with the main powers being the five greatest pitchers of the war, with potentially China included if they have excellent diplomacy as we saw with Taliban's diplomacy following the Napoleonic Wars. This five-power system will deal with the many revolutions and general upheaval that would take place after this. The United States will be completely devastated from the war, becoming dependent on European aid. A global hegemon will replace the United States, and that hegemon being a strengthened and centralized European Union. They will oversee the peace like Austria, Britain, and the United States did before them. Over time, the lesser of these powers will strengthen themselves through industrialization and technological advancement, and their belligerencies will make the world find themselves in conflict once more. I predict that these lesser powers will be India and Brazil, due to their industrial potential and high population growth, which will make them fight off the coming demographic crisis superbly. Perhaps the conflict will start over Brazil refuting Western domineering in South America, or perhaps it will start over the border disputes of Kashmir. Perhaps it will start over outer space colonization rights, with greedy nations trying to grab up all the prestige and resources they can. Only time will tell. In conclusion, this mental exercise has helped us understand why the study of history is important. It can help us predict the future. If the similarities between Pax Britannia and Pax Americana tell us that we will see history repeat itself, then we are sure in for interesting times. Thank you for listening.