History Repeats Itself Because the Political Class Lacks Imagination and Courage

Everyone seems agog over Anand Giridharadas' ideas, but I'm not impressed with him--or anyone else commenting on America's slow but steady descent into an amoral police state. In fact, the more I study American history, the more I realize America's leaders have been repeating mistakes by copying ideas from the past without realizing different times need different solutions. During the most recent recession, for example, Congress was atwitter over whether to extend unemployment insurance, and it eventually did--copying its exact response from the Eisenhower era over fifty years ago: 

Q. Mr. Vandercook: Do you have in mind so far any intention of proposing legislation to assist the States to continue unemployment benefits beyond the 6 months' period, as that 6 months, in many instances, is running out? 

THE PRESIDENT. I have forgotten for sure whether that was in the bill that went to the Congress or not. I remember the subject was discussed by Mrs. Hobby in front of me, and I would have to ask Mr. Hagerty to give you the exact thing as to whether it was actually in the bill. 

From 2013-2014, Congress extended unemployment insurance by 3 months, then continued it another 3 months. (See HR 3546, 3813, 3824, 3936, etc.) Why the sameness? Here's where Anand Giridharadas succeeds: he points out the political class has no real interest in changing the status quo anywhere. 

Now go and look at the kinds of people who enter politics. In almost every single case, they are from an affluent background or lack the real-life experience to overcome secondhand information (President Obama and the military, etc.). If you are someone who genuinely desires to avoid humanity's cycles of political failure, which model do you turn to? The obvious answer is nonconformity, but that approach requires an engaged, compassionate, and principled class of youth. Pray tell, where are they? 

Incredible Book on Chinese Influence in the Philippines

I just discovered an incredible book, Chinese Participation in Philippine Culture and Economy (1964), edited by Dr. Shubert S.C. Liao, Professor of Economics, University of the East. 

Dr. Liao took work from other writers like Dr. Mao-Lan Tuan and Dr. H. Otley Beyer, creating a deeply edifying compilation of Philippine history. I heard the term, "Hadramaut Sayyids," for the first time and learned "about 2% of the present Philippine population is descended from Arab or Persian ancestors, either ancient or modern." Other sections of the book detail anti-Chinese legislation throughout Asia. 

Below are a few selections, copied under fair use doctrine: 

11 Minutes to Explain 50+ Years of History

I've traveled around the world 2.5 times and finally understand history in context. In a nutshell, the world has not yet recovered from post-WWII fallout and restructuring..."

More here: https://youtu.be/RGpiH9yJgX8 

From wrestlers' training room at Jakarta's Asian Games in 2018

Travel Lessons: History and Relationships

People ask what I've learned in my travels. Two areas stand out: history and personal relationships. 

In Santo Domingo, I learned Christopher Columbus was an Italian whose voyages were funded by Spain to promote economic trade, including the slave trade. Colombus aka Colombo aka Cristobal Colon was buried in the Dominican Republic but his remains were later moved to Spain. 

His voyages helped Catholic Spain map shipping routes that would allow the Spanish to take gold, silver, and other commodities back to Europe and establish European influence—including the horrific transatlantic slave trade—in the Americas. From what I gather, Catholic Spain exported African slaves to the Caribbean initially to mine gold and silver. Later, governments, even when independent from European influence, could not wean their economies away from manual labor intensive industries and adapted the slave trade to cocoa/cacao, coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The American South was, in effect, colonized by Catholic Spain, who gave the Americas the Spanish word "Negro," thus reducing an entire group of people into a color. 

Colon Park, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

In Mexico City, I learned about artist Diego Rivera, featured on Mexico's 500 peso note, and his antipathy towards the Catholic Church and Hernan Cortes, who wiped out or subjugated much of Mexico's indigenous population. Columbus's voyages created new shipping routes and seafaring maps allowing Cortes to go further, and he succeeded, extending the European slave trade to Mexico to exploit Mexico's vast natural resources, especially gold and silver. I gather no one in Cortes' military thought of themselves as exploiting anything or anyone--they were paid to discover new lands and new resources to spread Spain's influence worldwide, and if they didn't do it, surely someone else eventually would. 

Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts

The collision between Spain's military values and Mexico's farming values--explained well in Mexico City's Museum of Anthropology--generated much bloodshed and conflict. Pre-Cortes, the indigenous population depended on corn/maize to survive. Without advanced farming equipment, they were often dependent on Nature's vicissitudes, which explains much of their culture (human sacrifices, animals as gods, etc.). 

Growing up in California, I had assumed Mexicans always spoke Spanish, but of course the language is not indigenous to Mexico. The similarities between English, Spanish, and French--all European languages--as well as their differences once exported to faraway countries make sense once history is taken into account. So, too, does modern Mexico City, where many of the residents in upper-class neighborhoods look/are white. 

All over the world, once a foreign language is imported into a country by a militarily-advanced opponent, the language usually becomes the official language of the government, which then promotes civilian employment--and export of natural resources--favoring the militarily-advanced country. Lawyers and diplomats operating in the host country's language are also able to draft contracts with trade terms favoring their employer, such as the "most favored nation status" clause, which assisted the growth of the U.S. economy post-WWII. We now understand why educated people in Tunisia speak French, not Arabic; why educated Filipinos speak English, not Spanish; and so on. 

In any case, the aforementioned linguistic policy/practice tends to create internal social strife by generating inequality between government employees and their allies--buffeted by new money and often new currency--and groups outside their orbit. This economic shift also creates cultural and therefore communication gaps between the blue collar workforce and a new intellectual elite where only one of the aforementioned groups is immediately exposed to Shakespeare, the Bible, or whichever conduit is used to promote the values of the now entrenched country. As one might suspect from studying Diego Rivera, the blue collar workforce often feels excluded from the capitalist or white collar sector, which dominates military and banking decision-making. From this lesson, we can begin to understand the catalysts behind Mao's Revolution in China, formally called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We can also see how governments that promulgate certain values lose credibility if such values are applied inconsistently to all residing groups. 

One of my gaps in understanding history is trying to figure out from where Spain bought and/or captured slaves. A European Africa Company modeled on the East India Companies in Holland and Britain failed. If Arab merchants were trading slaves in ways that knowingly led to their exploitation rather than integration into the more affluent employers’ families (such as a nanny taking care of her employer’s children and a de facto part of the family), they were violating the Prophet Muhammad’s express and clear edicts. And indeed, the Saharan slave trade occurred primarily from the 16th century onward--after the Portuguese took over the Strait of Malacca from the Arabs, signaling Islam's decline in SE Asia and the world. Even now, the Strait of Malacca is vital to world trade, as evidenced by tiny Singapore's trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund. 

As for the Swahili coast slave trade, "Because of the lack of explicit evidence, [some experts] even question the existence of the slave trade on the Swahili coast before the Omani settlement on the coast in the eighteenth century... Nevertheless, most of the historians of the Swahili world have generally adopted a prudent position, admitting the existence of the slave trade, but maintaining that before the end of the eighteenth century, it remained a minor part of the coastal trade compared to the trade in ivory or gold." (Interestingly, Dibba, Oman was the site of one of the great battles of the Ridda Wars, where Adz troops refused to swear allegiance to the descendants of the prophet Mohammad (PBUH); today, most Omanis practice Ibadi Islam, aka Ibāḍiyya, a unique version of Islam.) 

History rarely provides clarity, but in this case, we know after Malacca fell to the Portuguese in 1511, Islamic influence waned worldwide. Thus, it is not coincidental if greater European influence in Africa post-1511 led to a higher--and more brutal--slave trade where chattel slavery flourished, whereas Islam mitigated the practice and never based it on color. (See, for example, Tippu Tip aka Tippu Tib aka  Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi aka  حمد بن محمد بن جمعة بن رجب بن محمد بن سعيد المرجبي‎, an Afro-Arab slave trader, ivory trader, plantation owner, and governor.) African Muslims were not allowed to be enslaved, and as Islam spread in Africa from 600 AD, it slowly replaced tribal practices, which included slavery and slave trading. 

"If you read... there's stuff in there about genocide, about slavery, about the breeding of human beings which, if you're of African descent in this [Western] hemisphere, that's your legacy, you were bred into existence. Usually raped, but it was a breeding project of form." -- Junot Diaz (2012)

And so, the slave trade and the reasons for its transatlantic expansion help us to understand Islam, its conflict with Christian Europe, and why Arab merchants and their successors despised Prophet Muhammad and his deliberate regulations against slavery, going so far as to attempt to assassinate him numerous times. (This Islamic conflict between slaveholders and anti-slavery advocates occurred much earlier--over a thousand years before America's Civil War--showing that history does indeed repeat itself.) 

Virginia has a long history to confront. Our nation's experience with slavery began there... in Jamestown in 1619... It was the unfreedom of 40% of Virginia's population that made the liberty of the rest imaginable as well as materially possible. The economic viability of both the colony and the new nation depended on slave labor. -- Drew Gilpin Faust (The Atlantic, "Carry Me Back," August 2019) 

The attempts on the Prophet Muhammad's life forced him to flee from his birthplace, Mecca, to Medina, where he realized the Arab Establishment and their hired mercenaries would not stop trying to kill him, forcing him to take defensive measures. Even after Prophet Muhammad’s death, Arab rulers killed one of his grandsons, Husayn aka Hussein, indicating continuing power struggles within the Arab community. From this lesson, we can begin to understand the reasons for the modern-day power struggle in the Middle East between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. 

Until I traveled, I disliked history immensely. I suppose I intuitively realized the way it was taught was a waste of time. I earned top marks in my history classes, but the more I travel, the more I'm angered at America's governmental-academic complex, which seems to teach nothing well--while charging exorbitant tuition or taking state funding from other community-building projects. 

As for personal relationships, that's a story for another time... 

[To be continued?] 

© Matthew Rafat (2018)

A Primer on Modern History

The study of modern history is needlessly complicated. Unfortunately, most history teachers and professors spent their lives in a few countries or studied only a single subject, rendering them unable to provide the context students so desperately need. I have tried below to provide a straightforward framework acceptable to everyone. Without such a framework, historical understanding will fracture, and humanity will continue to repeat the same mistakes.

Since 1945, every single government and military has been focused on attaining or preventing others from attaining nuclear weapons. After the United States dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending WWII, politicians and military leaders realized existing defense/protection paradigms no longer applied. A country with the most skilled troops, superior munitions, most efficient supply chains, best hygiene (to prevent disease, which often killed more soldiers than active combat), and even superior strategy would not necessarily prevail. Now, only three things mattered: technology and the ability and willingness to use it. Developing brawn had given way to developing brains and gaining (accurate) information.

Military budgets prioritized R&D and began to emphasize covert operations. As governments continued competing for the moral high ground, questions became more complex. When was a first strike politically acceptable? How could one determine whether a recruit would keep secrets? How could countries identify the best minds in the world and entice them to relocate? (e.g., Operation Paperclip) 

Such a shift required a mix of intrigue, psychology, persuasion, media influence, and propaganda. Intelligence communities realized they would be key players in the new paradigm and, in an era prior to CCTVs and ubiquitous technological surveillance, reliable human assets and agents would be the difference between victory and defeat. Furthermore, where soft power and persuasion would not work, assassinations and abductions would--preferably through a third party ally. [Evidence: Operation Damocles; Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 years-old son; Israel assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriar, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, and possibly Ardeshir Hassanpour, mimicking USA's strategy against Germany.] 

Such tactics were not enough for military and intelligence units, which also resorted to false flag operations or coups on a much wider scale. [e.g., Gulf of Tonkin, Lavon Affair/Operation Susannah, Operation Ajax (1953), Operation Musketeer (1956)] Facing potential conflicts between civilian and military objectives, democratic regimes sought to limit international interference with domestic governance, causing ideological splits regarding the balance of law, order, and dissent. As domestic resistance increased, it had the potential to upend military alliances post-WWII, which involved important economic treaties and investments. (See “most favored nation” clause, which used USA's stronger currency to tilt trade in its favor: “The American workman, by 1960, had the highest standard of living in the world, and all due to what they genteelly called ‘the most favored nation’ clause in every commercial transaction with the East.” – Philip K. Dick) 

The failure of Western governments to foresee strong domestic resistance to international policies led to more secrecy in the name of national security, both at home and abroad. The private security industry, not subject to invasive government oversight, began its ascent. British-based Securicor is one example. In 1953, it specialized in delivery and logistics, eventually making its way into the telecom (aka surveillance and data-gathering) business. Today, it is part of G4S, the world's largest security company. With 585,000 employees, G4S is the world's third largest private sector employer and the largest in Europe and Africa. (See the film Logan (2017) for a dystopian view of the possible evolution of private security firms.) 

Returning to the 1960s, covert operations and violations of territorial sovereignty (Operation Menu) became more accepted within governments as the United States began to realize its superior armaments were not enough in Vietnam. As nuclear energy and more lethal weapons accelerated the risks of being outside established alliances, countries and military leaders were forced into one of two camps: pro-Soviet Union (which in practice often meant pro-China) and pro-American. Meanwhile, existing and aspiring world leaders learned that favorable (or in the case of Vietnam, unfavorable) media coverage and asymmetrical warfare—later used by Osama bin Laden—could defeat larger powers or at least convince them to leave. Like private security firms, the general media industries--in this case, television and radio--began their steady ascent. 

Its ability to influence world affairs now jeopardized by increasing Chinese and Soviet influence in Asia and Eastern Europe as well as domestic turmoil, America began addressing matters under its direct control more forcefully. American police started using the same tactics as the military and intelligence communities on their own people. (Potential lesson: once the military uses a particular strategy successfully, it is only a matter of time before the civilian government deploys similar strategies.) 

Surveillance, infiltration, and financially-debilitating lawsuits were used against antiwar groups and activists from MLK to Muhammad Ali to John Lennon. The term “law and order” became a justification for a proxy war against protesters, later morphing into President Reagan’s "War on Drugs." Ironically, countervailing forces that bolstered social change came partly from the military, which had relied on greater female participation in the private workforce during wartime as well as soldiers of color, including but not limited to Jackie Robinson. 

Politicians like America's Joseph McCarthy had used the media to blacklist anyone deemed an adversarial nonconformist in the 1950s at the same time the Soviet Union and its satellite forces were blacklisting and jailing dissidents.As power-hungry politicians gained more power, propaganda against dissenters became more widespread, with police officers in some jurisdictions ordered to attack nonviolent protestors while federal agencies (J. Edgar Hoover) spied on civil rights leaders. As lines between international and domestic operations blurred, the Watergate scandal was a natural and inevitable result. (See The Most Dangerous Man in America (2009).) 

Were it not for the courageous work of American whistleblowers and journalists (e.g., All the President’s Men (1976)), who often ignored conservative legal advice from their employers, secretive operations would have continued without abatement. Unfortunately, civilian resistance movements against the Eastern Establishment were not as strong as ones in the West, thus preserving the East's status quo--a status quo that would later prove to be unsustainable, essentially bankrupting the Soviet Union and ending its petro-military-industrial economic model. 

In the West, where the status quo was fraying, greater diversity flourished, both strengthening and weakening authoritarian impulses. Taking advantage of distractions in Southeast Asia and Central/South America, some countries decided to cooperate outside U.S. or Soviet-led alliances, much in the same way China would later exploit America’s failure to “pivot to Asia” after the costly and counterproductive 2003 Iraq War. [Examples: creation of ASEAN in 1967; “mid-level” countries like Argentina and Iran working to resume nuclear cooperation, only to see outside events interfere with their relationships, such as the Buenos Aires 1992 embassy bombing, in which neither Argentina nor Iran strangely derived any benefit.]

In 1973, the OPEC embargo added yet another disruptor to the existing world order, namely the integrity of the oil supply chain, which formed the underlying basis of U.S. dollar strength and numerous economic treaties. Post-Nixon and the cessation of active armed conflict between West and East, economic statecraft became the way forward, with America’s mighty Navy and more developed financial markets giving the West a clear advantage. Trade, oil, weapons development, and continued control of nuclear energy would dominate international relations until the birth of the internet in the 1990s. The formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991 provided America with the opportunity to create what President George Bush, formerly the CIA's Director, called a “new world order” on September 11, 1990, a period lasting until September 11, 2001. America's 2003 invasion of Iraq, driven by falsified pretenses, shattered America's reputation, allowing other countries to vie for global dominance. And here we are. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

Bonus: another historical pattern is that when two countries enter into a treaty—whether to avoid war or after a conflict—often only one party intends on upholding the terms. The other party uses the break in tensions to disarm—both literally and figuratively—the other signatory, eventually invading the former enemy and prevailing through political chicanery.

Bonus: when we hear the term, "divide and conquer," we typically understand the term absent historical context. After WWII, the British, despite prevailing, were in debt and could not maintain their empire, which once spanned a quarter of the globe. They attempted to break up or partition several areas in order to more easily manage them and to allow Western powers to maintain naval supremacy. Singapore's break from Malaysia is one example--keep the port, leave the land. Divide and conquer. Yet, even with lesser security obligations, European powers, particularly the British and the French, could not afford empire status. By the time of the Vietnam War, Europe had effectively handed off empire duties and corresponding security--both for Westerners living abroad as well as Western-owned businesses--to the United States. 

Bonus: from Allison J. Truitt's Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City (2013): "The United States' massive military expenditures in Southeast Asia led to the collapse of its ability to maintain the dollar's fixed value relative to gold. When the US government put an end to the dollar's convertibility in 1971, it ushered in a new era of more flexible and more volatile exchange rates." 

Bonus: counterpoint from Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani's Has the West Lost It? (2018)

Bonus: if you enjoyed this post, you may also like this one: Ports, Finance, Power, and Free Trade. 

Bonus: "History... is not merely something to be read... On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.  It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations." -- James Baldwin, USA (1965) 

Uncomfortable Questions about Germany for Americans

I am not a history expert, but I proffer several questions historians ought to ask about Nazi Germany: 

1.  When Adolf Hitler was appointed or elected, who were the alternatives? Were they more distasteful than Hitler in some way? 

2. It seems clear the first way to isolate a minority is through laws. (Violence is too obvious and its showcasing results in weakening the image of law and order.) 

What were the first laws that targeted minorities? What did the enforcement of those laws look like? How did the national government incentivize local police to turn against their own residents or at least to look the other way? 

3. What were immigration patterns from 1919 to 1937? Which types of persons moved away Which types of persons stayed? (Government employees? Recent immigrants? Affluent and/or educated residents?)

4.  Obviously, propaganda existed, but how was it made pervasive? For example, did the government arrest certain people and highlight their situations extensively? Did they use coercion to silence or blacklist persons who questioned the status quo? What specific methods did they use to dissuade behavior they deemed unacceptable? 

5.  What were marriage, divorce, and childbirth rates in Germany from 1900 to 1945? Can we break down statistics by each year to see useful patterns?

6.  What were immigration patterns--both legal and unauthorized--into Germany from 1900 to 1945? (Germany had to have been at least moderately diverse to generate backlash against "outsiders.") 

As an American citizen but a minority, I've left the United States. Whether my absence is temporary remains to be seen. Obviously, I have to return before April of each year to pay taxes, but the more I travel, the more I see other areas of the world that feel like America, pre-9/11. Part of the reason I've left is because I see history repeating itself. 

America elected someone who wasn't presidential but who was still better than the alternative. Vested interests within the opposition/losing political party elevated someone they favored rather than someone more electable, angering their base. 

Economic gains were not distributed to all corners of society, rendering some people vulnerable to propaganda, especially against minorities, tearing apart any common social fabric. Inflation in essential items increased, but without wage increases.

Being part of a group, in and of itself, became worthy of respect and heroism. For instance, merely being part of the military or police entitled someone to automatic respect--regardless of the presence or absence of specific actions. 

This patina of heroism translated into less accountability for certain groups, leading to a "uniform culture" that allowed consolidation of power--and government funding--for special interests, especially the military. 

Economic gains continued not to be diversified, with old and now new special interests caring less and less about results and accountability. All sides in power begin realizing problems involve fundamental issues that cannot be solved unilaterally or that require sacrifices they were elected to avoid implementing. Rhetoric such as "Drain the swamp" becomes muted as the new political establishment resorts to extreme signaling or headlines to avoid losing power or legitimacy. 

Political discourse becomes progressively more toxic, throwing people into two or three camps: 1) yelling to become heard, i.e., the rise of the outrageous as the new normal; 2) taking no substantive positions but remaining agreeable, losing the support of anyone with principles (Note: appeasement comes in many forms, including economic appeasement); or 3) advocating solutions that cannot be implemented without massive changes (i.e., politically impossible solutions that require a dictatorial approach advocates would say they despise). 

In many cases, outliers are highlighted by both sides to justify their political positions or at least to blunt criticism of the status quo. As outliers become used more commonly, the media loses its ability to rally the public to act as a check and balance against government overreach or against the government's honest mistakes. 

Such political toxicity permeates the culture, causing children to grow up in a desensitized as well as unstable environment. For children growing up during a toxic time, the abnormal becomes normal. The children, unlike adults, don't have an earlier time to which they can compare their current lives. The shift from normal to abnormal occurs without any obvious outward signal because the new generation is mimicking the only behavior they know.

Reasonable, empathetic adults see what is going on and leave or self-segregate. They reject such an environment in which to raise or have children or self-segregrate in ways that may require ever-escalating costs to maintain their positions. Many people within this camp will be among the most successful members of society or its most principled--exactly the kind of people who would otherwise stand up effectively for minority rights. Without them present or fully integrated in their communities, little resistance exists against actors wanting to remake society in their own image. 

The lowered number of sensitive, empathetic, principled, or quietly diligent people--whose absence occurs gradually and is therefore difficult to register in any official capacity--causes a collective shift to a new, desensitized normal. At some point, even the less sensitive and empathetic residents realize something is wrong and they, too, leave, self-segregate, or disconnect psychologically from broader society. Yet another barrier of resistance to conformity is removed, leaving strongmen, radicals, and fools to dominate the culture. 

The children in this society grow up to become the new SS. Threats not otherwise perceived by any reasonable person in the previous generation are suddenly seen where few to no new substantive threats actually exist. (e.g., the North Korean nuclear threat is not new; however, NK's increased ability to survive without any need to be connected to countries other than China renders conventional solutions more impotent with each passing year.) This distortion leaves less time--and taxpayer funding--to deal with real problems, the causes of which become less obvious as more time passes. 

Society decays inexorably as more people hold onto power by any means necessary, whether through propaganda (fake news), new laws (CBAs, etc.), or brute force. The inability to resolve fundamental problems means fewer resources to be divided, leaving charity--both psychological and financial--less viable ("compassion fatigue").  Segregation becomes the new normal as fewer people care about others, especially persons who do not look or act like them. 

Segregation is crucial to understanding how a society changes its character because as more and more groups segregate themselves from each other, the information they receive is different. For example, despite living just 15 to 100+ miles away from each other, Community 1 may believe in a totally different reality than Community 2. In addition to making communication and therefore collaboration more difficult, segregation also allows Community 1 to hide its activities from outsiders. To take an extreme example, Community 1 may be brutalizing a minority group, but Community 2 has no realistic way of discovering such activity if the media no longer captivates the general public's attention or continues to lose readers/viewers and therefore status, revenue, income, access, and jobs. In the alternative, a "Neil Postman scenario" may result where excessive information functions the same as deliberate misinformation, leaving too few persons able to ascertain reliable facts, making broad or nationwide cooperation extremely difficult. 

In this future, everyone wonders how such normal, nice people changed in just a few decades. Most people are convinced by academics and media that some unique phenomenon occurred in the past. Some historians highlight positive outliers to provide people with hope when they ought to be warning that atrophy has occurred in every society and could occur again, right here. Otherwise reasonable people have left or spend their time battling misinformation, leaving them exhausted or with less time to contemplate solutions to fundamental problems--the same ones that continue unabated as distractions and noise increase. 

More people leave or self-segregate through laws, legal agreements, harsher police enforcement, and/or physical barriers. Society's only hope is to allow more immigrants who still believe in the country's advertised principles, which are no longer actually true. Whether the government and existing residents allow new immigrants or some other source of fresh idealism to save their country dictates the direction of the society's future. Many countries, after a certain point in this cycle, choose war. 

From Bremmer's Superpower

The key is the youth. Do they choose the old ways, or do they forge a new path? 

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Bonus: when my family came to America, I remember being assisted by multiple native-born Americans who took pride in assisting my conservative and socially awkward father. (Like father, like son.) I remember this kindness vividly, even though I did not communicate verbally with any of the persons I saw. I was too young and, as noted, socially awkward. 

Yet, I still remember minute details: the family from Davenport who took the time to guide my family around unfamiliar territory, but who became separated at a highway offramp, leaving us to attempt to re-connect unsuccessfully in an era without cell phones or GPS. Being separated from this family distressed me greatly, even though I was not close with them. Why? I knew these people had made sacrifices to assist us, even if just losing time, and their sacrifice meant something. It meant I felt I was welcome in their community, and if I followed the rules, one day, it could be my community. Do recent immigrants to America have similar assistance and feelings that come with such generous assistance?  If not, how do they forge a bond, if any, with their communities?

Bonus II: my comment above regarding segregation is a precursor and base requirement to Kwame Anthony Appiah's worldview, in which he believes change and tolerance come from getting used to each other, not logic or arguments:

"I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement but because it will help us get used to one another--something we have a powerful need to do in this globalized era. If that is the aim, then the fact that we have all these opportunities for disagreement about values need not put us off. Understanding one another may be hard; it can certainly be interesting. But it doesn't require that we come to agreement."