SWJ Small Wars Survey 2012

[AmericanPride]

Unless somebody here has crystal balls, any assessment of what revolutions will be like or which revolutions the US will be concerned with for the next 10-30 years is purely speculative.

That's why it's called predictive analysis...

I don't see the capitalist system being challenged by the developing world at all. I see most of the developing world trying to push into the tent and get a piece of the action.

That's part of it, but that's mostly driven by Brazil, China, India, etc. But none of them are no more committed to maintaining the Western capitalist system any more than the US was committed to maintaining the European colonial system. How that transfer of power will proceed remains to be seen, if it ever comes to pass.

Islamism may have revolutionary aspirations, but there's no current evidence to suggest that it can transform those aspirations into significant political action.

Rewording what I said and using it as a reply is not productive communication.

I'll correct myself and say that attempting to deduce a "universal understanding of revolution" is not just pointless, it's downright counterproductive. Once we assume a "universal understanding", we try to shove events into that box whether or not they fit there, and that can lead to dangerous misinterpretations. Revolutions aren't universal, they are specific, and each has its own causes. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and the current struggle in Syria, had and have nothing to do with global capitalism; they were and are reactions to specific local governance conditions. Future revolutions are likely - though in no way certain - to be the same.

And those "specific local governance conditions" exist within a larger and specific international context of global capitalism. The Middle East is not experiencing any pan-Arab nationalist revolution as was seen in the final decades of European imperialism or a religious revolution like in Iran or Afghanistan. The revolutions are attributable to exposed elites vulnerable to the political, economic, and cultural forces of globalism. This does not imply that some magical hand is flying around the world tipping over tin-pot dictatorships -- the people are harnessing the ideas, technologies, and material powers to enact revolution. This is a direct consequence of the global regime in place.