Regional civil wars are sadly not swift occurrences. They take time to build momentum and to reach a crescendo and conclusion. As a prime example, the English civil war spanned for almost a decade.  This prognosis does not enhance our optimism with respect to the prospect of any near term conclusion to Britain’s modern-day democratic civil war for the identity of Future Britain.

Since 2016 we have predicted that Brexit would result in a no deal outcome.  The negotiations were best modelled as an acrimonious separation with the worst possible outcome.  However this model assumed that the Government and Parliament played by the rules. May and the EU have disregarded the rules by unilaterally delaying Brexit  (I would expect a legal challenge to this action and an argument that we are still leaving on the 29th to be raised in Parliament).

Reviewing America's progress in containing the momentum of the Chinese challenge we must conclude that so far it is “too little too late”.  Trump’s America needs to find another gear level to be successful

We have long argued that competition for resources regulates the rate of a strategic challenge, and ultimately wars. A prime example is the ‘cold war’ which can be modelled as below:

We can use the nine containment points America needed to act upon to assess Chinese progress with its' strategy:

1. Learn to respect and understand Chinese history and culture - the Americans continue to have a very poor understanding of their strategic competitor’s history, culture, and mindset, whilst the Chinese understand the American culture very well from a massive long cultural exposure. This is a profound weakness in not understanding one's enemy.

During the 17 years since the genesis of BTCH, the prediction of China’s rise and the stages that it would go through to achieve its goal of becoming the next global superpower have been accurate in every way. These are based on both the qualities of late regionalization and early ascension to empire expounded by China. The rise of President Xi to absolute power is also very much part of the cycle at this stage.

China Ascends to Empire

Trump is no doubt a strong leader and the majority of his policies are the right ones to reassert American influence. However domestically Trump, and thus America, are in a precarious position. Trump faces dissension at all levels, and perhaps even more seriously, the on-going potential of impeachment. This domestic resistance has impeded some of his chosen policies, foremost of which is his Russian policy. This was designed to pull Putin back into the western fold and thereby surround China as was once the USSR in the cold war.

Since 2001 and 9/11, America’s three presidents have all contributed to America's decline in their own inimitable ways. In this America has conformed to the characteristics of this phase of decline outlined in the five stages of Empire. Each of the last three Presidents lost a specific element vital to the composite of American power in what we will call the three false dawns.   

The First False dawn: The loss of the Eagles moral imperative to rule

It has been some 17 years since the genesis of Breaking The Code of History (BTCH) which followed the 9/11 attacks, and 8 years since its publication in 2010.

The King is dead, long live the King. The kleptocracy of King Bob has now ended to great applause. But what does come next for the oppressed and long-suffering people of Zimbabwe?