Preparation Precedes Blessings

The week ended on August 14, 2026. interesting news items to look at for the past fortnight are:

Preparation Precedes Blessings: One of the concerns I have is how our younger generation can cope with the rapid changes taking place in our society. Generational theorist Neil Howe describes the current period as the “Fourth Turning,” The Fourth Turning is a 20-year period of deep societal crisis that recurs roughly every 80 to 100 years. During this “winter” season of history, old institutional orders collapse and are violently rebuilt before a new cycle begins. So the big question is how does one move into the spring season, or does one get stuck forever in winter. (Fig. 1)

Based on Howe’s observation of (please note that the observation is restricted to 500 years of Anglo-American history), I like to set out certain markers that may be useful in our journey through this turbulent landscape.

1. Identification of the Seasons:  (a) Spring (1946–1963), post-WWII economic expansion, and massive infrastructure building. American hegemony began. (b) Summer (1964-1983), Vietnam war and cold war began to drain US economic vitality. Bretton Woods’ default and the beginning of the patrol dollar began, but they also signaled the decay of the financialized Anglo-American Empire. (c )  Autumn (1984–2007) Western societies began prioritizing the rise of a techno-elitist class over collective community. Trust in established international institutions decayed, culture wars intensified, and governance became more polarized. Winter (2008-2030). Triggered by accumulated institutional and financial decay (pegged to the 2008 financial crisis), this "winter" represents an era of systemic stress, deep political polarization, and institutional rebuilding designed to forge a brand-new civic order. (Fig. 2)

While Howe’s model above is useful for pigeonholing Western economies, China’s generational season is on a totally different time scale. China has gone through a particularly long winter of approximately 178 years, from the decay of the Qing Dynasty around 1800 to the final unification of CCP under Deng Xiaoping in 1978. For China, spring began in 1979 with accelerated rebuilding through 2012. China’s summer awakening began in 2013 and recognized that it needs to diversify away from reliance on exports to the West and to check its accumulation of surpluses in US Treasuries. The Spring season for China’s nation building will only be concluded by “China Standards 2035” after a successful implementation of “Made in China 2025”.  

As the Anglo-American Empire reached its inflection point in 2026 with the onset of exponential decay, China is neither ready nor prepared to assume the mantle of the sole superpower and global enforcer. My humble opinion is that we should expect a period of regional uprisings and power plays that will see new alliances and security structures formed, e.g. the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed on August 7, 2026, a tripartite security pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Often labeled the "Islamic NATO" or "Sunni NATO" in media commentary, the pact includes a collective-defense clause stating that an armed attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all.  (Fig. 3)  

Another recent incident to note is the mass crossing of Moroccan migrants into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta in late July 2026. Where a power vacuum develops, chaos is certain. (Fig. 4)

   

2. Identification of the Alpha in the Change Over: This is actually more tricky than a simple assumption that the Alpha will move from West to East.

Historically, the rise and fall of empires takes decades to unfold. So, by the yardstick of history, WWI and WWII were relatively short wars. WWI lasted only 1,574 days, and WWII lasted 2,193 days. The Ukraine war has already been going on for 1,634 days and is continuing. The U.S. Afghan war lasted 7,293 days, and the Vietnam War lasted 6,395 days. In my last blog, I commented that “the surprise was not that the U.S. achieved superpower status; the surprise was how the U.S. achieved it with so little cost and effort to itself.” Regional peers’ wars for dominance are measured in centuries. Until unification under the EU banner, various European powers had 5 centuries of conflict. (Fig. 5).

In China, it took two and a half centuries to bring the seven states under a unified Qin Dynasty. (Fig. 6).

In the 35 years since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, there have been 10 major conflicts in former USSR states. (Fig. 7).

Since the 1990s, the U.S. has dismantled all of its military surge capacity based on a belief that no one could challenge her military supremacy and is now found wanting. As a superpower’s force projection wanes, allies’ previous dependence or an adversary’s apprehension will cause insecurity or boldness, as the case may be, for new security arrangements that will be destabilizing.  Europe, Japan, and the Middle East are on the move, and Russia, China, North Korea, and India have taken corresponding countermeasures. In the meantime, the show must go on in Wall Street, and the narrative is “everything is under control and there is nothing to see, folks.”  Few political or corporate leaders are actually aware and have prepared for an economic cardiac arrest and a prolonged winter. If the war with Iran goes the way of the Afghan war, the Strait of Hormuz would be blocked until Feb. 16, 2046. What if the endgame is twenty years of skirmishes and stagnation until the emergence of 10 nodes of regional power blocs?  How would one deploy one’s time, energy, and resources in such a scenario?

3. Identification of Bottle Necks, Choke Points, and Irrational Exuberance: Risks is not having prepared for the unexpected to happen. Foolishness is seeing the unexpected happen and not revising one’s actions accordingly.

(a) Military - The Ukraine War and the Iranian Wars have proven that mass-produced, commoditized communication devices on cheap drones and rockets are equalizers to sophisticated weapons of a superpower.

(b) Technological Advantage - What it took a first mover decades to achieve does not guarantee that a challenger will require an equal time lag to catch up.  

(c) Supply Chain Control — A sovereign nation does not have true sovereignty when critical resources are controlled by a competitor or an adversary. Commercial contracts will not be honored by “civilized” nations that trumpet governance by a “rule of law” when a nation is about to lose its competitive advantage. The world’s commerce is moving away from globalization toward high tariffs and trade barriers. But then, as traditional markets are closing, new opportunities also open up for those who are willing to take up the challenge.  

(d)  Artificial Intelligence — We are still very far from realizing AGI (“Artificial General Intelligence”) and are still at a stage of machine learning. Winner of the current AI race will be (i) open-source, open-weight models, (ii) local inferencing on desktop/laptops rather than data centers, and  (iii) consumer hardware using Unified Memory Architectures (UMA) that hosts AI models locally will outperform expensive VRAM in data centers. The threat and narrative of  inevitability and artificial superintelligence is pure financial hype to justify bubble valuation on Wall Street. For those who move on to embrace AI will find it is more helpful in jobs than an exterminator of jobs.

(e) Reserve Currency — Currencies will continue to be useful for trade settlement, but it has proven that it has lost its function as a store of value and therefore is no longer useful as a reserve,

(f) Transit Choke Points - Geo-logistical choke points are more powerful than nuclear weapons. (Fig. 8)

We are in the fourth turning, and therefore we are compelled by external circumstances to move out of our comfort zone or traditional orthodox thinking. A comfort zone may be a place, a lifestyle, or a familiar routine. I would like to close here with a story you are all familiar with: Two friends walk in the woods and see a huge bear. One friend quickly sits down to put on his running shoes. The other friend says, "You cannot outrun that bear!" The smart friend smiles and says, "I do not need to outrun the bear. I only need to outrun you." (Fig. 9)

Matthew 7:7  "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9  Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!