Warnings From Alternative History

SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003).

"'...to set us all at each other's throats and bring on this general war, this...'
"'World War,' David bar-Elias said.
"'Yes, World War. Merciful Krishna, what a ghastly concept!'" (p. 314)

Because and only because their civilization has been knocked back by a physical catastrophe, the post-Fall British Imperialists are only just approaching the possibility of a first World War in 2025 - and one of their number has a grossly over-simplistic idea about how history might have gone without the Fall. Continuing the dialogue:

"'It is,' Warburton said. 'If there hadn't been a Fall to throw back progress, we'd be beyond the possibility of such things already. Probably the Empire would have united the world by now.'" (pp. 314-315)

Right!

The Fall was (or was not) in 1878;
the First World War began thirty six years later;
the Second followed twenty one years after the First;
a Third was prevented only by the madness of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction);
none of that has prevented continued destruction on comparable scales in selected geographical areas.

Lacking experience of our twentieth century, Warburton cannot know that the complex dynamism of industrial civilization sweeps away any Empire long before it can unite the world. Could the current global economy be reorganized so as to preserve its creativity while lessening its destructiveness? Unless it is transformed into or replaced by something else, our economy will retain an inner dynamic of competitive accumulation, causing boom and slump cycles, monopolization and armed conflicts for resources, as Poul Anderson showed on an interstellar scale in Mirkheim.

Yasmini the seeress prophesies:

"'I have...dreamed it. War over all the world, cities burning and bombed from above, both sides building new and terrible weapons...the Great Powers fighting until they are exhausted...'" (pp. 313-314)

- exactly as HG Wells predicted.