There is an entire future history just of World War III and its aftermath in "Marius," the opening story of the Psychotechnic History:
the Anglo-Saxon countries, weakened by missile attacks and needing to concentrate their remaining forces on Asia, were unable to invade Europe which had been occupied by the Red Army whose own country was wrecked;
Europe was able to liberate itself because Reinach executed Valti's plan;
however, Valti, predicting another nuclear war in about fifty years, persuades Fourre of France, Helgesen of the Nordic Alliance, Totti of Italy and others that they must -
- "...establish a world peace authority..." (p. 11);
recognize that Europe is crucial to the task of reconstituting the United Nations with real powers and also with a charter favoting civilization over "equality" because there are now only "howling cannibals" north of the Himalayas and east of the Don;
replace Reinach as chairman with Valti who will formally promise a constitutional convention and the ending of military government.
So what is Reinach doing wrong?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Basically, according to Valti and his supporters, Reinach was being too short sighted, focusing too much on short term solutions to the problems he faced, of not paying enough regard to dangerous long term consequences stemming from those mistaken solutions.
Ad astra! Sean
Though at this time in his career Poul's view of historical causation tended to the "vast impersonal forces" school, which led many SF writers to hypothesize a predictive science of history.
Later, it became more apparent that history was a process where, as chaos theory would indicate, small transient causes can have enormous and utterly unpredictable effects.
I've been studying WW1, and the causes the "impersonal forces" school attribute the war to -- nationalism, imperial and economic rivalries, the alliance system, arms races -- are if you examine the actual events in detail necessary but not sufficient. They made -a- general war possible. The war we actually got would not have had the same outcome or course five years earlier or later.
The actual war we got was the result of absolutely trivial causes -- personalities, who caught a disease and died and who didn't, an assassin's bullet at a time even the assassin didn't expect to get an opportunity because a car's engine stalled. The whole Anglo-German naval rivalry of the Edwardian period, which made the Triple Entente alliance possible, was the result of Kaiser Wilhelm's obsession with having a fleet like his British relatives', skillfully played on by careerists like Tirpitz and industrial lobbyists. That in turn required Wilhelm's father -- a convinced Anglophile -- to die early. He'd never have done that; and without it, the unwritten alliance with France was impossible.
I could give many other examples. History -- especially at the level of politics and war -- is far too tight-grained and too dependent on chance to be predictable. Attempts to do so always fail.
Poul eventually came around to that point of view. Even the neo-Toynbean historical theory he embraced later allowed for the chance occurence of individuals like Cromwell who upset its development.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree with this skepticism you have for vast impersonal forces being the prime drivers of history. And I did comment on how even "Marius" had some elements subverting notions of a futile predictive science of society.
Now that was interesting, what you said about the early death of Kaiser Frederick, the father of Wilhelm II, being unexpectedly momentous! I know just enough about him to agree he would not have governed as his son did. That Frederick III was a calmer, steadier man.
Another thing I've thought was wondering what might have happened if, instead of trying to outdo the British Navy in surface warships, Wilhelm II focused on building a much larger submarine fleet. Wouldn't 400 or 500 subs in 1914 have done Germany far more good than a surface fleet bottled up by the UK's blockade?
Ad astra! Sean
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