At the risk of getting a bit "political", I wonder who the first European nation to descend into Thirty Years' War II will be?
Personally, my money's on France. Besides the French Revolution and their high turnover of regimes since then, there's also how recent economic and demographic pressures have to come a head over there, which have produced the first "stirrings" of the collapsing pension system, militant sectarianism, and Globalist crackdowns that @Skallagrim has described previously. Don't think France will go full Yugoslavia mode tomorrow, per se, but being the first domino to fall over in a couple decades' time is something I'd bet good money on at the rate things are current unfolding.
I get it but Germany has the history of starting shit all through the 1st half of the 1900s. in the spirit of it being biased I feel like they are a safe bet.
My own thinking is more to do with "on-the-ground" observations about how France seems to have the worst outbreaks of collapsing pensions, militant sectarianism, and Globalist crackdowns now. Germany has those, too, of course, but as far as I'm aware, they haven't blown up quite as much as they have in France yet. In either case, these escalations still haven't reached their apex — and once they do, I expect "Yugoslav Wars meets Thirty Years' War II!" to be the best descriptor for what the European theater of Neo-Caesar's Civil War will look like.
First things first: actual "Caesarism" (understood as the Spenglerian concept) is still far off, from our perspective, and should be expected around AD 2090 or so. Trying to discern where the first flashes of this will be seen, nearly seventy years in advance, seems somewhat futile to me.
Moreover, describing anything in that context as a repeat of the Thirty Years' War may not be accurate, either. Taken all-together, the last, most extravagant stage of "the civil wars"
may certainly occupy such a stretch of time. But I'd expect it to be closer, even in that case, to an intermittent series of conflicts.
One may compare the closing stages of the Middle Assyrian Period, the termination of the Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, the final struggles of China's Warring States Period, and the last phase of the Rome's Civil Wars. Note that when we really look at the final, 'deciding' conflict stages, none last so much as thirty years. In Rome, the final stage lasted from 49 BC through 30 BC. Not even two full decades. And it wasn't like that whole period was spent warring!
This gives us something of an idea of what we might expect, especially since these things have resmbled each other so much in the previous observed instances.
Now, before we get to the final ("Caesarist") stage, we may reasonably expect a preceding ("Marian") stage of mounting conflict, some thirty years earlier. Thus: around AD 2060. This is rather closer, being not even a full four decades removed from us. When we look at current developments, the basic rule of thumb is that wherever in Europe that you see the largest percentages of non-Westerners, you may also expect the largest degree of problems. Not because immigration is Europe's only problem, but because all thy key issues are heavily correlated.
You might add that financial problems are another key factor, with the caveat that basically sturdy economies can pull through even if they take a hit, and the truly Southern European "fudged budgets and huge debts" economies will, if push comes to shove, just default and say "
Fuck you, Northern Europe, you can't take what we don't have!"
In this calculation, France is in the worst position, being essentially a "Mediterranean" style economy and culture. (As in all the other "garlic countries", as they are sometimes derisively called, France's pre-Euro answer to every economic issue was "just debase the currency".) But France
pretends to be a Northern European country, playing with the big boys. France, more than any other country, is tied to the Southern European debts. The Euro-crisis was a French crisis. If Italy or Greece collapsed... so would France. And that's still true. France's over-achieving (acting above its actual capabilities) has only made this worse. The French standard of living, basically, is too high for its economic strength.
So, basically, if things go to shit, the North will take a big hit because all their fake investments will be gone, but other than that, they'll be structurally untouched. The South will go bankrupt, but will thereafter refuse to pay any debts, so basically "they are poor, and they will remain poor". FRANCE, meanwhile... France will go from a country that
acts like a Germany to a country that can barely out-perform Italy. They'll take the big dive. They'll crash right into rock bottom.
They have a sizable population of unassimilated non-Westerners, too. That won't help. They'll have to be careful that they can even
be a second Italy. They might turn into a second Algeria.
Does this mean that the populist opposition will be most vehement in France? It might. An overwhelming majority in their police and armed forces are very, very right-wing. The French right wing is pretty radical, too, as these things go. But that's by no means a certainty. The key issue in Europe is that the great "Marian reform" (turning the disaffected minorities to the side of the populist opposition) is
impossible in Europe, because the minority groups are an
alien culture.
So while America enters its Marian stage, I expect Europe to fall into greater chaos and bloodshed, without any real solution in sight. If there is to be (an echo of) Caesarism in Europe, I expect it to be chiefly in Eastern Europe. I would look especially to Poland, and -- when this whole thing is done -- possibly Ukraine. In Western Europe, and counterparts to (and allies of) the Caesarist movement will, most probably, be partisan organisations trying to restore a semblance of order in the ruins of progressive societies that have run head-first into the
consequences of progressivism.
(Not that I have any room to gloat about the dim prospects of, for instance, France. My own country is so over-regulated and collectivised that at such a future point, all water-management systems will have crumbled as the government collapsed, meaning that over half the country will have been drowned by the sea.)
