Ten years ago a model calibrated on the political and social stability of States (and their eventual collapse) accurately anticipated the current unrest in the USA.
"Political instability in the United States," he said, "Will peak around 2020." Its authors at the time claim that events now lead to a possible new American civil war.
In the early 90s, when Bill Clinton was in the White House and the United States seemed stable and looking forward, the administration appointed the sociologist. Jack Goldstone. Nothing was more impossible than a civil war in America when Goldstone started working. His task? Develop a model to predict how states failed. The thought obviously did not turn to the USA, but to other states. Few expected that his model would later predict the collapse of his own country.
In an unpublished peer-reviewed article, Professor Goldstone e Peter Turchin, an expert in mathematical models historical societies have concluded that, after so many American wars around the world, the United States is "headed for another American civil war".
The conditions for the civil war, they say, are the worst since the 19th century (especially the years preceding the start of the American civil war in 1861).
The last great "civil" war in America: the American Civil War
An internal war, it is appropriate to say. The history of the American Civil War is short but devastating. For 4 years the American war raged, in fact, between two Americas. The United States of America, and another group of "mutiny" states (Confederate States of America, an entity that arose out of a form of splitting) fought a bitter war, the daughter of an economic and political secession.
The causes of the American Civil War lie in the interdiction of slavery. An action decided by the republican party of Abraham Lincoln, who later became president. A group of states, the Southerners, believed that their constitutional rights were violated and formed the "Southern" group of states before Lincoln was established.
All attempts at compromise failed, and the US Civil War was born. The Southern action of waging battle triggered the spark. The dead? So many: an estimated 750.000 among the soldiers alone. Eventually the Northerners won, the Southerners lost the Civil War. But somewhere in the American social fabric and in the "moral" heirs of Northerners and Southerners, it seems that the grudge is still smoldering under the ashes.
A new American civil war. Because?
The reason for predicting the American Civil War lies in trends that began in the 80s. “Inequalities, selfish elites and polarization, attitudes that have reached the highest level today. To the point of paralyzing the US government's ability to create an effective response to the pandemic disease, ”they write.
This state of affairs also "hampered our ability to offer an inclusive economic aid policy, and exacerbated tensions over racial injustice."
Professor Goldstone is an authority on George Mason University. A leading scholar in the field of long-term revolutions and social change. A profound connoisseur who knows the civil wars today and yesterday inside out.
The Goldstone model and its predictions (spot on)
The model developed by Goldstone and Turchin keeps track of the most disparate data. The ratio of average workers' wages to GDP per capita, life expectancy, average height and the number of new millionaires. It also measures political polarization or the degree of overlap between ideological areas.
Applied to the history of the United States, it perfectly "predicts" the civil war of 1861 and the unrest of the 30s, racial segregation and the advent of fascism. To put it in a nutshell: the model now sees the United States at war, but with itself.
Ten years ago, Professor Turchin pointed to his model towards the future and made an incredibly accurate prediction.
Just like in the 1850s, crisis indicators were on the rise, he wrote in the journal Nature. “They could be a reliable indicator of impending instability. They seem destined to reach their peak around 2020 ”. In other words, the next US war could be internal.
