The Theory Behind a Very Bad Year (and It. Lenin supposedly said . In late 1. 98. 9, a single three- month period saw the end of communist power in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania and the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as the U. S. Bush where the two leaders essentially announced that the Cold War had come to an end: many years? The past few weeks have certainly been vertigo- inducing. On June 2. 3, the British shocked world opinion (and themselves) by voting to leave the European Union. On July 7, five police officers were shot dead in Dallas, prompting fears of widespread unrest in the United States. A week later the Islamic State took credit for the latest massacre to strike the West, a terrorist attack on France. Then came the police shootings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. All this took place, moreover, against the background of a horrific sectarian war with no end in Syria, heightened tensions between NATO and Russia, and the greatest political upheaval in recent American history, as a populist candidate with no experience in government completed his successful insurrection against the Republican establishment and became the party. Populist authoritarianism is on the rise in many other countries around the world. To recall the famous Chinese curse (as apocryphal as Lenin. In 1. 94. 0, in a span of less than three months, Nazi Germany conquered Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, while the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. A year later, another three- month period saw the invading Nazis drive hundreds of miles into the USSR, concurrently beginning the systematic mass murder of Jews and other . So far, 2. 01. 6 has been less . That year witnessed the Gulf War, the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. 2016: The Theory Behind a Very Bad Year (and It. Spoilers ahead for the most recent episode of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. With the most recent direwolf death on Game on Thrones, their numbers are dwindling. Trailer from the upcoming film 'Loving Vincent' by Breakthru Films. Obtained from the official website: http:// 12 oil paintings per second, all done by over 100. The teen birth rate in the U.S. And then there was 2. But 2. 01. 6 is barely half- done, and it is entirely possible that the cascade of events we have been witnessing could accelerate, with unforeseeable consequences. It is worth remembering that disruptive events can trigger others in a variety of ways, even at a great distance. Sometimes the connections are clear; sometimes much less so. Most obviously, a disruptive event can spark direct imitation. In 1. 84. 8, after liberal revolutions took place in Sicily and France, a wave of uprisings at least partially inspired by them spread to Denmark, the Austrian Empire, Belgium, and several German and Italian states. In 1. 96. 8, student rebellions moved across the Western world in open imitation of and cooperation with each other, with the climax reached in Paris in May, when an apparent collapse of order led French President Charles de Gaulle briefly to flee to a military base in Germany. In the late 1. 98. Soviet bloc repeatedly led reformers and dissidents in other parts to attempt the same, or to go further. In the fall of 1. More recently, similar patterns have been seen with the . And today, with each terrorist attack, groups like the Islamic State do their best to publicize what happened, glorify the perpetrators, and urge others to emulate these . For instance, military aggression can seem particularly tempting when potential critics or adversaries are distracted by troubles elsewhere. It was hardly a coincidence that Stalin chose to start occupying the Baltic states on June 1. German army had entered Paris. In August 1. 96. 8, the fact that the United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. We still do not know the full story of this year. Given the recent string of terrorist attacks, it would certainly have been more difficult than in previous years for the United States and its allies to take serious political action against a Turkish military government that pledged to oppose the Islamic State and to reverse President Erdogan. Many historians believe that in 1. Germany behaved aggressively following the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, driving the outbreak of a general war, due to the belief among German elites that they were losing an arms race to Britain and France. Worse, such anxieties often have very little basis in fact. It is frequently forgotten that in the late 1. Soviet Union was already on life- support, a substantial portion of the American public believed that it was actually an unstoppable behemoth that would soon crush a weak, decadent West. With this diagnosis supposedly confirmed by exaggerated CIA estimates of Soviet capacities, even before Ronald Reagan. Today, although the American economy is in decent shape, and its military budget exceeds that of the next eight countries combined, fears of decline have returned with a vengeance, as exemplified by Donald Trump. In the history of the Western world such patterns are linked to the most powerful of all Jewish and Christian prophecies: the coming of the Messiah; the Second Coming of Christ; Judgment Day. Since the beginning of the Christian era, hardly a year has gone by without some significant group of Christians insisting that the End Times have arrived. If such a conviction leads to aggressive action against supposed heretics or infidels, the resulting violence can lead others in turn to believe in Judgment Day. Some historians think that something of this sort happened during the Reformation, when Martin Luther. The result was years of bloody religious warfare that decimated much of Europe. Today, the fanatics of the Islamic State believe they are engaged in an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and non- Muslims for the future of the world, and with every atrocity they convince more people in the West that, on this point, they are right. The pattern is not necessarily religious, however. There are also secular versions of the Apocalypse story. The 9/1. 1 attacks arguably had such an effect in the United States, with the Bush administration coming to believe that it needed to provoke a major war against a state that did not attack us. With luck, the current flood tide of bad news will in fact subside, and rest of this year will be remembered for placid dullness rather than bloody . But as these historical examples suggest, there are all too many ways that the flames of violence and disruption can suddenly spread, and even whip up into a firestorm. Photo credit: Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration.
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