Ladies and gentlemen, this is what makes history so difficult to predict: the fact that you can’t possibly assume that there’s a “neat cycle” of history, and that’s why so many disasters come out of left field. Let’s face it, at least with hurricanes and auto accidents, you can attach some minor probabilities.
But when it comes to big disasters like the current war in Ukraine, our fate relies on some power laws and random distributions. Naturally, not everything is completely random. I mean, we could have easily predicted this Russian invasion at the beginning of the year.
All you had to do is to take Vladimir Putin’s words both literally and seriously when he said that his people and Ukrainian people are one, and the possibility of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO or UE was stepping a red line.
So now there’s a war going on in Ukraine, and everyone is thinking about what the future holds. In fact, it seems that there are seven distinct historical processes at work, and it’s not very clear which one is going to happen the fastest. So let’s do an exercise and apply what history has taught us:
