It may surprise you, but I don’t disagree with much of what you say, but I think you’ve missed the point of 21stCenturyWaves.com — probably because it’s a somewhat different way at looking at economic, technology, and geopolitical history. You’ve given standard poli sci/econ reasoning for previous wars and economic situations, but you’ve missed the big picture. That’s not surprising either because almost nobody — certainly not the media, politicians, or most academics — talks about it, and yet this is where the answer to the future is.

21stCenturyWaves.com offers a fundamentally empirical account of rhythmic, twice-per-century pulses of great explorations, macro engineering projects, and major wars over the last 200+ years. These pulses (called Maslow Windows) are correlated with a long (56-year) business cycle discovered in 1989 and very well documented. (BTW, the long business cycle (actually based on energy use data) is also correlated with Strauss and Howe generational cycles.)

The theory being explored here has two parts: 1) that the long business cycle fundamentally drives key Maslow Window activities, and 2) that the “punctuated equilibrium” character of the pulses indicates the system is governed by self organized criticality; i.e., a Maslow Window is a short-lived “critical state” that is quite unlike intervening decades (i.e., the 1960s vs. 1970s through the present).

So if you’re an economist or historian you might say that long-term trends in the economy create conditions conducive to certain types of behavior and events (e.g., wars, great technology projects, explorations) at certain times relative to the long wave. And if you’re a physicist you might say the the global system self-organizes toward a 1960s/Camelot-style critical state every 55 to 60 years. Within this context the explanations you were describing above may be realistic descriptions of past realities … BUT they aren’t the fundamental drivers. Those go much deeper and extend back at least 200 years.

This approach is what makes scientific, multi-year or even multi-decade forecasting possible in technology and space, and in many other arenas. The trick is to keep in mind what is unchanging over decades: human nature and the fundamental laws of economics. And to continually factor in what actually is changing: mainly technology and also geopolitics.

I hope this will encourage you to explore this website more. Try using keywords or look under specific categories (e.g., economics) for things that interest you.