In the late 1980s I read a book called Generations, in which the authors posited that the US enters a major war when an Aggressive generation is in power, a generation that will respond to a blow with a blow. The authors argued that  generations succeed one another every 23 years or so, from Aggressive to Aggressive/Passive to Passive to Passive/Aggressive and back to Aggressive, the operating principle being that it takes two to tangle, and the other three non-aggressive generations, when in power, tend to paper over major provocations. The authors were so persuasive that I counted forward and found that an Aggressive generation should be coming into power along about 2014, and on that basis predicted we would be in a major war, probably with China, sometime before 2020. It is beginning to look as if the authors were right, but not because we were aggressive enough ourselves to react to aggression, but because we now seem to be unable to even see aggression let alone react to it.

None are so blind as will not see
The restless waters, dark’ning sky
The jagged rocks just off our lee
The monsters stirring where they lie
We pay no heed to foreign threats
No danger that we can descry
With closed shut eyes and wailed regrets
We’ll kiss our once great land goodbye