The "Vicious Cycle" is an expression in the study of the politics of the United States of America and the Post-Union States, describing a cataclysmic American war with the Soviet Union that happened every decade, with a new generation rising up to challenge the Union's place in the world, to be met with defeat. The term was coined by disillusioned U.S. General Joseph P. Hoar to describe the perceived futility of such actions in an interview with television personality David Letterman in 2010. The original quote is as follows:
"America has found itself repeating its mistakes like an infant. It is a vicious cycle of being beaten, rising up with a new generation of passionate twenty-something, going to war, losing those twenty-something to Soviet guns, and being defeated again."
The incidents of the Vicious Cycle are widely seen to be:
- Harry Truman in the Third World War
- Richard Nixon in the Cuban War
- Ronald Reagan in the War for Nicaragua
- Walter Mondale reacting to the threats by Vyacheslav Molotov, leading to the collapse of the United States.
- Although not involving the United States per se, Confederate President Mike Huckabee is widely considered a more recent example of the Cycle, due to his propagation of the Fourth World War.
- Additionally, it was stated during the 2010 Confederate Presidential election, Newt Gingrich, had he won, would have continued the Cycle. This was never the case, though; Gingrich lost to Jim Folsom Jr.