Has it turned into a pre-war one?
History, perhaps unfortunately, can’t give us a clear answer to the question of whether we face anything like another Great War. Looking into the rear view mirror can only tell you so much about the conditions ahead. Our situation today is different enough from that of a century ago to make renewed great power war much less than a certainty, but there are enough troubling similarities that we can’t rule the prospect out.
It’s an interesting analysis.
Only a few years ago [before Obama] most western observers believed that the age of geopolitical rivalry and great power war was over.
Because America was strong and respected… still strong (getting weaker) but not respected anymore.
Even the Chicago police have given up on sections of Chicago I hear in the news. Police are getting militarized while people no longer trust them. It’s not just world war we have to worry about. It’s world chaos which could be even more deadly.
Bingo. There won’t be a ‘Great Power war’ because there are no ‘Great Powers’ left.
There’s enough going on that I wouldn’t be surprised to see the events of today listed in the first chapter of a history book as the prelude to a major war. But I don’t think that’s necessarily inevitable. And I also think it’s unlikely that the major global powers will end up fighting each other.
Already we have chaos stretching across huge parts of Africa into the middle east and South Asia. We have civil wars that have burst their bounds and spread across multiple countries. There is war or serious unrest in Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Somalia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. When you stop to think about it the scale is incredible. As is the impotence of the West to address it or to even contextualize it.
Meanwhile, Iran has nuclear weapons and the Saudis are in talks with Pakistan on some sort of nuclear sharing agreement. If the situation develops to only a fraction of its potential of badness it would still result in a generationally defining event and likely a level of destruction and chaos that hasn’t been seen for decades.