No. I think we’re in the early stages of Cold War 2.
Part of what makes a “World War” scale war is the drastic social and economic changes to a full-scale war economy.
I only see World War economy happening if the US or multiple European powers go to the far right with Totalitarian features. But a modernized Cold War economy has been something the unscrupulous greed mongers in governments and corporate boards have been struggling for since the first Gulf War. Right now, the biggest threats for a potential World War 3 antagonist are MAGA/AfD/crypto fascism--all of which are falling in popularity and probably won't be significant forces in about 5 years.
China is too far, geographically, for the need of full scale war. Middle Eastern powers are far too insignificant. Russia is far too weak aside from nukes. That means the war goes two ways: the Kremlin regime folds like old newspaper to conventional warfare, or we're all destroyed by nukes. Neither leaves us with world war.
In a Cold War economy, the unscrupulous greed mongers are allowed to dig their hooks into government finance and regulatory bodies that dictate public enterprise and finance/direct large scale private enterprise. The powers can take liberties against free speech, locking people up on trumped up ideological grounds - like how Western libertarian Communists/Socialists/Progressives were often associated with the USSR despite being opposed to such totalitarian regimes.** People are more likely to let their governments and corporations abuse privilege and rake in the cash, because they're blinded by the conflict narrative(s) - and they have AI bots and tools now to further influence things (instead of making 20,000 people look like 20 million on social media, they can have 20 people look like 200 million). The majority of the population will think they’re under threat of world war, when (at least, right now for relevant conflicts involving the West) it’s just Ukrainians, Israelis, Taiwanese, Lebanese, Palestinians, and some Provincial Russians that are really under threat of having their lives destroyed on a massive scale. Those civilians and military combatants are the blood sacrifice to make the fight look dangerous for everyone - and thus more willing to turn a blind eye to the modern updates of the Congo rubber Industry, theft of Boer Gold, and MIC profiteering. Because that’s how these unscrupulous greedmongers get rich, and they always worm their way into governments and corporations.
**In the Cold War, there were a lot of silly pro-USSR people throughout leftist and progressive movements, and they confused the narrative between the more Marxian libertarian communists and the Leninist Marxist totalitarian communists... two nearly opposite political ideologies that happen to share almost the same name. It was enough to confuse many people on the left - I'm talking tanky types who had all the values of the libertarian socialists, but then wore funny Maoist hats. And considering that, you can bet almost every single person on the right half of the Western political spectrum saw mostly everything with social leanings, even unions, as USSR associates. Many people (left and right) don't have the brain capacity to understand that political labels that use the same words can mean completely different things, and confirmation bias can reinforce their ignorance. By confirmation bias, I mean that (as per the example) a right-winger, with a pre-existing negative view of BLM, seeing a single Mao hat wearing dude at a Black Lives Matter event with thousands of others probably reinforces their belief that Black Lives Matter is some anti-American movement because they appear aligned with (an outdated idea of) 1950s Totalitarian Red China.
Last edited by Jumpin - on 27 September 2024I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
