| Jumpin said: No. I think we’re in the early stages of Cold War 2. Part of what makes it 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 to 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: Russia 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 in fact (in this case) 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 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 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 even unions as USSR associates. Many people 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 a right-winger 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 (their outdated idea of) 1950s Totalitarian Red China. |
Probably the most accurate and realistic comment on the matter yet. Cold War still brings hot wars with it and could still lead to a hot war in the SCS however that would play out. But with China quickly trying to build out it's Navy it might be moving too fast, they had a submarine sink in harbour and tried to cover it up so we can hope we are a ways off of them pulling anything soon. In many ways a Cold War is worse, as you mention, imagine another 20+ year disaster like Vietnam or the horrible effects to one side of that with Korea that never gets resolved. Fuck, loom how the US destabilised the middle East and northern Africa so badly all Western nations are now paying the price with mass illegal immigration and that was in the most peaceful time on history. I know I'm ranting but I don't like the future even if it's just another Cold War. Fuck, if we have Cold War with the specter of ASI and that becomes the new nukes of the old Cold War that'll be as constant an anxiety as a hot global war.
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