Greetings Friends, this is mostly from a question my Dad asked and I answered in like 20 different short ways but I'll try to consolidate that here a bit. The above map is an okay representation of current geopolitics though south america should be green and Indonesia/India/Malaysia should also be green; Australia is blue for the time being but probably not after the Philippines fall/accede to China whenever that is (25-75 years). We are in a state where there is mass militarization in the places where war is most likely to happen therefore war will happen (and there's somewhere around 8 wars going on right now or on the cusp of going on in some cases); however the alliance systems in place do not lead to a chain reaction of death and destruction like the first and second World Wars; even if a NATO country was directly attacked most likely they would only receive military support and maybe aerial support, so just a little bit more involved than in Ukraine; also if the war in Taiwan had not started by then there might still be a perceived interest in pursuing a stalemate instead of a total victory (which seems to be the default conclusion of every modern conflict except for Azerbaijan/Armenia where one side clearly won)...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... As to Taiwan the war is extremely likely because of mass militarization and also demographics, China has reached the point where they don't need to get richer and being richer doesn't enhance their prestige much but winning or even having a partial military success against the US is an enormous prestige boost for them and a lot of the education system in China inspires young people to be interested in things like Nationalism and belief in the National Idea/Willingness to fight in the army; anything that reinforces those notions greatly strengthens China further. In the West there is a very minimal interest in these sorts of things because fundamentally the system was built on the lie/false belief/stupidity to think that the entire world would embrace western values, trade freely forever, and allow resources from poorer countries to gradually be siphoned to richer countries forever (and then be consolidated in the hands of a few hundred people mostly). To put it bluntly Singular Globalization died with COVID and has continued to die afterward but there are now multiple trading hubs and throughroutes for shipping and so forth so that there actually multiple models of globalization which is generally the way forward................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Apologies if the previous paragraph sounded Marxist as I've become less and less Marxist over time, I no longer perceive Capitalism as the evil itself but rather foolish and terrible academic and political systems where everyone buys into the same notions without questioning them; the cult following of the Francis Fukuyama End of History narrative which was always specious but maybe true for 5-10 years and just an outright fabrication after that point. Essentially every academic that has a decent point of view on foreign relations is from 30 years ago because that's when diplomacy actually existed, it wasn't just "you accept our values and get slightly richer, we get a lot richer, thanks" which has been the case for at least 20 years and is now falling apart entirely. The mass exportation of values worldwide concept was just a trusted aspect of socialization for decades so now everyone thinks that there is one specific way that everyone should feel about every social issue (or one of two different ways in a bipolar political system), and that somehow this should apply to every country in every situation throughout time. This is just an unbelievably foolish, even utopian ideal that isn't applicable to reality and probably never was, sure China would take your investment but they wouldn't care what dumbass shit you were spewing with it; they just wanted to get wealthier..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................So we're left with a situation where China is essenitally in an unlosable position, it's just a matter of how fast they want to move; do they let 600-700 million people die off in the Age Pyramid before witnessing ascendancy or just wait for things to naturally go their way. Unfortunately I don't think the latter is even remotely likely currently; but with some Nixon-esque diplomacy if some thunderbolt from heaven descended on a mass of incompetent dipshits in the political system it's probably not a completely unfixable situation at least as of 2023; that seems farcically unlikely so we can just assume that Taiwan will be invaded and the US will not have 50,000 missiles in Okinawa to shoot down every LST (Amphibious Assault Ships) before it can reach the shore; if all China does is get a beachhead and hold it they've essentially done enough to damage US prestige; the frozen conflict state is default as expressed before so having nominal control over Taiwan with some resistance is probably pretty likely and then 5-10 years after that they attempt to remove US influence from the Philippines. China doesn't want to conquer anything that's not Taiwan as far as I can tell but they do want nominal trade/sphere of influence control over basically every country between China and India (possible Australia or New Zealand could be exempt); this will probably happen naturally before 2100 but based on current trends it will be decided by war and not slower more methodical diplomacy, if that even exists anymore.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................All of that said China Vs Taiwan/US/Japan is a localized conflict and probably wouldn't result in further wars elsewhere, fairly small theater and the fanciest weapons ever used being thrown at each other to see who wins; Taiwan will suffer immensely but non Taiwanese casualties will be "light" compared to Ukraine and the purge of Palestine (though heavy compared to Iraq and Afghanistan); once that was happens I think other wars will happen elsewhere because of lack of US ability to intervene or even wave a finger and also just the global norms of conflict have already reverted to the Pre-WWI state. Nuclear weapons exist but their usage is not in living memory so someone will have to use them again if they're going to function as a deterrent, conventional war is brutal and horrible but not as intolerable as everyone dying instantly so no amount of conventional force would function as a true deterrent between peers.
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