Determining a new global hegemon through war, particularly nuclear war, is like flipping the table over; it is impossible to tell for sure which pieces will go in which spots on the game board when the table is righted.
The outcome of WWII was highly dependent on chance and unlikely circumstance.
China and its fanatical supporters are attempting to make the rise of China a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, there are too many weaknesses and headwinds for this to occur in any probable scenario.
A resurgent Empire of Japan would be almost as likely in my view.
Current financial resources and weaponry matter little.
A strong, capable, determined, unified population is most important.
Geography and access to natural resources is second.
The Anglo sphere is still the best-positioned, but lacks a unified population.
The Rus sphere, including Eastern Europe and the Balkans is next, but lacks the extensive geography of the Anglo sphere. (In case of nuclear winter that causes a year or two without summer, the Rus sphere is poorly-positioned)
The Euro sphere should be next, but has a combination of fragmented population and geographical disadvantages.
The Islamo sphere would follow due to its young population of determined fighters, extensive geography and access to local natural resources..
The Sino sphere would be fifth, because of its geographical limitations, a population weakened by decades of communism, restive populations, especially in recently conquered regions, like Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, Tibet and XinJiang and a population that is far too large and urbanized to adapt to wartime shortages. (Their only probable path to becoming a global hegemon is to play both sides of a conflict, encourage all other parties to fight each other, then conquer or financially enslave its severely weakened geopolitical competitors...particularly Australia)
Israel will be in a heap of trouble, because of the desperation food shortages will cause in countries like Egypt, combined with less monetary assistance from the United States in exchange for not attacking Israel.
Iran, Turkey and Syria will also become immediate threats if they lose Russia as a stabilizing force in the region.
In the event of global or regional war, Israel will likely be the first target of many Middle Eastern countries. If these destabilizing events were to occur at a controlled pace, in controlled regions within the Middle East and elsewhere, it would look like The Yinon Plan, but sudden destabilization will lead to destruction.
Depends if your grandparents experienced WWII from the United States perspective, the German perspective or the Bolshevik Communist perspective.
I don't think we will experience tens of millions, including women, children and the elderly being fed into the meatgrinder with machine guns pointed at their backs to kill them if they drop their weapons or attempt to flee.
Our freedom-hating communist leaders don't yet have the power and control to match the atrocities of Stalin.
Plans should be made, all the same.
Other than Chinese lockdowns and shit, two things stand out in 2020. The first was the Saudi-Russian oil price war, which coupled with falling demand (mainly due to China, not so much the "effects" of the "pandemic") led to negative oil futures for a while, unprecedented in history. This thing had to swing into heavily rising oil prices at some point, contributing to huge price increases ("inflation"). The other big thing was the Russian decision to block grain exports in early 2020, again as a "response" to the "pandemic". This was coupled with an immediate Chinese hoarding of grain and other foodstuffs. Now, I understand agriculture is not interesting to market observers these days, they much prefer to play those stupid games with putting the Treasury 2- and 10-year bill on a graph, but if you are working an actual job and were able to observe this, you would see that grain prices were the first to go wild, leading to all the other CPI increases ("inflation") that we are continuing to see. So it seems that some kind of low level warfare was going on even before the Covid scam, and we are only seeing a later stage of it.
Works also the other way round.
And I would say that the first to break promises and principles was definitely not Russia (think NATO enlargement and NATO intervention in Kosovo).
The disruption, imho, is that someone thought that breaking promises would indefinitely be without consequences.
IPB
Thanks for this, Gilead. I'm only 20min in, but it already looks like the Colonel's thinking matches with my points, so obviously you needn't be a seasoned military leader or Russia SME to make such connections.
Why are so few in the West, leaders and tax serf$ alike, unable to draw these conclusions? The former need the donor money and distracting current events, but the latter need what, dopamine-releasing international affairs to distract us from myriad domestic causes of misery? It seems the "good guy, bad guy" dichotomy has REALLY effectively been drummed into our (Americans') conscious's and national spirit!
People are starting to speculate about this: Biden’s Handlers Are Preparing to Eject Him (and Kamala) › American Greatness
It will be the most interesting thing in US history, and it's hard to say how it will affect the Asian situation.
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And here is a damned interesting piece out of Canada: Poll suggests vaccine refusers more sympathetic to Russia | TheSpec.com
Look at the data graph in the middle of the piece, and then read what "the study concludes":
That's not what I conclude from the study. You?The study concludes the results point “to the highly corrosive influences of disinformation.”
“This is definitely a new and bluntly insidious force that’s contributing to polarization and disinformation and poor decision-making. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. Things are getting worse,” said Graves. “I don’t think this is because those people had an ingrained sympathy to the Russians. They’re reading this online, they’re consuming this from the same sources that were giving them the anti-vax stuff.”
The EKOS survey comes out at a time when some of the loudest anti-vaccine voices that supported the Ottawa occupation are pushing disinformation about the Ukraine war over social media channels that reach tens of thousands of people.