chat

Lol sure, if we're in the barracks then you definitely have free rein to heckle me as much as you want.

I didn't mention it in the comment above, and I should have, but I've been watching things develop in geopolitics and although I didn't source anything or even reference a lot of what's influencing my opinion on these things, it's also based on more than just assumptions and gut feeling.

For example, the US has made statements about Iraq's elections that are very similar to those made about Bolivia when Morales was running, they have warned of war coming to the region, the US his issued a stern warning about armed groups in the region "interfering" with US operations there (strange how sovereignty is a special little treat and a sometimes food, huh?), they've taken measures to demobilize forces organized to resist Wahhabi militants, and then probably scariest of all was that there was an unannounced shut down of GPS in Iraq that lasted over a week that went unexplained and nobody took responsibility for. I'd say that this was intentional and it was either used to cause economic disruption (less likely) or it was used to test out how well a blackspot in GPS coverage could work, very likely as a prelude to an upcoming conflict and very likely specifically to reduce the capacity for military drone use. Still running on hunches here but my guess is that the most likely candidate for this is the US and that they were either observing how this affected the logistical efforts of counter-Wahhabi forces or they were observing how well the US could operate on a back up GPS system or a GPS system that was isolated to US military equipment while excluding civilian and Iraqi military access to GPS (all highly speculative on my behalf but we know that if war really is coming to that region then it's going to be a very drone-heavy war and this is very, very likely to rely on GPS so despite being a conclusion drawn from a long chain of assumptions this does feel very much like the purpose and if it was just a random outage due to technical issues it feels like this would have been announced publicly.)

Given this wall of text above that still doesn't have links to relevant articles and anything more than broad brushstroke analysis, I'm sure you can tell why I didn't lay out all of the factors leading me to my conclusions.

I know we live in scary times and I've been sounding the alarm about the potential for the next world war looming for years now so I'm not gonna lie and say that everything is fine and there's nothing to worry about (because I wouldn't be watching these things in the first place unless I was worried about it) but right now I don't see any major flashpoints that are likely to boil over into a big regional conflict or something even broader than that. Of course there's always black swan events and my biggest concern, perhaps partly because of how unpredictable it is, is what happens when the US economy or political situation (or both) turn sour rapidly. I can see Trump seizing power, I can see him starting a war with China to distract from a big economic crisis, I could imagine the government being replaced by ultra hawkish figures one way or another (dead Donnie, coup, next election etc.)

Currently the US and the EU are weak, Iran is in a relatively strong position, the axis of resistance in West Asia is powerful (although being at a low-ish ebb) but it's mostly factions within countries (Ansarallah, Hezbollah, Hamas) so a regional conflict is unlikely to drag in country after country when, for example, the "official" government of Lebanon is going to do what they always do and that is to sit around waiting for their spine to spontaneously materialize, and so on.

All of this means that currently I see neither the capacity nor the appetite for a big regional conflict or a world war, especially not from the usual suspects. Even if there is the appetite, the capacity just isn't there imo - the US and EU are militarily exhausted and it will take years to build up/rebuild. The US got a bloody nose from Ansarallah so they tucked tail and ran. The shape of war has shifted significantly and permanently away from aircraft carriers and air superiority, and the US has only ever been good at war post-WWII when they have been able to establish air superiority (and even then...)

In terms of capacity, imo Russia is the only big player that has it right now (hence a large part of the reason why the Ukraine war has been moving at a slow pace - Russia has been building up its military capacity both in terms of troops and in production rather than exhausting them as they are facing a possibility of a larger war with Europe so they aren't going on throw everything at Ukraine just to put themselves on a weak footing to have Western Europe and the US steamroll them.) I don't see Russia having the appetite for expanding the conflict, although the have their red lines so it's not completely off the table (for example, this although fortunately for us the attack was thwarted. If they took out Putin then there's a much greater chance of a European regional war or a world war.)

China does not have this same capacity as their military is very inwardly-focused and it's very much oriented to defence and deterrence, so I don't count them as having capacity to wage war in this way - they don't even have blooded troops in their military and, broadly speaking, their military has had generation of unblooded troops training generation of unblooded troops so it's really not the same as Russia imo.

The war on Venezuela is going to be messy and ugly but who is it going to drag in? Bolivia? Lol. Cuba? Not on your life. I don't see it boiling over there.

The war on Iran will be much messier but I still don't see it being a real risk of being a flashpoint for a world war.

That leaves China, who will avoid it at all costs and who is finally enacting export control measures on the US and it's very much targeting the US military industrial complex. The longer effects of this will be to starve the imperialist war machine beast. And of course Russia who would go to war with more countries but they are very, very strategic and it's really only NATO encroachment or serious attempts at subverting Russia domestically that would draw out a response like this.

It's a tentative period of relative peace but it's quite unstable too and certain actors seem hellbent on adding more powder to the powderkeg. The long-term forecast is gloomy but, at least for now, the short-term forecast is partly sunny with isolated showers.