[cbozeman]

A hot war is most certainly not impossible. Just because nuclear weapons might be off the table doesn't mean conventional bombs aren't. And frankly, even nuclear weapons might not be off the table fully.

Desperation leads people to do strange things.

China really is a sort of "early 1900s Germany" stage, which is rather frightening.

[federona]

China is in some ways like pre-WWI Germany in that it does not have an empire and everyone else does so it wants one to. But Chinese are not starving due to sanctions and have not lost a war, etc. Chinese are doing well. China is just flexing its muscle because it can. That is all. Not because it needs to or that it's people are psychologically in fascism mode.

[dmix]

Bingo, comfortable upwardly mobile populations aren’t too friendly to any sort of serious war. Let alone total

A majority in an agitated state that is being repressed or prodded (realistically or not) by other power blocs is what is worrying.

Even ideological extremism most just happens locally. Like the Russian socialist Revolutions and countless jihads.

[Dirlewanger]

There's also the whole frightening frame of thought that as people who were alive to see nuclear detonations being performed in the 50s/60s continue to die off, as a society we're going to slowly forget what makes nuclear weapons so awesome (in the original definition of the word), and the willpower around their restraint will slowly be eroded away until it's too late.