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by karaterobot
1107 days ago
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The long post-war era of peace is due to a number of factors, but the one we don't talk about enough is that the U.S. spent untold trillions of dollars becoming a global police force. This may be the biggest factor. I believe it is certainly the prerequisite for any others to have had an effect. The problem is that the U.S. has a tiger by the tail: if they want to continue in this role, they'll need to step up spending to cold war levels to have a chance of taking on China. This has a tremendous cost, culturally and economically. If they don't, we'll see (as we are seeing) increased global disorder and rearmament by, for example, European and Asian powers. This will likely lead to more wars in the future. One thing I am certain of: humans didn't just spontaneously become peaceful after WWII. Some energy is being expended to maintain what passes for global peace, and that energy will have to continue being expended for any conceivable time scale. |
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I mean, even if there was no China. OK. Great. Now what? You've still got India giving Russia as many drones as Russia desires every month. Is India, or even South Africa for that matter, ever going to lose its ability to produce drones for Russia? No.
The essential problem is that we live in a multi-polar world. Multiple nations can sustain themselves. Multiple nations can arm themselves. Multiple nations can exert influence in arenas that previously only the West could exert influence. China, the US, India, Russia, the EU. All of these power centers are realities, and they all sometimes have conflicting agendas. We're even reaching a point where they need each other less and less. In fact, the linkages in terms of, for example, global trade at times may be driving some of the problems. (See climate change.)
I'm not sure we know how to operate in this world. We focus so much on one "adversary", and without fail, we end up in conflict with another of the global powers or civilizations. I think this is because of the strangeness of this environment to us. Ukraine is a good example. You could argue that we didn't even bother to understand India's position on this before we issued an edict regarding sanctions. An edict that India promptly ignored. That's kind of a tell tale sign that we didn't really understand the underlying environment. Worse, I'm not sure we even tried to understand it? Did anyone ever actually solicit India's input in any meaningful way? I'm not sure they did.
So as long as that lack of understanding persists, I'm pretty sure we'll continue to stumble from one crisis to the next. None of which will be the crisis we plan for.