> A war with large geographic scope has been independently modeled as having a high probability of occurring circa 2030 by major governments for a decade or more
Do you have more information about this, or a source?
This has been discussed in strategic geopolitical circles for a long time. When surveying defense analysts and similar if they believe a "great powers conflict" will occur in the near future, the percentage that say yes has been rising rapidly (currently 40-50%). If you search for "probability of global war in $YEAR" you will find a lot of discussion of varying quality.
The major alignment is almost always assumed to be something like Russia/China vs Europe/US/Japan.
You can find circumstantial evidence for this in the change in military posture of many countries and rapid scaling of production capacity. Some random examples:
French General states that they are preparing for open war in "3-4 years" in 2025:
Up until a about a decade back, here in Australia/New Zealand, politicians behind door always talked about the tyranny of distance. Simply due to distance we were largely kept out of or behind larger global flows.
Nowadays it is seen as having the world largest moat.
When things like global conflict starts, it does impact us but it is more the flow on effects rather than direct impacts.
The last few minutes of this 2025 recap by 'Ordinary Things' did the best job or summarizing how the world is getting ready for war.
> Germany's defence minister is frank and plain-spoken, but also deliberate with his words and intention. When he talks about Russia, the future of the West and the possibility of another European war, the message however becomes stark: "Our experts say it can happen in 2029."
> In remarks published Wednesday, Generalleutnant Christian Freuding, the inspector of the German Army, said the 2029 date was not a figure pulled out of thin air by his government's national security establishment, but an actual consensus view among Western allies.
> NATO Chief Mark Rutte urged member countries to do more to prepare for the possibility of large-scale war, warning that Russia may be ready to attack the alliance within five years.
Russia may be ready to attack the alliance within five years.
Russia can't even take the country next door. How exactly are they going to attack NATO? With a bunch of rusty nukes that almost certainly no longer work, and that would get their (relatively few) major population centers vaporized by nukes that almost certainly work just fine?
> With a bunch of rusty nukes that almost certainly no longer work, and that would get their (relatively few) major population centers vaporized by nukes that almost certainly work just fine?
Even 1% of Russia's arsenal being functional would be a problem, and I can imagine someone taking a gamble on "will Germany/France/England want to take a nuke to the face over the Baltics?"
Nukes aren't relevant unless Russia uses nukes or tries to take Paris or London. No one is going to nuke Russia over a Polish-Russian border town, and maybe not even over Warsaw falling. Until Poland and the Baltics get their own nukes, of course.
Have you seen the state of the rest of their armaments? Countries that have to bum artillery and soldiers off of North Korea are not in any position to go up against NATO.
If you're a Russian officer in charge of nuclear stockpile maintenance, why in the world wouldn't you pencil-whip the paperwork and steal the funding? If you're ever caught, it will be under circumstances where nobody will be in a position to do anything about it.
There is a good chance of this. Nukes need ongoing yearly maintenance to be operational, without that they are basically just a flying tin can. The whole movie trope of stealing an old nuke and using it doesn't apply to the real world.
Also corruption is somewhat accepted in some countries as it allows those at the top to have legitimate means of disposing of traitors when needed without that hassle of drumming up fake charges.
I read that in the Cold War, the military expected some incredibly high failure rate (30%+) of the bombs due to technical failures. These are incredibly complicated machines.
The major alignment is almost always assumed to be something like Russia/China vs Europe/US/Japan.
You can find circumstantial evidence for this in the change in military posture of many countries and rapid scaling of production capacity. Some random examples:
French General states that they are preparing for open war in "3-4 years" in 2025:
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-top-general-expects-s...
Sweden increases defense spending by 40% starting in 2021:
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/12/15/sweden-...