And what is it going to look like? Any dystopian future books worth reading for curiosities sake?
10 months, 10 weeks, all just as likely.
I would say we are already in WWII, there’s just a lot of fronts.
No
Lessee. The US helped overthrow the Ukrainian president in 2014 that they knew would ultimately lead to military confrontation. The actual military engagement started in 2022. The US decided to decapitate the Iranian state in 2026. The US began a trade ‘war’ with China even earlier and is slowly ratcheting things up with the Philippines so they can maybe possibly be the next Ukraine for China (which doesn’t really make sense but it’s the US). Europe and NATO (the US) are fully engaged vs Russia. The US and its underlings are engaged vs Iran. The US is stuffing the underlings of the Pacific Rim full of weapons for a showdown with China. The US has overthrown multiple governments in Latin America to secure their resources. We are here. Now. Economic waves have shocked other parts of the world. They are hitting Europe. The US is feeling them. Things will deteriorate and military engagement will grow. This is WWIII. The US led order is fragmenting and it is fighting like a dying empire does.
A hot war? Unlikely.
We’re already in a new Cold War though.
In Star Trek it happens this year and stretches to 2053, killing 30% of the world population. This followed by the ten year long “Post Atomic Horror”. And then bam, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
If you mean something like a war between US and China that seems unlikely. I don’t see any intermediate steps to it being realised. Taiwan rhetoric has died down a bit recently for example. Plus US would eat raw shit. If you mean something like the US waging proxy wars through entities like israel and Ukraine that is already going on.
Deeply unserious question with no answer.
Nobody can predict the future.
Then explain Gordon Chang
I can predict whatever new thing Gordon Chang comes up with will also be wrong. 😂
Francis Fukuyama: “Nothing will ever happen again, history is OVER!”
Gordon Chang with laser eyes: “Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask?”
My framing is unserious. I changed the title.
But discussing coming imperial conflict is not. I only half heartedly asked about fiction because a modern global imperial conflict would be fought very differently compared to the past. And I would rather have a vague image of what to expect than none at all.
“Miraculous prophecy is a fairy-tale. But scientific prophecy is a fact. And in these days, when we so very often encounter shameful despondency and even despair around us, it is useful to recall one scientific prophecy which has come true. Frederick Engels had occasion in 1887 to write of the coming world war”
For thousands of years, since Jesus was alive, himself and many before him prophesized the end of the world. They continue to warn others of their doomsday visions as they get older, and older, and eventually die as elderly men in their beds.
The apocalypse is an enduring fixation of the human mind. I don’t think any of us will live to see it. And if I’m wrong, well our problems are over anyway.
I’m more concerned about when socialism will be achieved.
Likelihood of “ww3” is very relevant to achieving socialism. And I didn’t mean that it would be apocalyptic or whatever.
If someone in the 1930s asked what the likelihood of ww2 was it would be a fair question.
I’d settled to a similar conclusion for a while, but I could not ignore how we seem to be approaching our planet’s thermodynamic limits. We have disrupted the natural flow and cycles of energy to the point of, I think, a global climate refugee crisis in my lifetime. Its arguably already begun.
We’ve “simply” burned too much, and too fast, low entropy fuel and our Sun-Earth system can only expel so much thermal energy, and increasingly less so as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate and ice caps melt. We’re pressure cooking ourselves.
