by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There are some assumptions we have made about the world since the end of WW2 that may not be grounded in reality anymore. One of them is the United States is powerful enough that it, unto itself, is enough to prevent a major regional war from breaking out.
And, yet, I don’t know if that’s still the case.
The specific instance I’m thinking of is China and Taiwan. China is now powerful enough that it could attempt to retake Taiwan and…what would happen? Anything? The United States isn’t going to nuke them because of MAD and the United States and China are so tightly linked on an economic level that there’s not a lot, in real terms, the US could do.
As such, the argument could be made that China — far sooner than we might expect — could made a grab for Taiwan and the United States would make a lot of noise, but wouldn’t do much about it.
The big wildcard of such event, of course, is World War 3 would start because once China proved they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, then other, similar hotspots would also erupt and we would have a number of regional wars happening at the same time that would be marketed as “World War Three.”
It could be that China will simply way for the United States to buckle as part of a civil war to strike. Or, a MAGA president might make us Fortress America and then China could strike because we won’t care about the outside world anymore.
The point of all of this is — it’s possible the existing global order is a far more fragile than we might otherwise believe.
