To not quite understand why / how we are heading towards lots of wars?

[forgivemysillyq]

So obviously I am aware of the Gaza / Israel conflict and Russia / Ukraine.
But what is meant when people say we are heading towards a period of lots of wars? What other wars are there likely to be? On British soil or in other areas of the world?

Forgive me if I sound very uninformed, I am and just want to learn.

Have you entered the 21st century @MarnieMarnie ? Population GROWTH is not the problem 😀

Exactly. Fundamentally it's this. Just as it was with stone age tribes.

Just dressed up with fancy language and you'll get a whole load of jingoistic nonsense as we head towards the inevitable.

Climate change will make large swathes of the earths land uninhabitable. Food harder to grow and more scarce. Water more scarce. Stability will decrease. Immigration will increase. We will be fighting for dwindling resources.

You do understand that world population is still growing? The UN predicts the population will be nearly 10 billion by 2050. This isn't sustainable. I understand the aging population conundrum, but adding more and more unskilled badly educated young to look after old people is an unsustainable and short sighted solution.

What's that got to do with war though?

Not really.
Often its the good men that die in the wars
Women die too.
Usually the women in the territory the war is taking place on suffer terribly in lots of other ways
Large standing armies = increase in prostitution and sex trafficking. This is even the case for US bases in Romania/Japan. And don't get me started on "peacekeepers"

Also some men are nice and I don't want them to die :(

More people = less to go around. Its really, really simple.

Yep, that’ll lead to wars.

The thing is that the next big war won’t be fought by soldiers in trenches, it’s already being fought online.

Exactly. People seem to think a war will be like ww2.

Unlike the US (and the UK previously) China does not aim for global supremacy. We will continue to exist in a multipolar world for the foreseeable future, this is not great news though as likely to be rather unstable.

I don't think WW3 or nuclear war is likely
I also don't think climate change will automatically lead to more wars. I think it's more likely that the race to develop new and greener technologies could lead to conflicts as countries compete for certain mineral resources.

My big worry is the internal collapse of some large states like the US, Russia or China. The US is incredibly polarised and a new civil war is not unthinkable. Russia could turn chaotic if Putin dies with no successor in place. China has very serious economic, environmental and demographic problems. Big powerful states don't last forever.

And has been since before brexit and trump. Russia certainly excel at influencing Western elections.

Memes sum this up quite nicely.. we’re currently in the forth panel of the cycle.

I agree, resources and the control over said resources.

@PutMyFootIn I think you are splitting hairs when you suggest that population growth is not happening or a problem.
The world population is larger than it has ever been and people are living longer so we each consume more food and energy and other resources in each lifetime. Similarly more people in the world require better food and more metals and energy than they used to. This demand inflation is not reducing.
In Africa we can see that the population has increased hugely since say 1950, more food is required the expansion of sealed and paved roads and vehicles has increased the pressure on the economy to import so much to satisfy this demand.

It may be that civil and local wars will increase.

Most certainly. It has been proven that the Brexit vote was influenced, and that the influencing of that vote was a warm up for influencing the US election.

There will not be a nuclear war.
But there are so many world tensions at the moment.
China clearly wants to invade Taiwan.
The west are losing interest in Ukraine. If Russia takes Ukraine then it will look at invading another country.
If Trump gets elected then he will try and destroy NATO. He won't succeed, but he could severely weaken it.
Refugees fleeing climate crisis impacts are going to incraese.
Natural disasters and extreme weather are going to increase leading to more fighting over resources.

There has never not been war. In modern times though, wars happen because the defence industry and corrupt politicians need a way to rip off the taxpayer. The US taxpayer specifically and mostly but western taxpayer in general.

Wars don’t happen because some people are good and others bad. They happen because all the good and the bad globally collude in order to stage conflict. Who wins? Big defence contractors. Always follow the money.

Exactly.

And people were warned at the time but refused to believe it. We played right into Putin's hands

This all sounds a little bit too tin foil hat territory. I don't believe for a minute that all of these different players with different agenda's are in anyway colluding just so that BAE and General Dynamic get £$£$. Most governments in the world can't find their arses with their own hands.

So far we are getting some nonsensical conspiracy theories about the armaments industry. How long before the Bilderberg Group are named?

A note of optimism seeing the destruction of Ukraine by the Russians will it give China a pause for thought. Do they want the island at any price or would they want to take over a thriving industrial base?

It is about money and resources, but what some in the west do not understand is that it is also about ideology for some international players. Putin's war on Ukraine is ideological. And he will throw as much money as he needs to in order to win. He said near the beginning the west are decadent and would get bored of supporting Ukraine, and he is right that support is waning.

Of course it does. Because you struggle to think beyond anything that’s the most basic narrative. Unless the Guardian said it, everything is a conspiracy to the hard of thinking, until a few years later, it comes in the wash and then these sneering idiots disappear and you never hear from them again.

I recall a recent interview with a female war reporter who suggested that the ultimate frontline was in people’s homes - the bedroom, the kitchen, the back doorstep - spaces occupied by women, children, the sick and elderly.

Civilians are always the highest casualties of war, compared to military deaths/injuries. That said, as a soldier’s daughter, it’s not a pity-competition - every life is precious 🙏

The clock is ticking as events converge/mutate/take-your-pick. Where the f*ck are our leaders? Time to step up.

Goodness, you are a long way down the rabbit hole. Deliberately insulting someone who questions your unfounded assertions isn't the way to win friends and influence people. But I guess when all you have is hate and bile its no suprise that you react with hate and bile.