Thank you for your opinion.
Well Russia's forces are already stretched thin, exhausted and bogged down. So they can't materially sustain an invasion. Russia isn't allied with Hamas, they just historically back Palestine. But its like Syria - you just have countries shipping aide and money and mercenaries. Again, Russia doesn't have the capability to deploy. Russia is a declining power with an aging population.
I mean China doesn't need to invade the United States. They just wanna control their region and they want access to Europe and Africa. What could we really do? I mean basically we kind of have them like pinned in on the water because you have the Philippines, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and maybe Vietnam are all our allies so it's like a ring around China. So we could really interrupt their sea lanes. And they get a lot of their oil obviously from the middle east and they have to ship it and there's a lot of narrow straights we could cut off. But once they develop that belt and road initiative they're like connected to Europe and Africa through pipelines and roads and stuff what are we gonna do honestly? I mean China doesn't have to spend as much as the US. They can't invade us but we can't invade them. They should be able to control their area around China to free up their sea lanes. They don't need to conquer the United States to defeat us.
China could do something bad to Taiwan like cancellation of preferential tax rates for imported products from Taiwan. FTA, CPTPP…
Only a handful of nations now have "blue water" force projection capabilities - the ability to operate far from home waters. The US, the UK, France, Russia (which is being decimated in the black sea), Japan, India and China - and the Asian powers either keep their navy close to home waters (India & Japan) or are just now starting to develop a true blue-water capability (China).
My friend's dad is deputy director of the US Trade Representatives Office and my other friend's dad is a 4 star Admiral.
Proxy wars might be the status quo, but direct war seems obsolete to me. I think for a war now to reach a global level, it would have to be largely financially based (and we may be in one now). Management of markets and trade embargoes would lead to internal conflicts within governments that would extend across borders. It's not a war in the traditional sense, but I think it could still be considered a war. I'm doubtful of the utilitarian value of detonating a nuke during a proxy war. I believe in terms of military value there's more useful tactical weapons which also have less fallout… hybrid warfare scenario such as cyberattacks, influence OPs, and/ or Wagner/little green men is more likely with russia vs nato than outright hostilities. You could box that into state sponsored terrorism IMO...
Space isn't really the thing as much as cyber. Anti satellite weapons are being developed but with the Kessler Effect and limitations of kinetic based weapons, it's more so the realm of cyberspace. ICBM's already go through space. Race for AI superiority has already begin with the US's Project Maven and rival countries' versions of the same.
This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, senior Washington correspondent Saleha Mohsin talks for her podcast with a former Defense official about the US military’s use of artificial intelligence for the battlefield. Sign up here...
www.bloomberg.com