ORIGINAL: Halsey
Welcome to the 21st century.[;)][:D]
With the US retreating on all fronts, aggressive leaders see opportunity all across the globe to increase their power. Even if the US elects a conservative leader in the next election do you really think the US will force Russia to close its new military bases in Syria and risk a shooting war with the megalomaniac Putin? Russia’s most recent move guarantees they will be one of the most dominate if not the most dominate western geopolitical power in the Middle East for the next hundred years or more. I suspect Putin isn’t finished with just these moves either I expect to see even more expansion moves into the Middle East on his part.
China’s unchallenged expansion into the South China Sea will lead to many small regional conflicts over the next century that will probably reshape national borders and see a new string of colonialism style expansion moves into the East Indies by China.
A new Middle East nuclear arms race is about to commence and with the level of religious zealotry that exists in the leaders in that region of the world I have no doubt nuclear weapons will be released in this century leading to some possible devastating results.
Imagine if you will suddenly 50% of the world’s oil supply becomes unreachable due to nuclear fallout levels rendering vast regions uninhabitable for 50,000+ years. Russia would immediately become one of the wealthiest nations on earth due to skyrocketing oil prices, and that would probably lead to war in Europe as he tried to retake Eastern Europe.
Having the sole superpower left in the world step away from being the world’s police suddenly without any forewarning has created large and small power vacuums all across the globe. And the countries moving to fill the vacuum are not the good guy countries.
After the disasters of WWI and WWII the US realized being an isolationist nation was not in its best interest. Here we are less than 100 years from the end of WWII and we’ve gone back to an isolationist stance. How soon the lessons of history are forgotten.
Jim
