Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Or does anyone believe China will hold back their ambitions? I once did, many years ago. I do not believe that anymore.
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It's a tough one to consider, it's not easy to get into the mindset of the men of Beijing, but current attitudes seem to indicate no desire for a global military expansion, but more regional. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, even perhaps Australia would be viable targets, to basically push the US back to Hawaii and perhaps beyond.
In a way, I think China seeks to recreate the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere...although if you said that to anyone in Beijing you'd be summarily executed.
The same goes for Russia, I don't see a desire in Putin to drive all the way to the Channel, but certainly he wants a buffer zone of pro-Russian states between Moscow and Berlin, and that's a very Russian viewpoint which comes from centuries of being the whipping boy for Europe.
That being said, there are some geopolitical strategic points which either China or Russia might be willing to go out of their comfort zone to engage in. For Russia that would be Syria, because of their investments in the area, and for China I think that would be Africa, because of resource gathering.
Ultimately, there are, I think, three or four factors that will spur conflict in the coming centuries.
The climate. Some argue that this was the spark which ignited the Syrian civil war. Droughts, flooding, that kind of thing, is going to prompt some governments to do things that they would not ordinarily do. The potential for North Korea to do something stupid because of a catastrophically bad harvest leading to internet unrest cannot be downplayed.
Resources. Not just things like oil, which some argue is a major factor for western decisions in recent years in the Middle East, but more basic things like water and land for farming. Also potentially base metals if we don't start mining outside the planet.
Social changes. We are running into a time where there are going to be a lot more people than there will be jobs for them to go into. That is unsustainable and is going to cause a lot of conflict, most likely not international conflict, but intranational. When you throw in other factors, such as wealth divide, racial division and of course our old favourite, religion, it's a nice tinder bed for people to kill people.
The nature of such wars will be as you have already said, an increasing bias towards machine based technology.
I would be hesitant though to suggest that it would be prudent to strike now. It is rare that any good comes of an empire trying to prolong its dominance through pre-emptive warfare. If anything it could hasten our decline.
