Are we sleepwalking into World War III?
ft.com
ft.com
The countries are "discontent". Russia "resents". Iran has attacked US bases. This is the level of this article. Nowhere any mention of aggressive actions taken by the US.
Millions upon millions of disenfranchised young people with no where to go. Before 2019 those millions at least had the hope of moving to one of the still wealthier countries, which alleviated some of the pressure and anger back home. Now that pathway is increasingly more difficult and harder to justify, plus the people in the wealthier countries themselves are starting to feel the same anger and pressure, but have nowhere else to go.
All that pressure and anger will need to be directed somewhere, and I'm sure the leaders of such countries would prefer it goes outward than inward.
Fossil fuels are the war driver of the past and present. Just by owning a plot of land you become insanely rich. Other parts of the economy have an interest in peace, because war is bad for business. But income from fossil fuels is too high for this to matter.
With fossil fuels being phased out this will become less and less important. Many people understand it. But not some backwards grumpy old men like Putin, Trump and the Ajatollahs.
For the rest of the world the best course of action is to try to pacify the involved parties as much as possible. Trump will loose power. Putin will die while Russia will become irrelevant by destroying it's own economy for this pointless war. And the Ajatollahs probably also will loose power without oil income, Teheran running out of water and large swaths of land becoming uninhabitable.
There is just no active course of action to solve these crises. Just "sleepwalk" trying to minimize the impact of those conflicts, while waiting for the transition away from fossil fuels and preparing for the climate change impact.
The big cause of conflicts in the future will be climate change. Large areas becoming uninhabitable and millions of people migrating between countries. This is what we have to prepare for. Stepping into some old mens petty games is pointless and will only cause more pain.