For those of you out there who believe Mitt Romney will start WWIII if elected.....

[kurt_cagle]

162. Not totally agreed.

The cold war was primarily about hegemony - two large empires that were fighting proxy conflicts, but that had effectively established a stalemate. Europe was growing economically and politically, the US was growing economically and politically, Russia and China were both stagnant but relatively stable, inwardly focused. The Middle east was largely still controlled by colonial powers.

Today, resource issues are the primary driver - access to oil, water, rare earths, natural gas. Europe is in economic and increasingly political chaos, China is facing a major recession with a large and vocal middle class and a thirst for oil, the Middle east is increasingly aligning along Islamic fault lines, Russia is creeping back towards authoritarianism and has a chokehold control over natural gas into Europe, and Southeast Asia, including Japan, China, Singapore Korea and by extension Malaysia and Australia, are becoming a powerful economic bloc. Oil production globally has stalled and is declining in many regions, fresh water access is becoming critical in many parts of the world, and climate change issues are changing the location of productive vs. non-productive farmland. As I see it, this only increases the likelihood of conflict, and increases the potential that the major economic hegemonies will be thrown directly into conflict, rather than via proxies.

Consequently, I'm a lot less sanguine about regional conflicts escalating into global wars than at just about any time in the last sixty years.