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. What Could Cause World War 3?Can you hear the war drums? Is World War 3 just over the horizon?... War is, sadly, part and parcel of human history. As far as we can tell, humans have been at it for as long as our species has existed on this planet – and animals were in conflict before us.
...War could be a consequence of our biology, or a completely human construct initiated and maintained by organized societies. Like most things in life, the true underlying causes are likely a combination of the two schools of thought.
The triggers for war are pretty diverse but generally center around some common themes like the need for resources, conflicting ideas, expansion of territory, revenge for perceived wrongs, frustration with the status quo (i.e. revolution).
...Today, the world is a different place, at least on the surface, compared to the 1940s. However, people, and by extension nations, can have a very long memory. And we've had some very close calls since the end of the Second World War like The Korean War, The Berlin Crisis of 1961, The Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, to name but a few....
1. The ebb and flow of great power and "Thucydides Trap"
... many believe that another massive global conflict may happen in only a matter of time through a phenomenon called the "Thucydides Trap."
The premise of it is that throughout human history, there is a tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power for regional or international hegemony. Today, that would apply to the growing power and influence of the People's Republic of China and the decline of the power of the United States.
The term was coined in reference to the ancient Athenian historian and military general called, funnily enough, Thucydides. In his view, at the time of his writing, he suggested that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was inevitable because of Sparta's growing anxiety over the growth in Athenian Power leading up to the conflict.
In Allison's view, of the 16, or so, times that a similar scenario has arisen over the last 500 years, the outcome has been an outright war in 12 cases. In the other four cases, he notes, [War] was avoided through either some imaginative statecraft or pure chance.
For example, one of the case studies that did not end in war was between the rising United States and the British Empire at the turn of the 20th-century. The United States would ultimately surpass and replace the British as a dominant global power but as an ally of Britain, not an enemy.
While this theory, of course, has its critics, it is a compelling argument and one that may predict all-out war erupt as China's economic and military power continues to rival that of the United States.
2. Taiwan might be the straw that breaks the camel's back
Taiwan is something of unfinished business for the Chinese Communist Party.
...The People's Republic of China (PRC), to this day, considers Taiwan as part of China and does not recognize the legitimacy of the ROC. If China decides to invade the island, this could, some fear, trigger a chain of events that could escalate very quickly....
3. Prepare yourself for the water wars
...If the pessimists are right, water and food shortages will likely not be taken lightly by much of the world's population. After all, food scarcity was one of the major triggers for the French Revolution.
...we may be entering a period of increased civil unrest, revolutions, and, perhaps, state-on-state struggles for control of basic commodities. It is not difficult to see how this could trigger a global war the likes of which we've never seen.
5. Electronics wars on the cards?
...Pretty much all electronics require a good deal of mineral raw materials and chemicals that, if supply were to dry up, would pretty much bottleneck electronic production. Typical common key resources include materials like copper, lithium, tin, silver, gold, nickel, and aluminum.
The pressure on these resources is also being accelerated with the global push to decarbonize and switch to renewable technologies and electrically power vehicles too.
Some of these key resources, like lithium, for example, are not universally abundant or available, and maintaining access to them has become something of a national security issue for many nations....
6. Mass migration may spark the next world war too
MUCH more at the link: [ link to interestingengineering.com (secure)]
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