Backing Into World War III

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the world – with a few notable exceptions – was significantly more peaceful than in the past. Gone were the days of great power conflict or the threat of an apocalyptic nuclear war. Geopolitical scholar Francis Fukuyama even went so far as to describe this new Pax Americana as the 'End of History'.

Now, 25 years later, things are looking very different. The world is changing and the USA is shrinking away from the liberal world order it created. Even before the election of Donald Trump, this trend was in motion, but in recent months it appears to have greatly accelerated.

Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, and as the US retreats politically (and militarily) from large parts of the world, new and old powers are filling their places. Of these, the two most likely to challenge the US are Russia and China.

The author of this article, US political scientist Robert Kagan, argues that the world is now entering a period of intense competition between the dominant power – the USA – and China and Russia, which are acting as classical revisionist powers. He posits that when this occurred at other times in history, it led to massive violent confrontations, such as the Napoleonic Wars, WWI and WWII. With this in mind, throughout the article he outlines his fears that the world is moving towards war, should the current relative decline of the US continue.

The article itself is a particularly poignant read as it shows the cyclical nature of history and how if we cannot learn from the past, it will inevitably repeat. For more pessimistic readers, it also serves as a good primer on the political turmoil that awaits in the future.