'..while they must prepare to be strong enough to successfully fight and win a hot war.''..I hope that the leaders of the great powers will wisely step back from the brink, even while they must prepare to be strong enough to successfully fight and win a hot war. In my opinion, for this to go well not only will the restraint of the participants be tested, but alliances that are prone to draw in non-fighting parties will also be tested. That is because being allied and helpful to the allied countries in these brutal wars is always very costly and raises the risks of being drawn fully into the war. That’s how local wars spread into world wars.
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What Can Be Done to Improve ThingsRather than just describing what I think is going on and what might happen as accurately as I can, I will also offer a few suggestions of things that can be done to make things better.
In my recent post, when I looked at the internal conflict issue in the US (prompted by Kevin McCarthy losing his position due to the small number of extremists beating those who are bipartisan), I shared my pipe dream that a strong bipartisan leader would emerge to become president, have a bipartisan cabinet, and create a bipartisan commission of smart folks from both sides to re-engineer the system to produce much broader-based productivity and prosperity that is built on sound finances and investments. I realize that this won’t happen, so I shared my more attainable hope that moderates from both parties openly state that they are willing to work in a bipartisan way and create a bipartisan voting bloc that is strong enough to deliver the swing votes that determine outcomes. I believe in this path because I believe that if there is not a big move toward strong bipartisanship that leads to big, smart reforms that bring about broad-based productivity and income gains, there is likely to be some form of debilitating civil war. As I also explained in that post, in order to reduce the risk of a debilitating civil war taking place, I believe that having different people be able to pursue their different preferred approaches to life by going to the states that are most aligned with their preferred approaches will help relieve the tensions (though it will have some drawbacks and unintended consequences as well, which I won’t digress into now).
I will now share with you both my pipe dream that is not attainable and my more attainable hope for what will happen to deal with the international conflicts that are bringing us to the brink of a hot world war. My pipe dream would be to have world leaders recognize that having hot wars is the worst possible thing to happen and that working together on creating a path and processes for minimizing the chances of a hot war developing is the best thing they can do. My more attainable stretch goal would be for the US and China to jointly broker peace in Ukraine. While that is a stretch goal, it might be attainable as conditions are ripening for this to happen. Imagine if the two leading and opposing world powers that are currently lining the sides up for a hot war join forces to deliver peace. That would be shockingly terrific because besides delivering peace, it would reduce the risks of the Russia-Ukraine war leading to worse wars and would also show that they could work together for peace. If they did that, maybe they could develop a dynamic that would bring about peace rather than conflict in other cases. Imagine how great an alliance in pursuit of world peace between the two greatest opposing countries would be.'
- Ray Dalio,
Another Step Toward International War, October 12, 2023
Context'What are Ukraine's borders? .. they’re internationally recognized and defined in 1991.' - NavalnyIsrael’s Response to Its 9/11 Risks Missing the Lessons of America’s 9/119/11 was a test. The books of the last two decades show how America failed.In The Electric Universe a Future of Peace and Love