We Are Uncomfortably Close To World War 3

Sean 17 Henley asks, "So in your opinion, just how close are we to World War II? " I think we are uncomfortably close to it. First of all, look at where the current wars are that are being fought. So we already have a major land war in Europe, the biggest one that we've had since World War II with the Russian invasion of Ukraine that has killed probably hundreds of thousands of people and has not ended. We've already seen a major conflict in the Middle East with the Gaza war and Israel taking action in seven or eight countries and we see this state of war between the United States and Iran that could lead to state collapse in Iran, could lead to major refugee flows. So we're 2thirds of the way there if you look at the map of World War II. And now the third piece of this could be the Taiwan Strait. China has made very clear that it doesn't see Taiwan as separate from China. They want to reunify Taiwan no matter what they have to do. And the Taiwanese increasingly do not want to be a part of China. If China were to try to militarily take control of Taiwan, then we'd really be in a situation where that entire map of World War II, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, suddenly you do have conflict along those fault lines. I think the bigger reason that I'm worried about this is look at the collection of people who are in charge of the most powerful countries in the world today. Donald Trump in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Shiishin Ping in China, you can throw in Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Taipe Erdogan in Turkey. These are older men. They are nationalists. They are strong men. These are the kind of leaders that can get into conflict. Now, you might say seems like Trump wants to avoid the war. Doesn't seem like the Chinese are looking for a world war. But that's always the case. The problem is when you start to have territorial expansion again, a Russia trying to take land in Ukraine, a United States that may try to take land in Greenland or other places, a China that may try to take land in Taiwan, those big powers, they can bump into each other. And given the fact that increasingly those countries are not playing by the rules that were set after World War II to prevent another world war, that's why we set up a United Nations. international laws. As those rules and laws and institutions are being ignored, I just think we are living with way too much risk of the potential for another world war, a conflict among the great powers.