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As a military historian, I still have a keen interest in international politics, conflict & defence subjects. In the past, I’ve written a lot about these subjects. I’ve written my master thesis on the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and hybrid warfare, which is quite relevant still today.
Our world is changing. All facets of our lives are in flux. There’s demographic changes, economical changes, technological changes, political changes, etc. What the world will look like in 20 years is not how the world has looked in the past 70.
Change always brings strife, because at its most basic, most people don’t like change. It makes then uncertain, stressed.
We’ve seen tensions rising in the last few years. I see them continue to rise in the next few. Tensions might (might) boil over at some point, and turn these various places into a full-blown world war. If so, can we make an educated guess of who is on what side? Took a stab below:
The core is the West (NATO & allies) vs. the Axis of Grievance, with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These four are mainly allied through their grievances of the current, American-led, world order, not because they really like each other.
Around this core there are countries that lean to one team or the other, but aren’t really in the core group.
Independents are, well, independent, with India, Brazil and Nigeria as the most notable players. They are either strong enough to not get dragged into one of the teams, are really trying hard to avoid their former team (Kazachstan), aren’t relevant enough (Namibia) or Switserland.
The last group is countries who are inward focused. i.e. nobody cares about the opinion or the support of South Sudan.