When Putin started the second (full-scale) invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he set in motion a regressive way of the world that we've not seen in a long time. The way of less war, more trade. Trump in his ignorance — no matter what goes on behind closed doors — aided in that effort to make man more violent again.
His senile predecessor's administration didn't help either; by not wanting to aggravate the nuke-powered Putin, they did too little to aid Ukraine. If they had helped more, they would have stumped the Russian attack and forced both Putin (and Xi) to go back to a Rule Based Order where trade is the name of the game.
Instead we have this. European countries are going to raise armies again, and the future is going to be more violent.
Here's one scenario: Europe has brought in too many migrants from MENA over a short amount of time. The migrants are destabilizing in that they in general weight heavier on the well fare system, per definition has lower education, puts the culture of the new country in decline, gets left behind and generates more violent crime. My home country, Sweden, is a prime example of that.
This makes people vote right at first, and far-right later on. Eventually some megalomaniac far-right idiot is going to get elected in a European country. The threat alone will make voters in neighboring countries appoint for similarly deranged figures. Add to this the future threat of Russia, and the downward spiral into less trade/more violence is undeniable.
There are other scenarios that may have similar outcomes.
Given that war in a couple of years is going to be fought with autonomous anti-personnel drones which can't be intercepted with EMP guns, this is going to be carnage on an industrial scale. Perhaps even worse than WW I.
The tyrannical dictatorships of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran is not going to mind civilian casualties, in fact deliberately killing civilians is what Russia is doing right now in large parts of Ukraine as part of their war effort. Of course US isn't going to be left behind, and the arms race is on. Similar to nuclear weapons: if you wipe out our population, we'll wipe out yours.
If European counties follow suit (sure, autonomous drones it is) plus elect mad leaders (at least one country will make this mistake at one point or another), I fear we are going to see large swarms of autonomous drones over many European cities in a decade.
The best way to turn the tide would be if US backs Ukraine properly, allowing it to win a small victory on its terms, without humiliating Russia too much. Then slowly try to turn the clock back to trade over war.
If US does that, the future instead looks pretty bright, as both China and the EU has rapidly aging and declining populations, and Russia has killed of so many of their young, that the risk of war in just ten years time is dwindling. At least I hope it's impossible to wage war and at the same time wipe your parent's asses.
Another hopeful idea is that it will take some time for most countries to get on the warpath again, and in the mean while the aging population and reduction in economy will make it very hard to wage wars. This will mainly affect the EU and China, but with those two our of the equation, the likelihood of WW III is reduced by a lot.
