I guess not so many people here have direct experience of the world before the end of the USSR and the cold war. Basically there was very little exchange of goods between the two blocks and their two leader countries made constantly clear that they had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed to all the countries in the other block and were ready to wipe them out if they were attacked [1]
The level of confrontation now is nowhere close to that but that has been the usual state of the world for a longer time than the current open and free Internet and commerce. If we are heading into that direction (if!) all the major players (USA, China, Russia) will build some walls again and pull the strings of their allies. It's both a defensive strategy and an offensive one and it's going to reduce the flow of goods, people and information. Technology stacks will be rewritten and operated locally as barriers are raised. Factories will have to be rebuilt in the west. I wonder if the EU can survive being pulled in three different ways or each country will go its way toward the party that suits them best.
We can look at the 1946-1989 cold war as an experiment to predict how this is going to play out. The winner was who was able to create more wealth for the people in its block. Nuclear weapons were (and are) a strong enough deterrent to make a real full scale war impossible. Be prepared to hear more about them in the next years. However there were many wars fought by proxy, or against proxies.
Tangentially, you might be interested in learning about the origin of the words First, Second and Third World [2], which somewhat changed in meaning since their origin in 1952. They where USA + allies, USSR + allies, all the others. They were not about being rich or poor. Maybe we'll end up with more than three worlds this time or (I hope) business as usual.
And I can imagine that current “nuclear” is “tech”. Each party will develop cyber warfare in a form of hacker groups, tools, AI, autopilot drones, etc.
Yes, but they won't lead to mutually assured distruction. Only nuclear weapon can do that so far: ensure that whoever pushes the button die in the counterstrike.
It seems the EU are for lifting sanctions and resuming relations with Russia (and subsequently keeping relations with China). I don't know, but I bet this has a lot to do with our relationship with the current US president's attitude and his trade tariffs. A second term for president Trump will probably cement this relationship.
I feel it's something that the EU wants and we surely care more about the Western democratic culture, but not at the risk of our own financial ruin.
> I don't know, but I bet this has a lot to do with our relationship with the current US president's attitude and his trade tariffs.
It could also be a continuation of the German "Wandel durch Annäherung" policy ("Change by Rapprochement"). People you do business with won't shoot at you, and will generally be more willing to talk to you about human rights, nuclear disarmament etc than people you don't do business with.
It’s not that the balance of power was convenient is that a major disturbance in it could’ve been deadly.
A civil war in the USSR at the time could have literarily ended the world as we know it.
The fact that the only major thing we got at the fall of the USSR was the attempted 1991 ‘August Coup’ is a miracle as things could’ve ended so badly for Russia and the entire world.
The level of confrontation now is nowhere close to that but that has been the usual state of the world for a longer time than the current open and free Internet and commerce. If we are heading into that direction (if!) all the major players (USA, China, Russia) will build some walls again and pull the strings of their allies. It's both a defensive strategy and an offensive one and it's going to reduce the flow of goods, people and information. Technology stacks will be rewritten and operated locally as barriers are raised. Factories will have to be rebuilt in the west. I wonder if the EU can survive being pulled in three different ways or each country will go its way toward the party that suits them best.
We can look at the 1946-1989 cold war as an experiment to predict how this is going to play out. The winner was who was able to create more wealth for the people in its block. Nuclear weapons were (and are) a strong enough deterrent to make a real full scale war impossible. Be prepared to hear more about them in the next years. However there were many wars fought by proxy, or against proxies.
Tangentially, you might be interested in learning about the origin of the words First, Second and Third World [2], which somewhat changed in meaning since their origin in 1952. They where USA + allies, USSR + allies, all the others. They were not about being rich or poor. Maybe we'll end up with more than three worlds this time or (I hope) business as usual.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
[2] https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=372684438