It's hard to know if that's too dramatic. Wars have happened before. Global financial system collapse has not. Large scale regional ones have happened, and they arguably do hurt more than war. While I'm not saying it is going to be that bad, you don't actually know any more than I do, and that's a legitimate concern. As an engineer, on the risk * impact metric, it's something I'm paying attention to. I'm not planning on it as if the risk is 100%, but at the moment I certainly judge this on the risk * impact as larger than the direct threat of a war because the impact side of the terms are pretty significant, and the risk is certainly non-trivial.

(At least, the conventional definition of "war". Certainly if I were looking at the East vs. West dynamic currently in play, and I were in charge of the East with the goal of winning, I'd be playing to knock over the Western-styled economy rather than a direct military conflict. From a certain point of view, a military conflict is just an economic conflict anyhow. A global financial crisis may well be the direct threat of war.)