You think a hot war won't happen over Taiwan? I mean, I hope you are right. But if China wants to invade, it's going to turn into a hot war including the US and probably a number of other regional neighbors.
My guess is that MAD will keep the war conventional even though people have nukes. After all, Russia has nukes and they haven't used them despite their failure on the battlefield.
I'm curious where you are from? You don't sound like you understand the mentality of Americans. Your reasoning sounds quite a lot like the theories of victory circulating among Japanese leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
And if you think Russia is failing, then I'm not sure you know what victory looks like when fighting a competent adversary. The Ukrainian army is being fueled by endless and increasingly brutal forced conscription, and backed by Western weapons, tech, hardware, and intelligence. But instead of the present, let's go 4 years back after the invasion and when the West decided to get overtly involved. Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.
> Imagine I came to you and said 'hey stickfigure not only with this war last for years, but in 4 years Russia will have the strategic initiative, control a massive chunk of Ukraine, and be continuing to push forward' -- what do you think you would have said? 'Russia must be failing' wouldn't really be a logical response then, or now.
If four years ago anyone had said that Russia would invade Ukraine with everything it got and that four years later it would still stuck fighting for the first eastern provinces, with casualties exceeding a million and no end in sight, they would've been dismissed as an insane doomer. And yet here we are.
By now, the war against Ukraine is among the worst disasters in the entire military history of Russia, far worse than the 1979 invasion Afghanistan and the 1904 Russo-Japanese war, which until recently were regarded as the worst catastrophies of the modern era. Notable Russian fascist Maxim Kalashnikov goes much further. He says that Russia tried to subjugate Ukrainians, but failed, and Ukrainians will return for revenge. He calls it a "cultural and civilizational defeat": https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1985270960321130516
That adage about being doomed to repeat history would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Part of the reason people are doomed to repeat history is precisely this effect. By the time Hitler was greenlighting the Volkssturm, he certainly knew it was over. But he refused to step outside of his cognitive dissonance, to the net result that vast numbers of Germans ended up dying for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
That 15% no longer has the majority of the economic power in the world, or anywhere near it. There's a great visualization of the G7 vs BRICS here. [1] That's obviously not all countries, but those omitted aren't going to change the result nor trend. Just as important is what "economy" means. When we speak of war we're referring to the ability to go from ploughshares to swords, but most of the 15% have neglected their core manufacturing competencies and transitioned to service economies where these large numbers don't really translate into economic might of the sort we might imagine. Again, yet another lesson from Ukraine.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1412425/gdp-ppp-share-wo...