This. The West will fight over the last remaining strips while the Muslim world tries to understand why.
WWIII won't be fought by nations. it will be fought by collapsed states in desperation for food, energy, and drinking water. It will be fought after our economic systems collapse due to instability from the concentration of wealth into the hands of two few of individuals. Eventually that concentration will lead to massive unrest and if it gets bad enough...revolution on a massive scale. It's naive to think that the concept of nations will survive a 1,000 years. It's hardly 250 years old....the first nation really being the U.S. What is likely to happen is that we'll have enough of a global collapse in 50-100 years that results in a great depression. One gov't will fall and many others will follow and there might be civil war and massive upheaval. With that level of anarchy and desperation for ever increasingly limited resources, nukes could get used. Pakistan is likely the prime candidate.
Heres a thought. We have the means to destroy humanity. The world nuke stockpile is enough to kill every living human 7 times over. Lets pray it doesnt come to that.
England doesn't exist today as a nation. And it never was a nation state as a political entity but a series of kingdoms, conquered territory, and finally a part of the UK. I am talking about nations as a political and cultural phenomenon. A political gov't with a population that identifies itself culturally and geographically as one. Not as part of a conquered or paying tribute to a feudal lord.
I think we need to keep our eyes on Canada. Bunch of troublemakers and ne'er-do-wells up there. Beyond Canucks and their blood lust, I suspect the next really major conflict will be a drawn out affair resulting from climate change and refugee movements.
I acknowledge that England isn't a sovereign entity but it once was, and I think your definition of nation, state or nation state more specifically refers to a republic. I just don't accept the assertion that the United States is the first nation, or even oldest one continuously in existence.
Oh lawlz. Obviously, none of us can say what society will look like two hundred, five hundred, or a thousand years from now. But if there's a one-world government by the time I'm dead, I'll be shocked - though then again, I'd rather die than live under than any variation of a one-world government, so I guess that's a misnomer anyways. On a more serious note, the only way a war of any note can actually arise is really China's rise, and I don't mean that in WNBA's "lololol the Japs will kill us all lolololol". I don't actually think such a thing will happen. But peaceful international political systems are generally in two states - one nation is so powerful that he can generally maintain the peace ( current-day America, Rome at its peak) or there's a general balance of power (19th-century Europe after Napoleon, the Cold War). China, and maybe India country, are the only nations which can threaten the Pax Americana - Europe lacks the political will and is too nihilist to be a credible threat to anyone. So, if there's war? It'll be because of a breakdown in talks between America, China, and India over something. Nothing ineivtable.
Like the tangle of alliances that ushered the beginnings of World War I, IMO the same tangle of alliances surrounding Israel and the militant Muslim states (Iran, Syria, Iraq etc.) will usher in WWIII. Whether Israel eliminates Iran's nuclear capability or Iran develops a nuclear weapons system that it unleashes upon Israel, the war IMO starts there and escalates, pulling all the major industrialized nations into it. Muslims, in general, are not well educated or socially mobile, so extremists, IMO, will be able to whip up the general populace into a religious frenzy with a mindset of killing all "infidels" and imposing shariah law globally. As a result, they will be the first to discover the tragedy of first stage nuclear war. The rest of the world will suffer the same fate either directly or indirectly. For half a century Soviets/Russians and the United States understood the lunacy of nuclear war and MAD. Arabs do not think this way and IMO believe killing non-muslims is their religious duty, hence, the world is plunged into World War III and a nuclear holocaust.
This is paranoid and shows a big misunderstanding of the Muslim and Arab World. Most Arab countries aren't likely to align themselves with Iran in a war against Israel. While none of those countries like Israel the primarily Sunni Arab countries distrust Shiite Iran and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates consider Iran more of a threat than Israel because of their own Shiite minorities. Further this idea that Arabs are inherently so fanatical religiously that those countries are suicidal belies their behavior. While the Arab states fought wars with Israel they didn't do so suicidally, in fact one reason why they lost all of those battles is that many of their soldiers weren't as dedicated (fanatical) as the Israelis. The Iranian Revolutionary guards fought fanatically against Saddam's regime but that was a case where Saddam's forces had invaded Iran and they were defending their land. The country in the Middle East most likely to use nukes is Israel. For one they are the only country there that has them currently and also they are the ones that feel the most threatened on all sides, Iran is the second. I don't think Israel would ever use a nuke offensively but if Israel where to every be close to losing another Arab - Israeli war I can easily see them using a nuke since the alternative is them being wiped out as a country. The Muslim country that would be most likely to use a nuke is Pakistan but their most likely target would be India and not the West. Pakistan is locked in a protracted existential conflict with India and hardliners on both sides aren't shy about saying they would like the other to not exist and they both have nukes. That said I doubt either would actually use nukes unless they were invaded and losing badly to the other. This would be more likely Pakistan being invaded by India.
