Everything bad is escalating. By Gerard Baker in The Australian.
The world is trapped in a vortex of steadily ratcheting tension. Events are whirling in a spinning cycle with powerful centrifugal force that threatens disorder: abroad, at home, in our lives and livelihoods.
Everywhere you look – international diplomacy, domestic politics, economics, technology – the risk of things getting worse significantly outweighs the chance they will get better. Each ratchet upwards brings the heightened prospect of calamity.
The planet’s two major wars are escalating. Russia and Ukraine are preparing for another dark winter. Vladimir Putin seems to be considering escalation, both vertical and horizontal, deepening and widening the conflict. Repeated hints that he may use nuclear weapons can probably be discounted but what he can now achieve through many more missiles and drones can be just as devastating. Russia increasingly threatens its neighbours with provocations and incursions designed to test Nato’s uncertain resolve.
The war in Iran, a misconceived act of hubris compounded by inept prosecution, sees Washington and Tehran locked in a race against time whose logic impels more war. Donald Trump needs to break the stranglehold the war has on energy prices and his approval ratings, preferably before the midterm elections in November. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps must lift the US blockade of its ports before its faltering economy collapses completely. Don’t expect Russia and China to stand by as that happens. Russia has been supplying weapons and intelligence to Tehran, and China remains its vital economic lifeline. The Houthis in Yemen are threatening again to escalate the shipping havoc in a region vital to world trade.
Etc., across several domains. Maybe the 1930s felt like this too, with the logic of escalation pushing the world to war, with poor leadership unable to steer us back to peaceable resolutions. China seems to be behind a concerted anti-western push, backing both Russia and Iran, so eventually this might spill into open conflict between China and the US.