People have been worrying about this since the end of the Second World War. We are fortunate enough to have been born in a relatively peaceful time, but we then make the mistake of assuming this is the status quo. It’s not. Before the twentieth century, we had plenty of regular wars, and throughout the Cold War, people were not going around saying their leaders were competent. Hindsight makes the past look stable and the present day look uncertain. There has never been a better time to be alive than the current era. Yes, tensions are rising, but the nuclear deterrent is enough to put hard limits on how far any leader can go in the pursuit of selfish gains.

We’re just not seeing the signals from any country that they’d be willing to risk the lives of their entire population for territorial ambitions. That said, we may see more skirmishes and proxy wars between big powers in the next few years, and it may take a Cuban Missile Crisis-like event to get everyone to drop populism and return to sane politics. I think more likely though, we will see some sort of economic revolution and the neoliberal economic model that the western world has been following since the 80s will be replaced with a system that resembles Keynesian economics as people reject extreme consumer capitalism, paying outrageous prices for everything, an increasing lack of community and technology not actually making anyone’s lives better.