Several months ago, I wrote two essays on Russian grand strategy. (My apologies on never completing the nuclear one, an extremely necessary but far too grim subject for my taste.) In that series of essays, I made a few assertions I want to bring to your attention again in a more contemporary context. First, that wars’ result tends to confirm the strengths of the coalition arrayed against the main combatants before the war has even started. This is, in fact, not an assertion, but an iron law of warfare that still exists in chimpanzee warfare. See Strategy: A History, Chapter One, by Freedman if you disagree.
Second, that big global dustups tend to run in about 100 year cycles these days.
So, take a look around — got a big, hot war in the Ukraine slightly analogous to the Sino-Japanese war of the 1930s. Next, you got weird, unresolved shenanigans in the Middle East that have a weird reverse-appeasement type feel.
We’re quite possibly looking at the two opening battles of WWIII, right now.