Will The Next World War Start In The South China Sea?

Mike Blake / Damir Sagolj / Reuters / alessandro0770 / Shutterstock / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

The Independent: The next world war will be in the South China Sea. Ask Thucydides...

World View: Is this the dawn of the nuclear Doomsday we have lived in fear of?

Climb into my time machine and come fly with me two years into the future. Here we are, November 2018, with celebrations of the centenary of the end of the First World War in full swing. And we find ourselves part of the grand coalition that has just declared war on China.

Throughout the noughties and beyond, the itch we couldn’t stop scratching was the Muslim world. Our war was the war on terror, we were told, and when that “crusade” collided head-on with the Arab Spring, the result was Syria. Seven years on, the bloody stalemate grinds on. Nobody can win. Nobody is prepared to yield an inch. It’s Flanders Field all over again.

But meanwhile, at the beginning of 2016, a real old-fashioned war was boiling up in the South China Sea, only we were not paying attention. And now the British government is talking about conscription – a century after the heroes came home. It’s so funny it hurts.

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WNU editor: This conversation has been around for a while .... The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War? (The Atlantic). What's my take .... in an age of nuclear weapons the “Thucydides Trap” is probably not applicable .... at least I hope so.