Thread by @kofinas

1/ We are entering a period in world history where long-standing territorial disputes—so-called “frozen conflicts” mediated for years by the credible force of American intervention—are igniting in violence.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1310128511429087232

2/ The chaos in Nagorno-Karabakh could easily get out of control and spread beyond the borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, becoming yet another proxy war that ropes in Turkey, Russia, and possibly Iran.

https://twitter.com/LizSly/status/1310171371742343170

3/ There are many such flashpoints around the world. The Taiwan Strait is another. Any breakout in violence there could quickly rope in the United States and its Asian partners into a full-blown military conflict with China.

nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chin…

4/ The last time the world faced such danger was in the lead-up to WWI, with its interlocking alliance structures, or subsequently, during the inter-war years when economic hardship, populism, and rearmament turned Europe into a wasteland of death & destruction.

5/ We may be at greater risk of annihilation today. Like the period pre-1914, the western world has become accustomed to peace & prosperity.

Complacency combined w/a revolution in the technology of war-making has laid the groundwork for the most destructive war in human history.

6/ Likewise, the financial dislocations, mounting debts, and political baggage left unresolved after 10 yrs of economic "expansion" in western countries raises the specter of domestic upheaval & revolution seen during the interwar period—a dynamic that can be equally destructive.

7/ Nowhere is this dynamic playing out with greater consequence than in the US.

As we head into an election that may not produce a clear winner—only civil unrest & political crisis—the risk of international conflict grows by orders of magnitude.

We are at a perilous crossroads.