Cold war 2 or world war 3?

[kirby9612]

Which is more likely to happen?

[Skynstein]

I think neither, but IMO a Cold War is less likely to happen because, the reason why it was called "Cold War" is that there was a significant amount of tension between two major powers (USA and USSR), but they never fought directly against each other, instead using their puppets to do their fighting for them or sponsoring coups d'etat to acquire influence (the USA is most guilty of this last bit).

A new WW could be sparked by Ukrainian conflict, but I doubt it'll get that far unless Russia starts supporting the pro-Russian groups in East Ukraine for real. Lately the trend is "war against terrorism", going by the two US invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan). I expect the US to try to garner support for another strike (against ISIS), especially if the Republicans win the next presidential elections.

[MercyWalk]

Might as well rule out Cold War because it's not really an arms race between any major powers right now, it's a matter of direct military conflict.

Also someone should really fix Africa before the world fucks up again and makes it even worse.

[Rewjeo]

The combination of nuclear arms and the general interconnectedness of the major powers of the world makes a large scale conflict unlikely under any circumstances. For instance, Russia depends too much on natural gas exports to Europe and Europe depends too much on that gas for anyone to really do much about anything over there, and of course the US isn't in a rush to mess things up, either. China and America could not reasonably get into much of a conflict right now, as the two are too dependent on trade with the other. And then there's the part where, at least for the time being, there's no real competition in how a war would go. The US/NATO would basically win anything, unless the conflict went nuclear and then, well, everyone loses. China could probably make up the ground over a few decades, but even then they wouldn't have much of a reason to get into a direct conflict with US. The would fight mostly over power projection in the Pacific, and honestly it's hard to say how that would go. I suppose you could sort of call that a Cold War 2, but really I would say that the bigger concern right now is the continued existence of things like the Islamic State.

[Magical CC]

Neither, the world has always been a mess. It's just that with internet, youtube and the current trend of hyping, everything looks so grave and serious.