These Are Not the Geopolitical End Times

TL;DR: These are not the end times — you are not special and you will probably not die in a war.

A lot of people today feel, or at least act, like the world today is more dangerous and unstable than it's been for the last eighty years. I'm tired of people jumping to conclusions like "This is the technology that {will change / has changed} everything," or "WW3 is going to start in the next decade," or even "We're literally (figuratively) in Weimar Germany". Granted, this perception I have about how people feel is probably more a reflection of the people I talk to or read the opinions of than anything else. However, there are logical reasons why this kind of paranoia or simply exaggeration of current events' relevance is prominent today.

Real Geopolitical Tension is Business as Usual

Let's start with the real state of international affairs. There's a consensus that global tension is rising, but many people exaggerate how bad it is. I was talking to someone who felt that international tension in the current day was particularly high. They suggested that there's a "large scale shift towards rearmament", particularly concentrated in America, Russia, and European countries. They said military power was being abused to subjugate other countries, and that the PRC will at some point make a move on Taiwan because the precedent has been set.

I agree that the PRC invading Taiwan is the most significant threat to "the west" and global stability, but I don't think it's particularly likely to happen soon. Global powers should absolutely be ready to fight for Taiwan, but I also think that everybody already knows this. The leaders of the PRC know full well that as long as America is a superpower, they can't just waltz into Taiwan. Thanks to China's undemocratic system of government, they have relatively reliable and forward-thinking leaders. Xi Jinping is the guy who has the same expression and stature in every photograph taken of him; he's not going to do anything reckless. Of course tension over Taiwan is high, but ultimately that leads to stability with neither side making a move. The PRC has been after Taiwan for political and cultural reasons for over 75 years already. While Taiwan's importance has only grown over the years due to international reliance on their semiconductors and other computer doodads, this affects America and the rest of the world more than Mainland China itself. The PRC's stake in Taiwan has relatively declined compared to other countries as the focus has shifted from politics and culture to economics. Until any major changes in the global economy occur, and America and Mainland China keep up comparable military spending, we're probably not going to fall into WW3.

Taiwan aside, I'd like to dispute their comments on militarisation, which they justified by citing rising military spending as a proportion of GDP. There's a lot of noise in military spending, and according to NATO their nations' spending will be going up massively over the next few years. However, targets are only targets, and acting like hypothetical scenarios for 2030 and beyond have already happened isn't useful. Countries have an incentive to make it seem like they're increasing military spending more than they really are, so take bold promises with a pinch of salt.

In general, military spending as a proportion of GDP has gone down across the board since the middle of the 20th century. When people say it's going up they're looking specifically at Europe, because we tend to care more about what goes on here compared to other parts of the world. Military spending has increased significantly in some countries since 2022, primarily because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, but this isn't anything unprecedented. There's also been a long overdue increase in NATO countries due to rightful pressure from America. Some countries are admittedly rearming quite rapidly. Poland doubled its share of spending on the military from 2.2% to 4.5% in just three years. However, this is only really a symptom of Russia's war in Ukraine, and that's not too much of a worry.

Around the start of the year there was a lot of speculation that 2026 might finally be the year in which something happens. Americans ousted Maduro from Venezuela (see: Guatemala 1954, Cuba 1961, Dominican Republic 1965, Grenada 1983, Panama 1989, among other coups d'état) and launched a botched operation in the Middle East (you already know). Personally, I'm not opposed to all American intervention. My point is simply that we aren't living through anything unprecedented, and Trump's behaviour isn't particularly unusual for a U.S. president. The tariffs are a serious issue driving tension but their importance is somewhat exaggerated by the news cycle. If you're in Europe, you'll be worse affected by the EU's anti-consumer China tax, specifically designed to hit poorer people the hardest.

When people speak of impending world war I can't help but imagine how people felt for most of human history, or rather, how they'd feel if they had the information we have today. Tension used to (before 1945) flare up much more easily and wars used to happen a lot more frequently than they do today. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone, but it becomes more remarkable when you add further context. Wars and humanitarian disasters didn't use to be distant phenomena confined to the Middle East and Africa. Tensions between nations in Europe and much of now-developed Asia used to be far higher than they are today. The average person forecasting WW3 or the end of the world, much like myself, lives a mostly sheltered life in a safe country. It's difficult for us to discuss conflict, disaster, and tension because we've never truly lived through them. Furthermore, the world population is so large today compared to how it was for most of human history that we don't have a great sense of scale of historical events like conflicts and diseases. When accounting for population, the world today seems even more relatively peaceful than it first appears.

Tension isn't Just About War

Geopolitical tension is more nuanced than the rate of wars, deaths in action, and military spending. Fortunately, I have an example which involves heightened worldwide political turmoil, and a real fear of the whole world being nuked to oblivion. It's called the second half of the 20th century, or more specifically, the Cold War. Those proclaiming fear of nuclear weapons today must've been holding their shit in the entire time from the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Everyone knows about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 False Alarm Incident, but there's literally a whole Wikipedia page on nuclear close calls. Thanks to technological progression, accidents would be less likely than they were back in the 20th century, even if we were in a second cold war. One of the funniest incidents occurred on the 5th of October 1960, when the United States' early warning radar was "fooled by the moonrise over Norway and computers misinterpreted this as an all-out attack on the United States". What's worse is that at the time, incidents like these, in addition to non-nuclear events which could've driven up tension and paranoia, were often classified or otherwise not broadcast to the whole world as they would be today. The tension at the informed high table was worse than what the masses felt. There were probably events we still don't know about, most of them buried under the ashes of the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, tension is partially influenced by the feelings of the public, as politicians are encouraged to play into their fears. So the points I make later in the next section could increase global tension more than I give them credit for.

Why Does the World Seem Like it's Going to End?

It makes sense that we perceive world events and conflicts today as more significant than they really are. We're forced to think about how events might affect us and the world without knowing what the end outcome will be. Reading a history book, you can argue "it was obvious" or "this wasn't really important". You can't truly understand how people at the time responded to wars, disasters, and politics which you never lived through yourself. So even if something which happens today isn't that significant in the grand scheme of things, it can still feel like uncharted territory for you or the world because you have very little to accurately compare it to.

Since the Internet started, our ability to access and release information has dramatically improved. People in the 1960s were sheltered by the contemporary media oligarchy and tight-lipped government officials in a way that seems foreign to us today. Now you can talk to people by text or voice from any place in the world. You can see pictures and vivid video feed from just about any place in the world, including active warzones. Often you can watch high-stakes summits and speeches as if you were really there. Tension and conflict appear more rampant to us than they would to any ordinary people throughout all of history. Before mass media, you would only hear murmurs of distrust with other powers in your region. Even when radio and television were dominant, you could only find the highlights carefully curated by companies and your government. Now information is unlimited and you can find out about completely foreign conflicts, or geopolitical spats occurring across continents, as if they were battles taking place in your home.

Just as you can report on local events, people in warring states can report on the latest street kidnappings and bombings. It's easy to find videos of crawling soldiers in Ukraine getting their heads blown off by drone strikes. They appear alongside a flurry of news and real-time updates from the ground on Telegram and sometimes on Twitter. If you're hesitant to expose yourself to the carnage, you can still keep up to date with trackers like liveuamap.com, as I did watching the end of the Assad regime. If you tailor your information diet to that of a warzone, you'll naturally begin to feel the world is a more dangerous place than if you were more occupied with the real world around you.

It's worth noting that not everything is accurate or reliable. In the past, when the world was less connected and we relied almost entirely on word of mouth for finding information, it was easier for a nomadic charlatan to deceive others into buying their snake oil. We're fortunate to live in a world where most misinformation can be debunked by anyone who has some common sense, can use a search engine, and cares enough to take a minute out of their day. Lies about anything critical are bound to be disproven eventually. That said, on-the-ground reporting and live coverage of events in politics and warfare are still difficult to verify. Anyone can make an authoritative claim on Twitter and have it be corroborated by relatively legitimate news sources and artificial intelligence within minutes. By the time it's proven false, thousands of people will already believe it.

Taking in all the news and footage of armed conflicts will waste some of your time and maybe make you more agitated. You can do your best to avoid it but you'll still be affected by others' responses to global conflict and perceived heightened geopolitical tension. You may be pressured to take a stance or be drained by their perpetual doomerism. Some people are into this sort of thing, like those with an eye on tracking websites or Telegram, but most people stumble into content about geopolitics and warfare accidentally.

Social media platforms profit off inciting emotional responses from their users, keeping them engaged, so it's no surprise that geopolitics and warfare are big talking points. Some people can't hold a conversation without revealing whether they're in "Team Palestine" or "Team Israel", and expecting the other person to do the same. Others will treat you like a Russian asset if you dare to be critical of the Ukrainian government. Perhaps the worst of them all are the redditors (it's always redditors) who have an aneurysm whenever America is brought up. They happen to be the same people who treat America as both the centre of the universe and of every world conflict, so they're always annoying assholes. Worse yet, they probably live in America! I don't like my country but I know not to drag it.

People want to feel special. There's pleasure in watching world events play out in real time and thinking about the most exciting, usually worst-case scenarios. People love going on about how we're living through grandiose world-changing events. Admittedly, I got a kick out of watching the Ukraine war begin, reading Twitter posts while lying on my bed. There are people who want something big to happen every day, even if it's just so they can get angry at it. People will celebrate the "American Century of Humiliation" whenever one of Trump's tariffs goes through, or when one gets retracted. Even if things seem to be going well, you can always fall back on the old reliable "it's just like Weimar Germany!" If geopolitical tensions rise, a war breaks out, or worse, someone you don't like gets elected somewhere in the world, ditto. This phrase aggravates me because it's so versatile it's meaningless! Do you know how many people with a GCSE History level of understanding who I've seen parrot this in YouTube comments!?

Conclusion

With people drumming up hype about every world event being "the big one" which sets off the chain reaction for WW3 or whatever, it's difficult to resist the belief that real international tension is on the rise. People who have already taken a side on conflicts happening thousands of miles away will be emboldened and become even more tribalistic. Right now relationships at the high table may be relatively relaxed and peaceful, if a bit icy, but large segments of the common people are in a frenzy. There's more interpersonal tension, related to international politics and conflict, throughout the population than you'd expect.

I've focused almost exclusively on international tension and war in this article, but similar phenomena exist for other things like artificial (general) intelligence and climate change. These two issues will continue to change the world a lot over the rest of our lifetimes but they won't bring about the apocalypse that so many people claim to be terrified of, but are probably secretly looking forward to in a way. Think Peter Thiel's antichrist. For donkey's years people have also predicted that we're literally, in the religious sense, in the end times. Much of this is blatant self-aggrandisement from the propagators of this belief, but there's always a group of people who genuinely believe it. I'm not denigrating people for thinking the world is going to "end" because of war, artificial intelligence, climate change, or their own paranoia of choice. Many of them are victims, but when they go on to fearmonger about how the world is going to end, more people become victims and the cycle repeats.