Security expert Andrew Michta believes an armed conflict between the great powers in the next five years is possible, Report informs referring to his article for The Wall Street Journal.
The risk of confrontation between the US and China is greater than it has been in decades, and a broader war, triggered by a Chinese action against Taiwan, is a possibility.
The US military will require time to restructure and refit away from counterterrorism and toward high-intensity state-on-state great-power conflict. The Army Modernization Strategy published in 2019 sets 2035 as the deadline for transforming the Army into a multidomain-capable force.
Western democracies are buffeted by the trifecta of Covid-19; increasingly brazen mass in-migration, to which their governments seem unable to respond effectively; and the cresting cultural revolution, especially in the US, which is likely to peak within the next two years.
All have strained national cohesion across the West, fed distrust in government, and sowed seeds of doubt that legacy democratic institutions and processes are able to meet the basic requirements of governance and satisfy the citizenry.