Perhaps ISIS, North Korea, or even Russia could have been viewed as the greatest threat to peace this past year and at the present.
ISIS is dispersed into the cities and new hidden battlegrounds around the world, defeated militarily in their declared ‘home’. In retrospect, it wasn’t as hard as it appeared on the evening news the past two or three years. Interesting how that works out; put a real military man in charge and let him do his job without interference from Washington. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but seriously, compare now with a year ago. ISIS and its future iterations may never go away for good but no one is declaring absolute victory this time.
North Korea is probably the greatest present threat but even here, we may have a greater handle on it than what you see at face value. Count of it. War = great harm to western interests but also, automatic destruction to the Un regime and Un appears to know that in spite of his blubber to the contrary. The other options are that we may see North Korea collapse from an internal infiltration, like one of those insects that gets a parasite and are taken over like a living zombie. The real question is will that happen soon enough before Un exports weapons or there’s a missed signal that triggers a war of mass casualties. There is -0- room for error. This alone makes North Korea the most dangerous threat to the United States and much of the surrounding hemisphere.
Russia may essentially be viewed in a similar way. They have a historical record of greater success is creating geo-political disturbance and they’re far more sophisticated than Un and North Koreans. However, if you look at their underlying fundamentals, a different picture emerges. Putin is vain and he is not invincible. He has the aspirations and enough new strategic military gadgetry to create instant pop-up domination almost anywhere in the world. What he lacks is a nation-platform that could sustain any large-scale aggression. Due to years of subtle internal suppression, he also lacks wide-spread popular support. He has patient enemies within, at his gate. In the minds of a lot of naïve Americans, Putin’s Russia is viewed as boogie-man #1 for using the internet to infiltrate our press and social media during the election. Well shame on us, if we were truly unaware. Turns out Google and Facebook etc. was selling some of that access. Obama should have just asked Schmidt and Zuckerberg. Putin’s Russia will probably spend the next number of years nibbling at out ankles but I also see the potential for a Yeltsin style collapse.
Other world powers like China and Iran are by no means unimportant but their circumstance is less immediate in the news as of the end of 2017. Witness the US declaration that Jerusalem would be the Israeli capital. Five or ten years ago, the Middle-East would have erupted into a ball of flame like a Michael Bay movie, not so now. The world is changing.
Foreign threats are beyond the control of any single one of us but yet our attitudes toward our politicians and military does have a huge tangible effect. A few hundred thousand votes can make the difference between a decade of relative peace or immeasurable suffering for millions of people somewhere in the world.