Even without nukes, a war wouldn´t leave much of the eco systems in any continent involved, not to say globally.

Russia gets Europe, China Taiwan. The US would get... Greenland... and vanish. Russia happy. Or... What would a desperate Trump do to save not his country but his ego? Surely he wouldn´t do that..?

But, oh no, Russia says it struggles with the war effort. The US has to wage war on its own. And what with Canada allied with the EU, China invading Taiwan, uprisings in ME and Latin America and no friends anywhere!

Where would the UK stand? Not an EU country, and suspicious of those Continentals. And heavily dependent on the US. A good base for an invasion? Worked before.

Zones of interest: Russia gets the old East Bloc, the US the rest. At least on paper. Russia would want to occupy and exploit, the US only to destroy a competitor and look victorious.

US enters a more formal military alliance with Russia, aimed at Nazi-Communist Anti-American Europe (no need to be picky). A Russian invasion of the Baltics directly supported by the US.

Russia, given a victory in Ukraine by the US, moves in to defend Russian minorities in the Baltic states. Left-over NATO reacts in a hostile way – typical for Europe.

US picking an enemy. ME has been done, China is too risky, Russia... what? Canada would probably take too long to demonize. Europe – unpleasant lot, and beating Germany in WW is always popular, right? And Old Put wants to fight the EU too.

US leaving NATO, for a wider selection of potential enemies and allies. When the former allies insist on US bases being shut down, they are presented as hostile by the Orange House.

If we could learn from the present and inverted the development, we could have a sustainable and peaceful global community without poverty and drudgery. Or at least stumble along in that general direction. As Marx hoped, though premature attempts were discouraging.

If this process was inevitable and absolute, AI would eventually get rid of the somewhat human oligarchs as well, which would be interesting. But AI isn´t quite there yet.

If we can´t come up with new ways of distributing wealth, we may see a class of oligarchs ruling an AI middle class and a robot working class, with most of humanity left out to beg.

(OK, sometimes a subset of the elite kicked out the rest of the elite. But all the same...) (The working class staying pretty much the same, either conned by middle class into risings benefitting the middle or overturning the pyramid only to rebuild it again.)

The plan: To run both states and corporations, the world, by AI, while you live in luxury (?) in space. A dynasty of superhumans (???) will easily find solutions when the Earth is used up. Or, remaining on the planet, privilege will always prevail. Not a safe bet.

To fully harvest the resources of poorer lands, with increasingly desperate and violent populations, the rich states have to take direct control of the territories. Of course, taxpayers pay and fight, corporations reap the profits.

And they really did find the master economy crasher now, didn´t they?

Or to update that: Destroy communications and information, install puppet regimes, and have AI survey and supervise. Drone troublemakers.