President Joe Biden has given permission to Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory with American munitions, though he has restricted their use so Kyiv can only hit targets over the border close to Kharkiv after Russia made significant advances around the city in the northeastern part of the country close to the Russian border, two US officials told CNN.
We’re not anywhere near a revolutionary moment. 30% of the country is convinced Russian influence operations control a lot of the country and installed Trump and are trying to destroy the US entirely. 40% of the country (overlapping with above somewhat) is convinced China is trying to destroy and control us with tik-tok and the rest are mostly too tired, too beat down by bad labor conditions and life to care to think on it one way or the other.
US civil war is a meme. It’s not happening anytime soon, even the strongest moments of BLM were minor and the US is far too good at managing things at home and distracting the masses. We’re decades out from discontent and economic conditions getting bad enough that there’s anything resembling an insurrection and it won’t be red states vs blue states but uprisings in cities that grow and grow and refuse to be extinguished as they get more intense.
World war it is then if you’re right. And likely nuclear because Russia can’t win against US and NATO without devastating losses and a huge mandatory mobilization. China won’t intervene because that’s against their foreign policy. The DPRK could I suppose decide letting the US host nuclear weapons in the occupied south is unacceptable and launch an attack to retake the south and catch the US with their pants down but I’m skeptical they will either.
Though I suppose Russia could blink at the last moment and decide they’ll tolerate a heavily armed, NATO-ified rump state on their border rather than go to nuclear war. Russia’s reluctance all along has worsened things for them and I’m not entirely convinced they’re over it. The amount of times they talk about wanting talks comes off as almost pleading really which signals weakness to the vicious west and I’m afraid probably could lead to escalation from the west mis-analyzing all this as a sign that if they just push them a bit more they’ll sue for peace or give up. Then again this all could also just be western bluff and bluster and they could be out of ideas other than playing Nixon’s “madman” card against Russia and hoping they back down.