The next global conflict?

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With all this Trump talk, I've been thinking about what the next global conflict would be like, and I envision America in the role of the bad guys.

For increasing authoritarianism, America is ejected from NATO, but Canada remains. NATO reorganizes to account for the change in membership. America starts to get closer to Russia and they begin to realize what they need to do to stay secure: Control the Arctic while retaining access to the Southern Hemisphere. They know that NATO is unlikely to stay idly by while this happens, so they devise a strategy.

First, they isolate Europe and Canada by using rhetoric to paint them as immoral degenerates who are spreading corruption everywhere and blame them for the "loss of morality" occurring in America and Russia. At the same time, they denigrate the Muslims, painting them as a scary threat. This gives America and Russia, the newly formed Arctic Powers, pretext for war.

For Phase I of their plan, they manage to get the Britain secretly on their side to help outflank NATO. Britain will prepare to conquer Ireland and Scandinavia (assisting the Russians) simultaneously, while using their position at Gibraltar to prepare for an attack on North Africa and to keep the Mediterranean closed off from the west. At the start of the conflict, the 3 major powers go into action. America simultaneously invades Canada and Mexico and soon after that NATO invokes Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty and goes to war against America. Britain then shows its hand and quickly invades Ireland and Scandinavia, while Russian troops move in from the east. Russia then invades and subdues the Caucasian and Central Asian republics. Russia achieves an "understanding" with Iran, China, and Mongolia (that they'll remain neutral).

Now that the Arctic is secure, the Arctic Powers go to Phase II of their plan and move south to both secure access to the Southern Hemisphere and outflank NATO from the north, east, and south, with only the Atlantic open on the west. Here, Britain and Russia keep NATO at bay while Russia invades Turkey the Middle East from the north, with the goal of quickly reaching the Mediterranean and Red Seas and most importantly the Suez Canal, with substantial assistance from American and British troops, in order to bottle NATO up in the Mediterranean from the east. America moves troops into Central America and the Caribbean, to prepare a stroke against Brazil and French Guinea.

Unfortunately for the Arctic Powers, they get bogged down in the Middle East. America invades Brazil and French Guinea as part of Phase III, but gets bogged down in Brazil.

What will happen next? Also, what other details would you consider, like the direct war between Russia and NATO in Eastern Europe, the status of Israel, and the status of North Korea? When do British troops in Gibraltar move into the attack phase?

As I understand it they don't let a new country into NATO unless it meets certain criteria for human rights.

So if a country already in NATO starts to violate human rights then I suppose that that country could get booted out of NATO.

If Trump gets sworn in, and then actually enacts some of his fantasies of deporting eleven million people, and torturing terror suspects, then I suppose its theoretically possible that the US could get booted out of NATO for violating human rights.

But Britain and the US together are the backbone of NATO. So if either leaves (especially the US) then that's pretty much then end of NATO.

The next global conflict will like be overpopulation... as such, we are *all* the bad guys by simply existing on this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun...

And this is likely to be a semi-permanent conflict...

To quote the otherwise unimpressive Herman Daly, we are transitioning from an "empty world" (where natural resources are relatively abundant) to a "Full World" (where we have/are reaching the upper limit of utilization of the Earth's natural resources).

In fact, climate change is just the beginning of our worries, since there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Even if we do not get nuclear fusion up and running within the next 50 years (when my father was my age, many believed that we would have fusion in 50 years ), Earth is a closed (and not isolated) system, and thus provides us with a nigh-exhaustible source of energy from solar energy (and variants like wind energy, which is just solar energy in another medium).

We are left with a significantly larger challenge when it comes to terrestrial physical resources like water, land, iron, building materials etc. As the world population grows, so does demand for these resources, and while some technologies can increase efficient usage of existing resources and generate usable substitutes (GMO, nanotechnology, biomass etc.), there is an automatic upper limit to substitution: The 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Since so many wars in history have been partially or completely motivated by access to resources, the ever-increasing overpopulation of planet Earth will likely generate significant conflict unless some of global coordinating framework can be established. And all the major global economies (the US, EU, China, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil etc.) all have a stake in the conflict due to their domestic demand for resources.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change might be cause for some measured optimism, but (1) the United States will likely decide to sabotage it if a Republican wins the 2016 presidential election, and (2) the agreement only addresses global warming and not the wider range of environmental problems.

The military establishment fears Trump. They will hide the REAL nuclear button, and give him a phony password should he be elected.

Quite an imagination there. It got silly at the part the US got kicked out of NATO or Canada taking a leading roll in the world, only in Justin Trudeau's wildest dreams. More likely would be Canada to withdraw from NATO.

The next global conflict has already begun, the wars in the middle east aren't going to end and threat of terrorism will never ease if continue down our current path. If things are to change then we must change our approach and take stock of who really shares our common interests. The neoconservatives don't care as they want to exist in a state perpetual revolution, a forever war which our military industrial complex enthusiastically supports.

Beneficii - why exactly would the us invade mexico and canada? Other than a maniacal desire to rule the universe, that is.

Your plan is quite organized. I would be far more concerned with:
-reactionary measures as opposed to anything resembling a "rational" plan
-deeply angering other leaders into considering war themselves
-further destabilization of areas via the presidential power to act upon any countries, groups, or individuals as he sees fit under the catch phrase of terrorism
-providing endless fuel for recruitment and action by anti-american groups, including isis
-disregarding or dissolving any treaties related to torture, spawning an increase of torture across the board
-threatening any country that won't do as he says with military action
-creating an extremely detrimental snowball effect of which the impact will be seen for many years to come.

I think ww3 would happen in the middle
East. It would probably start off between
Saudi arabia and iran, and then their allies would get involved.

interstate warfare has been in overall decline since 1950(just after NATO was formed) and societal conflicts have been in an even steeper decline since 1991.

img source: http://www.systemicpeace.org/conflicttrends.html

i'm more worried about china than anybody else.

Yes. China in the long run. Russia and US against each other (not teamed up like in the OP) in the short run: being drawn into the regional wars already going in on the Middle East (or the Ukraine crises, or both).

The scenario in the OP is too silly even to be a joke.

Some sort of breakdown causes nukes to be accidently launched.
China and Taiwan
Russia Ukraine etc
Israel and Saudi Arabia vs Iran
North Korea figures out that the world does not take thier blustering seroiusly because of the "cry wolf" effect so the actually act upon thier threats

Here are some outliers
President Trump attacks Mexico to force them to pay for the wall. Most of the rest of the Spanish speaking world allies with Mexico.
Economic depression brings back old hatreds between Germany and France and the UK or between UK and France

The war described in the post is due to oil and wanting to control access to markets in the South (such as South America, Africa, and the Middle East). Thanks to global warming, a lot of oil and gas is becoming extractable in the Arctic, and the Arctic Powers are looking to monopolize it. Thanks to rather toxic politics in America, Russia, and the UK, there is an increasing ultranationalism and a desire to have these resources only for themselves. Thus, they go to war.

Oil has only been a problem when an existing supply is cut off.

China was given the markets for manufactured goods.

The next war will be fought with money.

Not sure if this makes your scenario more plausible, or less plausible.

But those are real trends: climate change in the arctic, resources being found on the bottom of the arctic ocean, and nationalism already rising in the three countries mentioned.

They are finding oil and probably will find natural gas in the arctic ocean. And this is being made possible by climate change. The trend to expect is for there to be decreasing ice and increasing black gold deposits being found in the arctic ocean.

A few years ago Putin did send a sub to the north pole to plant a Russian flag on the sea bottom right at the Pole.

Both Canada and Russia have what are called "sector claims" in the Arctic (have for a century). Imagine the Arctic Ocean as a pie. The north Pole as the center point of the pie. The slice of the pie that radiates out from the Pole to the eastern and western edges of Canada is claimed by Canada. That radiating out to where Russia's coast touches Norway faning 6000 miles east to where Russia almost touches Alaska is the even bigger slice always claimed by Russia. The US doesnt believe in Sector claims (and our artic coast -that of northern Alaska - is tiny compared the Russian and Canadian Arctic ocean shores anyway). I believe Denmark may have a modest sector claim radiating out to its colony of Greenland. No one else as sector claims in the Arctic, though the ANTarctic is covered by sector claims by dozens of countries - claims that overlap and contradict each other.

Though these sector claims have been there for the whole 20th Century no one thought much about them (its all just ice up there so who really cares?). But now these claims might become real claims.

That silly seeming Russian stunt of planting that flag on the sea bottom could be a harbinger of serious things to come. Canada, and its commonwealth ally the UK, with tacit support from the US might become very territorial about the Canadian side of the Arctic Ocean much like Russia already is about its half of the watery top of the world. But these trends are more likely to make the North Pole a flash point between the Anglosphere and Russia than to cause sudden cooperation between Russia and the Anglosphere against everyone else.

In a recent washington post interview, trump wouldn't rule out using nukes against isis. He just changed the subject as he does. And, since that would of course just be a big media smear, they provide a transcript and recording of the whole interview.

Russia's claim is based on the Law Of The Sea, that is, the Continental Shelf of Russia continues north, their claim is, the boundary is half way between the Canadian Continental Shelf, and the Russian Shelf. By this measure, Russia owns most of the Arctic.

Recently Russian military bases on Arctic islands have been reactivated. Russia owns most of the world's icebreakers.

A recently approved claim north of Japan, the sea inside a line of Russian islands, including ones captured from Japan, is not international waters, it is an inland sea, belonging solely to Russia. They are making the same claim inside their Arctic islands.

The shortest route from China to Europe is through the Russian Arctic. A high speed rail line is being built from China to Saint Petersburg, to a Baltic Port.

Russia is not going to war with its European customers.