Biggest short term risk area?

I have never believed this. Wars and conflicts are usually due to the elite of one side, sometimes both, trying to further their own self-interests at the expense of, not only the other side, but their own people. Ideology is usually a tool to mobilize the people to work for the interests of the elite at the expense of their own.

Hi, Chiroptera. You say Contra would probably agree with you, and I might as well. Are you saying that the term, "U.S. interests" is in reality the interests of the 2% of the wealthiest people?

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Are you saying that the term, "U.S. interests" is in reality the interests of the 2% of the wealthiest people?

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Hello, Phatboy. Good question, and a bit difficult to answer. Especially since this may be off-topic, so I am going to try to get as much as I can in one, brief post.I believe that the ruling class of this country (I leave it to others to debate whether it coincides exactly with the wealthiest 2%) do determine what constitutes "US interests". This doesn't necessarily mean that these people are cynically manipulating everyone else -- I don't have much patience with "conspiracy theories". I notice that it is remarkably easy to accept beliefs when those beliefs just happen to work out in your own self-interests. To quote Gore Vidal: Conspiracy? No, they just all think alike.Now take the working classes which, ironically, tend to have more intense patriotic feelings than other demographic groups. The are the ones who tended to vote Republican in the last election, and they are the ones who form a larger proportion of the armed forces. Is it in their best interests to always take jobs that either pay barely subsistance wages or are unstable (subjecting them to unemployment) or both? No. Is it in their best interests to have inadequate access to health care? No. Is it in their best interests that their local schools are inadequately funded, have inadequate resources, and which burn out their teachers? No. And seeing how they form a large part of the armed forces, is it in their best interests to be wounded, maimed, and killed for a system that consistently shows them such contempt? No. But they are patriotic, and their feelings of loyalty are sincere, and so they are quite willing to make sacrifices to further "US interests".The middle classes in this country are more interesting. The middle classes also have problems with job insecurity, access to adequate medical care, access to adequate educational resources, but not to the degree that the lower classes do. And since the second world war the Western capitalist countries do a remarkable job of sharing a large amount of the wealth with the middle class, so that, at least materially, the middle classes are remarkably wealthy in comparison with both the majority of the rest of the world as well as the majority of people in history.So, on the one hand, the middle classes have access to incredible wealth and a high material standard of living. On the other hand, this comes at the cost of having this access being insecure as well as giving up a large amount of control over their own lives and having very little power in the formulation of government policies. So, whether the interests of the middle class is the same as "US interests" depends, I guess, on what one values.

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Right now, where do you think the biggest immediate threat to world peace exists? (And I know contra will say the US but I hope he'll go beyond rhetoric to point out both sides in any assessment).

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Well its kinda an odd question in that of course the world is not at peace. And most of the conflicts you nominated do not appear to me likely to translate into a kind of world war.Yes, my general answer is the US. As Lennin argued, imperialism is the ultimate expression of capitalism, and IMO the US is structurally committed to warfare. This has little to do with any specific trigger.The main serious international issue which I am anticipating is the developement of Chinese power projection in the Atlantic. I think we also have to understand that Taiwan will - by hook or by crook - be reincorporated into China sooner or later. Some may CHOOSE to make an issue out of that and thus trigger a war. Some may CHOOSE to consider Chinese aircraft carriers in the atlantic inherently threatening.But of course I am in the camp that sees recent events as demonstrating incontrovertibly that Iran has a legitimate, even urgent, need to develop a nuclear weapon to ensure its own security, and I do not feel remotely threatened by that prospect.