Regional wars between ascending powers

MarkRoderick

New Member
Hi all,

first let me give you some background: I just got started with a plot for a novel/script I want to write and that is the main reason why I joined this forum, because it seems I can get lots of good input from you guys.
Basically, the main plot idea came to my mind as I got really upset with this Sandy bitch killing halloween.
Then I was considering. We had the worse dry summer in the US story, then we have this supermegastorm kicking start the winter, and east coast got drenched and obliterated. And we in the US are not the only ones getting gut-kicked by climate. There is widespread drought all around the world, and there is this global burning-freezing/flood-drought cycle happening every year and so on.

Before people start to throw rocks at me, let me make it clear: I am not a global warming advocate (actually, I was totally against it, but seeing the way climate is messing up with us lately I became way less skeptic towards it than I was before).
Thing is, I was writing a script for a documentary about the Greatest Generation and how they shaped the America we live in (I don't like documentaries, but, hey, kids gotta eat and I have to save for their college, lol), and I noticed how WWII helped the world not only to recovery economically, but also, somehow, to get rid of overpopulation, and give us like 50 years of prosperity.

Also, before people start to call me racist, or whatever, this is an idea for A WORK OF FICTION. And I am Latino. I was born in the US, my parents and my grandparents were already American, and I am American, but I am Latino, and I have plenty of Hindu, Chinese, Nigerian, Mexican, Brazilian and even two South African friends (one was a vet from Angolan wars, and the other is a black professor that even got jailed during the apartheid, so both sides of the South African divide).
They were the ones suggesting their countries to me to begin with.
Again, this is FICTIONAL. The opinions and concepts here are not necessarily my opinions on regards of those issues, but are the opinions that can be used to having the story plot making sense.

So, the plot idea for that scenario I am building gets from this premise that our world right now is overpopulated, ignorance is prevailing (when we keep helping the less fortunate, we break the perfect balance of natural selection, so the weak begin to prevail over the strong), the planet is breaking down, and such.
When that happened before, global wars kicked in and cut the clutter. But issue now is, we are alone in this world, there is no military power equivalent to 1/10 of our military capabilities. With the Soviet Union we still could expect a good fight. We would have won eventually, but they would have bruised us badly, and perhaps even break a couple ribs. But, right now, we can overpower any military force in the world without even the need of bringing up draft or reserve forces.
So, if we don't fight ourselves (a possible scenario, even TRADOC already got in consideration...) we won't have a real foe capable to wreak some serious havoc in this world.

I was thinking then, what if regional powers and ascending superpowers get in serious bloody conflicts? Perhaps, they can get like 5 billion people killed or so?
So, I thought about 3 regional wars that can achieve that, and even get Europe and USA to have some low key engagement on a way Western European countries and the USA could build some sort of "foreign legions" (with immigrants, and other people that would see war as an opportunity of getting out of their poverty, low wage, welfare ridden lives).
China and India already got a hot conflict past from their 1962 border clashes.
A regional war between then, involving Pakistan, Vietnam, and probably Iran, that begins as a conventional war and escalates, after 2 or 3 years, as a limited/localized nuclear confrontation, could easily wipe out 3 billion people out of the planet.
That is an easy to happen scenario, and as India and China step as superpowers in the world stage, and fight for hegemony in Asia, the tendency of that happening increases on a daily basis.

My other two scenarios are harder to come by.
But, one of them is somehow unfolding, at least in the political stage.
My second all out regional war would involve Nigeria and South Africa. As China would be fighting their own war with India, they won't be able to waist resources to calm down their "backyard" Africa.
That could involve the North African Islamic countries as well, with Egypt siding with South Africa against Nigeria (some sort of hidden way to support Boko Haram Islamic guerrillas fighting of Biafra and North Nigeria).
South Africa has nukes, but Nigeria don't (as far as we know). But nukes are very easy to find in the black markets if you are a regular normal country at war. Ukrainians got plenty of the 1992 lost warheads issue to sell, and there is always N. Korea, if you need some dirt big WWII sort of nuke to do a dirt job.
So, that would be some sort of pan-African conflict and would be a very, very crude conventional war, as regular military war ideology is nonexistent in Africa. There would plenty of civilian carnage and massacre. That could also escalate to a bloody limited nuclear exchange to close the war, but that seems hard to happen. They will probably fight large guerrilla widespread ops, with jungle, desert and urban affairs, and lots of bloodshed, fighting for years until Europe and USA send peace troops to clean the mess up.
That could kill around 1 billion people also (between Africans and a couple million peace forces/foreign legions).

Then I have the hardest regional conflict to possibly happen. Basically, because both countries are very weak as far as military power goes, and have no military tradition whatsoever. They are, usually, the kind of countries that "resort to a diplomatic solution" because they are too coward to fight. So, they surrender before a shot is fired.
I was thinking of some all out war between Brazil and Mexico. Another problem with this war is there is no geopolitical conflict between them, and they have a tradition of a very peaceful mutual relationship.
But, they are the only countries that can flood Latin America with a bloody mess conflict that can achieve the goal to get as much people out of the planet as possible.
So, this scenario is the most complicated. I was thinking on a escalation of the war on drugs, with the cartels taking over Mexican government, but that would probably get us involved first, instead of Brazil.
I thought of something involving Chaves, as he is part of Brazilian mercosul now. But Venezuela has 10 times the military power of Brazil, so they won't need Brazilian help.
I don't know, I am still thinking about on how to make this happen, so if you guys have any ideas that would be awesome.
A war between Mexico and Brazil, involving Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, and, in a lesser extent, Argentina and Chile, would be enough to kill like 500 million people more (again, Latin America armies and population, and US and European peace forces/foreign legions).
Brazil must lose the war, so they would suffer land, airborne and sea assaults by Mexico and their allies. As Brazilian capital is all the way in the middle of their country, and their most populated cities are over their Atlantic coast, a full invasion would guarantee a long and painful guerrilla war, until Mexico and its allies get close to Brasilia. That will be the time for Brasil, as their last resort, to make nukes rain over Mexico, perhaps with Chaves and his Russian bought submarines help.

So, what you guys think?
These wars are important for the plot, because they will provide the "planet cleaning job", and also give me my characters that would outlive the wars and enter the second step of the plot, when, after the wars, a "new world order" is established (lol), and some people begin to fight their consciences and this new system that, in reality, is not that good as it looks, and as their new governments' propaganda machine keeps telling the planet survivors...

Thanks, and sorry for the very long post. Any ideas, input and help will be really appreciated.
 
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