The insanity of war has returned to our world.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, everyone knew something had changed. The Iraq War had been a harbinger of what was to come — a great power launching a war of choice against a smaller, non-threatening state. But Ukraine was different — Russia wasn’t just recklessly intervening in a neighboring country, but attempting to swallow it entirely. The age when great powers competed only by proxy and by temporary interventions was over, and the age of conquering empires had returned. The Russians themselves have said this openly, and the Chinese realized it as well:

And so across the sea, the old stormclouds gather again. In the seas around Taiwan, an armada assembles. Across the strait, the emperor orders a million kamikaze drones, hundreds of nuclear weapons, a forest of ballistic missiles, and a vast new navy. In Taipei, the sun is out, and people sip their tea, and eat their beef noodle soup, and and try not to think too hard about whether this will be the year the old world finally gives way to new.