Frozen Lines: How the wars of the 2020s ended without a nuclear war.
Speculative fiction, written as the most likely case rather than the worst. A historian born in 1980 writes in 2059 how the wars of the 2020s ended. Russia paid for its war by borrowing at home and accepting stagnation, Ukraine ran short of soldiers, and the war ended in 2029 with an armistice on hard terms close to the American plan of 2025. Hormuz reopened after a deal in late 2026, but the fertilizer shock it caused brought the bread crises of 2027 and 2028, revolts, coups and a surge of migration from Africa to Europe, where the radical right won power in France and came first in Germany. Russia probed NATO at Narva in 2030 and drew back. China never invaded Taiwan, Russia did not collapse, and no nuclear weapon was used, though it came close five times. Real events up to 1 October 2026, scenario after. Chapters are continents. No real person acts after October 2026.
Water as a weapon
On 23 April 2025, the day after the killing of 26 tourists at Pahalgam in Kashmir, India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which divides the rivers of the Indus basin between India and Pakistan. Pakistan, whose farms depend on those rivers for most of their water, said that any attempt to stop or divert its share would be treated as an act of war. Cause. India wanted to punish Pakistan for attacks it blamed on groups based there, and water was a lever it had not used in sixty-five years. Consequence. India could not stop the great rivers quickly, but it began building dams and canals that would let it hold back more water within a decade. Water joined Kashmir as a cause of conflict between two nuclear powers (see Asia, May 2031).
Four days between nuclear powers
On 7 May 2025 India struck nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, saying they were bases of the militant groups behind the killing of 26 tourists at Pahalgam on 22 April. Pakistan answered with artillery, drones and missiles. For four days the two nuclear-armed states fought with aircraft, drones and missiles, the most intense fighting between them in decades, until a ceasefire on 10 May, first announced by the United States. Cause. Since 2016 each Indian government had answered a major attack from Pakistani territory with a larger strike than the last, and each Pakistani government had answered in kind. Consequence. The clash showed that two nuclear powers could fight a short conventional war and stop. It also showed the danger: each round had been larger than the one before. The next round came in 2031 (see Asia, May 2031).
Golden Dome
On 20 May 2025 the American president announced Golden Dome, a missile-defence system meant to protect the United States against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, including interceptors based in space. He put its cost at 175 billion dollars and said it would be working within about three years. Independent estimates of the full cost ran far higher. Cause. China and Russia were building weapons designed to evade existing defences, and the administration wanted the United States to be protected whatever happened to arms control. Consequence. Moscow and Beijing said Golden Dome would let the United States strike first and survive the reply, and both used it to justify larger arsenals (see The World, June 2027). The system came later and cost much more than announced (see North America, January 2030).
Five percent
On 25 June 2025, at their summit in The Hague, NATO's members agreed to spend 5 percent of GDP on defence and related security by 2035: 3.5 percent on core defence and 1.5 percent on infrastructure, cyber defence and resilience. Spain secured an exception. In 2024 the European members had spent on average about 2 percent. Cause. Russia's war in Ukraine had convinced most European governments that Russia might attack a NATO member within a decade, and the American administration had made clear that the United States would no longer carry most of Europe's defence. Consequence. European defence budgets rose by about a fifth in the following year (see Europe, July 2026), and the rise continued for a decade. By the 2030s Europe could defend itself against Russia with much less American help than in 2025 (see Europe, September 2030).
The siege of Bamako
In early September 2025 the jihadist alliance JNIM, linked to al-Qaeda, announced a blockade of fuel imports into Mali and began attacking tanker convoys on the roads from Senegal and Ivory Coast. By late October fuel had nearly run out in Bamako, the capital, and the government closed schools and universities across the country. Shortages returned in 2026, and schools closed again that July. Cause. Mali's military government had expelled French and UN forces and relied on Russian mercenaries, who could protect the capital but not the roads leading to it. Consequence. The blockade showed that the jihadists could strangle the capital without taking it, and the junta was eventually forced to bargain (see Africa, July 2027).
Three leaders in Beijing
On 3 September 2025 China held a military parade in Beijing to mark eighty years since the end of the Second World War. The leaders of China, Russia and North Korea watched it together, the first time the three had appeared side by side. The parade showed new intercontinental missiles, weapons for all three branches of a nuclear force, and large uncrewed underwater and aerial vehicles. Cause. China wanted to show that it was not isolated and that its forces were ready. Russia and North Korea, both under sanctions, needed China more than China needed them. Consequence. Western governments read the parade as the alignment of three nuclear powers against them. In practice the alignment was loose. China bought Russian oil and sold Russia machinery, but it sent no troops to Russia's war, and its machine tools and components kept Russia's factories running until Moscow had taken most of what it wanted (see Europe, August 2029).
The young in the streets
On 9 September 2025 Nepal's prime minister resigned after police killed dozens of young protesters in Kathmandu. It was the most dramatic moment of a wave of protests led by people in their teens and twenties and organised online, which shook Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Peru and the Philippines that year. In October a military unit that had joined the protesters took power in Madagascar. Cause. Large young populations, unemployment, corruption and the cost of living met social media, which let protests form within days without parties or leaders. Consequence. The wave showed how quickly a government could fall when prices rose and the young had little to lose. When food and fuel prices rose much further in 2027, the same kind of movement returned in more countries, and in several it ended in armed conflict rather than a change of government (see The World, February 2027).
Drones over Poland, jets over Estonia
On the night of 9 to 10 September 2025 about nineteen Russian drones entered Polish airspace during an attack on western Ukraine, and Polish and Dutch fighter jets shot several of them down, the first time NATO aircraft had fired on Russian aircraft over allied territory. Nine days later three Russian MiG-31 fighters flew through Estonian airspace for twelve minutes. Poland and then Estonia invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which calls for consultations among the allies. Cause. Russia was testing how NATO would react, and its drones and aircraft cost little to spend on the test. Consequence. The incursions showed that NATO's air defences had been built to stop missiles and aircraft costing millions and were poorly suited to drones costing tens of thousands, and European armies began buying cheap interceptors (see The World, March 2027). The probes grew bolder over the next five years, up to the most serious crisis between Russia and NATO in this history (see Europe, September 2030).
The Pukpuk treaty
On 6 October 2025 Australia and Papua New Guinea signed the Pukpuk treaty, a mutual defence pact under which each would treat an armed attack on the other as a danger to itself, and citizens of each could serve in the other's armed forces. It was Australia's first new defence alliance in more than seventy years. Cause. China had signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in 2022 and was seeking more in the Pacific, and Australia wanted to make sure that its nearest neighbour would not follow. Consequence. The treaty set the pattern for the competition in the Pacific that followed, carried on with alliances, police training and money rather than fighting (see Oceania, May 2027).
The fall of El Fasher
On 26 October 2025 the Rapid Support Forces captured El Fasher, the last city in Darfur held by Sudan's army, after a siege of about eighteen months. Witnesses and UN investigators described mass killings of civilians in the following days, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo later attributed about 60,000 deaths to the massacres. Cause. Sudan's army and the RSF, partners in the coup of 2021, had been at war since April 2023 over who would control the state, and each had foreign backers who kept it supplied. Consequence. With El Fasher the RSF held almost all of Darfur, and the war became a partition in all but name (see Africa, October 2026).
An order to test
On 30 October 2025 the American president ordered the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons "on an equal basis" with other countries, days after Russia announced tests of a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-powered underwater drone. The United States had not conducted a nuclear explosive test since 1992. Officials later said the tests would be of weapon systems, not nuclear explosions. Cause. Russia was displaying new ways to deliver nuclear weapons and China was expanding its arsenal, and the order was meant to signal that the United States would not fall behind. Consequence. The order alarmed arms-control experts, but it was never carried out as an explosive test. Neither the United States, Russia nor China tested a nuclear explosive in this history, and North Korea was the only country that did (see Asia, September 2031).
A sentence in Tokyo
On 7 November 2025 Japan's new prime minister told parliament that a Chinese attack on Taiwan involving warships could be a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, the legal condition under which Japanese forces may fight to defend an ally. China demanded a retraction, told its citizens to avoid travel to Japan and suspended imports of Japanese seafood. Tokyo did not retract. Cause. Japanese governments had long kept their answer to this question deliberately vague. The new prime minister judged that vagueness invited miscalculation in Beijing. Consequence. The remark made it more likely that a war over Taiwan would also be a war with Japan, which made such a war less attractive to Beijing. It is one of the reasons historians give for the invasion that never came (see Asia, October 2049).
The 28-point plan
On 20 and 21 November 2025 a 28-point American plan to end the war became public. Ukraine would withdraw from the part of Donetsk region it still held, which would become a demilitarised zone. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk would be recognised as Russian in practice, including by the United States, and the lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions would be frozen. Ukraine's army would be limited to 600,000 soldiers, Ukraine would never join NATO, no NATO troops would be stationed on its soil, and Russia would return to the world economy. Kyiv and its European allies rejected the key points and offered amendments. Cause. The American administration wanted the war ended quickly, and it judged that Russia, which was advancing, would accept nothing less than most of what it demanded. Consequence. The plan was shelved, but it set out the price of peace as Washington and Moscow saw it. Notice how closely the armistice signed four years later followed it (see Europe, August 2029). The years in between decided mainly how many more people would die before Ukraine accepted terms of this kind.
Europe pays for two more years
On 19 December 2025 the leaders of the European Union agreed to lend Ukraine 90 billion euros for 2026 and 2027, raised by joint EU borrowing. They dropped a plan to lend Ukraine the value of the Russian state assets frozen in Europe, after Belgium, where most of the assets were held, objected for fear of Russian legal and financial retaliation. Cause. American financial aid had largely stopped in 2025, and without European money Ukraine's government would have run out of funds in the spring of 2026. Consequence. The loan let Ukraine fight through 2027. But it was a political decision that had to be renewed, and by the time it had to be renewed the governments that would decide had changed (see Europe, January 2028).
Justice Mission 2025
On 29 and 30 December 2025 China's Eastern Theater Command held exercises called Justice Mission 2025 around Taiwan, the largest aimed at the island since August 2022. Ships came closer to Taiwan's coast than in earlier drills, rocket artillery fired into the sea within 24 nautical miles of the coast, and simulated blockades of the main air and sea routes disrupted hundreds of civilian flights. Taiwan counted 60 military sorties in one day, 44 of them across the median line of the Strait. Cause. The United States had announced an arms package for Taiwan worth 11.1 billion dollars, and Beijing regarded Taiwan's president as a supporter of independence. Consequence. The exercise rehearsed a blockade, not an invasion. That distinction shaped what followed: when China chose to squeeze Taiwan in 2033, it used a coast-guard quarantine of small islands rather than an attack (see Asia, August 2033).
Maduro captured
On 3 January 2026 the United States struck military sites in Venezuela and announced that President Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been captured and flown out of the country to face drug-trafficking charges in New York. Venezuela declared a state of emergency. Cause. Washington accused Maduro's government of running a drug-trafficking organisation. It had struck suspected drug boats in the Caribbean since September 2025 and had gathered naval forces off Venezuela for months. Consequence. The operation showed that the United States would use force in its own hemisphere to remove a government. Venezuela's transition proved slower and messier than Washington had promised (see South America, October 2026).
The Paris Declaration
On 6 January 2026 Ukraine, France and the United Kingdom signed the Paris Declaration, backed by the coalition of countries willing to guarantee a future peace and by the United States. After a ceasefire, coalition members would send forces to help rebuild Ukraine's army and to provide reassurance on land, at sea and in the air. The United States would lead a system to verify the ceasefire, and a special commission would rule on violations. Cause. Ukraine would not accept a ceasefire without guarantees that Russia would not use it to prepare a new attack, and NATO membership was not on offer because Washington and several European governments opposed it. Consequence. The declaration could do nothing until there was a ceasefire, and Moscow refused one. When a ceasefire finally came, Russia's price included a ban on foreign troops in Ukraine, and the force the declaration had promised was never sent (see Europe, August 2029).
Eighty-five seconds
On 27 January 2026 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it had ever been. The Clock is a symbol rather than a measurement: a board of scientists moves it once a year to show how near they judge the world to be to a catastrophe of its own making, above all a nuclear war. Cause. The board pointed to the war in Ukraine, the approaching end of the last treaty limiting American and Russian nuclear forces, the growth of China's arsenal and the wars in the Middle East. Consequence. The Clock changed no policy, and it was not meant to. I place it first because it records what informed people feared in 2026. This journal describes what happened instead, and the difference between the two is its subject (see The World, March 2059).
The last treaty expires
On 5 February 2026 New START, the last treaty limiting the nuclear forces of the United States and Russia, expired. For the first time since 1972 there was no agreed limit on the two largest arsenals. The treaty had capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and had provided for inspections, which Russia had suspended in 2023. Moscow had offered to keep to the limits informally for a year. Washington did not accept and said any new talks must include China. Cause. China's arsenal was growing fast and was bound by no treaty. American officials argued that a two-sided limit no longer made sense in a three-sided world, and Russia saw no reason to make concessions to a country that was arming Ukraine. Consequence. Neither side rushed to build. Both had more warheads in storage than they could quickly mount on missiles, and both were spending heavily on conventional forces. The real loss was information: without inspections and data exchanges, each side planned against its fears of the other. That problem shaped nuclear policy for the next decade (see The World, June 2027).
Ukraine strikes back
On 11 February 2026 Ukrainian air assault troops attacked south from the Vovcha river in eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, beginning Ukraine's first counteroffensive since 2023. By 12 August Ukraine claimed to have retaken about 745 square kilometres and 26 settlements: almost all of Dnipropetrovsk region and parts of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. Cause. In early February Russian forces lost access to Starlink satellite terminals, which many of their units had used for command and reconnaissance, and Ukraine attacked while their communications were disrupted. Ukraine had spent 2024 and 2025 on the defensive, building up drone units and reserves. Consequence. The counteroffensive disrupted Russia's planned offensive for 2026 and slowed its advance for a year (see Europe, September 2026). It did not change the arithmetic of the war. Ukraine had far fewer soldiers than Russia, and from 2027 it was losing ground again (see Europe, June 2027).
The Iran war begins
On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel attacked Iran. The opening strikes killed the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled since 1989, and dozens of other officials. Iran answered within hours with missiles and drones against Israel and against American bases and oil facilities across the Gulf, and Hezbollah joined from Lebanon two days later. Cause. Iran's nuclear programme had survived the twelve-day war of June 2025. About 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, enough for about ten weapons if enriched further, was out of sight of inspectors, and the American and Israeli governments concluded that only war would end the programme. Consequence. The war did not overthrow the Islamic Republic. Mojtaba Khamenei, the late leader's son, was named Supreme Leader on 8 March, and Iran turned to the weapon it had always held in reserve: the Strait of Hormuz (see Asia, March 2026).
Hormuz closes
On 2 March 2026 tankers stopped moving through the Strait of Hormuz after the Revolutionary Guard warned it would set ablaze any vessel attempting the passage. About a fifth of the world's oil normally passed through the strait. Brent crude, 73 dollars before the war, reached nearly 120 dollars on 9 March and rose 55 percent in the month, the largest monthly gain since the contract began in 1988. Cause. Iran could not match American and Israeli air power, but it could make the world pay for the war. Mines, missiles, drones and fast boats were enough to frighten shipowners and their insurers. Consequence. The closure made the Iran war everyone's war. It raised fuel prices from Valencia to Manila, filled Russia's budget with higher oil revenue (see Europe, August 2026), and frightened importing countries into a decade of change (see The World, January 2027).
Ceasefire, talks, blockade
On 7 April 2026, less than two hours before an American deadline to destroy Iran's power plants and bridges, the United States and Iran agreed a two-week ceasefire mediated by Pakistan. Talks in Islamabad on 11 and 12 April, the highest-level direct contact between the two countries since 1979, ended without a deal, and on 13 April the US Navy began a blockade of Iranian ports. Cause. Both sides had reached the limits of what bombing could do. The United States would not invade Iran, and Iran would not reopen the strait without guarantees and an end to sanctions. Consequence. The war became a contest of endurance at sea: an American blockade of Iran's ports against an Iranian blockade of everyone else's ships. It lasted, with interruptions, until December (see Asia, December 2026).
Hungary changes course
On 12 April 2026 the Tisza party won Hungary's parliamentary election with a two-thirds majority, ending sixteen years of government by Fidesz. The Fidesz government had been the friendliest to Moscow in the European Union and had repeatedly delayed EU decisions on Ukraine and on sanctions against Russia. Cause. Hungarian voters were tired of a stagnant economy, corruption scandals and a government that had quarrelled with the rest of the Union over money and the rule of law. Consequence. The European Council lost its most reliable veto against Ukraine. Notice, though, that nationalist government was ending in Budapest just as the radical right was gaining in Paris and Berlin (see Europe, April 2027). Europe's politics did not move in one direction; they moved in several at once.
Hormuz becomes a food problem
On 14 May 2026 the World Bank reported that urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer, had passed 850 dollars a tonne in April, up 80 percent since February and the highest price since 2022. Middle Eastern exporters, whose cargoes passed through the Strait of Hormuz, supplied nearly a quarter of the world's urea exports, and Qatar and Iran had stopped producing ammonia. Sulfur, needed for phosphate fertilizers, had doubled in price since January. Cause. The Gulf's fertilizer plants run on the region's natural gas, and the war shut both the plants and the shipping lane (see Asia, March 2026). Consequence. Farmers in the northern hemisphere had bought most of their fertilizer for 2026 before the war began, so that year's harvests were cushioned. The harvests of 2027 were not, because the poorest farmers bought less and grew less (see The World, February 2027).
The most wars since 1946
On 9 June 2026 the Peace Research Institute Oslo published its count for 2025. There had been 65 armed conflicts involving at least one government, the highest number since its records began in 1946, and nearly 245,000 people had been killed in battle or political violence. Since the end of the Cold War only 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide, and 2021, the year of the Tigray war, had been deadlier. About 76,500 civilians had been killed in deliberate attacks. Cause. Three large wars, in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza, accounted for most of the deaths. Around them were dozens of smaller ones, most of them in Africa, which had 29 conflicts involving a government on its own (see Africa, October 2025). Consequence. In 2026 the trend looked like a slide toward a general war. Notice that it did not become one. Battle deaths stayed near that level until the war in Ukraine ended in 2029 and then fell for most of the next thirty years (see The World, May 2059). The reasons are the main subject of this journal.
The Versailles memorandum
On 17 June 2026 the American president signed a fourteen-point memorandum with Iran at a dinner in the Palace of Versailles after the G7 summit, and Iran's president signed in Tehran. It promised American waivers on oil sanctions and a strait open without tolls for sixty days while a final agreement was negotiated, and it called for an end to fighting on all fronts. Two weeks earlier Israel and Lebanon had agreed an American-brokered framework that tied an Israeli withdrawal to the disarmament of Hezbollah. Cause. The blockades were hurting both sides and their customers. The Gulf states, China and Europe pressed for a deal, and fuel prices had become a political problem in Washington before the November elections. Consequence. Brent briefly lost all of its wartime gains. But the memorandum settled nothing about Iran's uranium or the rules of passage through the strait, and within three weeks ships were being attacked again (see Asia, July 2026).
Ankara
On 8 July 2026 NATO's leaders, meeting in Ankara, reaffirmed the target of 5 percent of GDP by 2035 and their "ironclad" commitment to collective defence. European and Canadian defence spending had risen about 20 percent in a year, and allies announced about 50 billion dollars of new joint purchases, from drones to submarines. The American president said the United States would withdraw some troops from Europe and would license Ukraine to build Patriot interceptors. Cause. The commitments made at The Hague (see Europe, June 2025) were being met, and the United States wanted Europe to carry more of its own defence while American forces were busy in the Gulf (see Asia, April 2026). Consequence. Ankara marked the point at which Europe's defence became, for practical purposes, Europe's responsibility. The American withdrawal it announced continued slowly for six years (see North America, January 2027).
The truce collapses
On 6 and 7 July 2026 Iran struck three commercial ships that had used routes it had not approved, and on 8 July, at NATO's summit in Ankara, the American president declared the ceasefire over. The American blockade of Iranian ports resumed on 14 July. Within a week the Houthis in Yemen declared their own blockade of Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea. Cause. Iran insisted on controlling passage through the strait, and the United States insisted on free passage. The memorandum had papered over the difference (see Asia, June 2026). Consequence. Both of the region's shipping chokepoints were now contested, and Brent rose back above 90 dollars. The war at sea entered its most dangerous phase (see Asia, September 2026).
China's generals purged
By August 2026 more than half of China's top generals had been removed since 2023, including five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, and 21 of the 27 posts at the rank of theatre commander were vacant, according to analysts at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War. The same month Taiwan's annual Han Kuang exercises included, for the first time, a drill to evacuate its president from a simulated decapitation strike. Cause. China's leadership was purging the armed forces of officers accused of corruption and disloyalty, including many responsible for its missile forces and its plans for war over Taiwan. Consequence. An army whose commanders are being arrested is not ready for the hardest operation in modern warfare, an amphibious invasion. The purges made an attack on Taiwan in the late 2020s much less likely, whatever the political target dates (see Asia, October 2049).
Russia's refineries at two thirds
In August 2026 Russian refineries processed just over 3.8 million barrels of crude a day, against 5.3 to 5.5 million a year earlier, according to Bloomberg. Ukrainian drones had struck refineries, depots and terminals across Russia, some more than 2,000 kilometres from the border, and parts of the country ran short of fuel. Cause. Ukraine could not match Russia's army, but it could build long-range drones by the thousand, and a refinery is a large, fixed target that takes months to repair. Consequence. Russia still exported crude, and the Hormuz crisis kept prices high (see Asia, September 2026), so the strikes hurt Russian drivers more than Russian exports. They did not stop the war, which Russia paid for by borrowing from and taxing its own people (see Europe, January 2027).
Tanker for tanker
On 1 September 2026, after a tanker leaving the strait was hit, the United States began striking tankers owned by Iran's national oil company under what it called a tanker-for-tanker policy. Within ten days American forces had sunk or wrecked at least eight Iranian tankers. Only a handful of ships a day crossed Hormuz, against about 130 before the war, and on 11 September the Houthis seized Perim Island at the mouth of the Red Sea. Brent passed 100 dollars again on 9 September. Cause. Each side was trying to make the blockades more painful for the other than for itself (see Asia, July 2026). Consequence. The tanker war pushed Iran's economy toward collapse, and by late September its airlines had also been cut off from the world's aviation system. It kept oil prices high enough to help pay for Russia's war (see Europe, August 2026). Both pressures decided when the war would end (see Asia, December 2026).
The front in September 2026
By mid-September 2026 the front line in Ukraine had barely moved in a year. Russia's net gain over the twelve months to 8 September was about 2,000 to 2,300 square kilometres, and over the last four weeks of that period between 36 and 194, depending on the mapper. On 15 September a Ukrainian corps commander confirmed an operation north of Lyman that had retaken about 75 square kilometres. Recruitment for Russia's army had fallen by about 40 percent since late 2025, and 59 percent of Russians told pollsters they supported peace talks. Cause. Drones made every attack expensive for both sides, and Russia's losses, estimated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies at about 1.4 million killed, wounded or missing by June 2026, were outrunning its recruitment. Consequence. Both armies were tired, and neither could win quickly. The question was which would run out first, Russia's money or Ukraine's soldiers. In the autumn of 2026 most Western observers expected it to be Russia's money, partly because they expected oil prices to fall once the war in the Gulf ended (see Asia, October 2026). They were wrong (see Europe, January 2027).
Where things stood on 1 October 2026
On 1 October 2026, where this account turns from record to reconstruction, three wars mattered most to the rest of the world, and one weapon frightened everyone. • Ukraine. Russia held about 19 to 20 percent of Ukraine. Over the previous year it had gained on average less than 200 square kilometres a month, and a Ukrainian counteroffensive had retaken several hundred square kilometres since February (see Europe, September 2026). The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated about 1.4 million Russian and 525,000 to 625,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, wounded or missing. • Iran. The war that began on 28 February (see Asia, February 2026) had become a contest of blockades. A handful of ships a day passed the Strait of Hormuz, against about 130 before the war, and Brent crude settled at 102 dollars a barrel. • Taiwan. China had rehearsed a blockade of the island (see Asia, December 2025), while purges had removed five of the seven members of its Central Military Commission (see Asia, August 2026). • Nuclear weapons. The nine nuclear-armed states held about 12,187 warheads, about 4,012 of them deployed, and the number deployed was rising. China had about 620 and was adding about 20 a year. Cause. Each war had its own causes, which the chapters set out. What they had in common was that none of the main parties could win outright at a price it was willing to pay. Consequence. Forecasters in 2026 gave a ceasefire in Ukraine before the end of the year about 15 percent and named November 2027 as the most likely date, though some analysts expected the war to last until 2029. They gave a full Chinese invasion of Taiwan before 2030 somewhere between one chance in eight and one in three. In this journal I follow, at each fork, the outcome that the best forecasts of the time rated most likely, and I give the reasons. It is a history of the probable, which is less exciting than a history of the worst and, I think, more useful.
Venezuela after Maduro
Between late 2026 and 2029 Venezuela moved slowly toward an elected government. A presidential election in 2028, the first since 2013 whose result both sides accepted, was won by the opposition, and the armed forces accepted it after guarantees that most officers would not be prosecuted. Oil output, below a million barrels a day in 2025, passed 1.6 million by 2030 as American companies returned. Cause. The removal of Maduro (see South America, January 2026) broke the ruling party's hold on the state but not its hold on the army, which had to be bargained with. Consequence. Venezuela's recovery slowed the flight of its people, about 8 million of whom had left since 2014, and added oil to a market that no longer needed much more of it (see The World, January 2027). The use of force had worked, which encouraged Washington to treat its own hemisphere as its own business (see North America, June 2027).
Sudan divided
Between October 2026 and the end of 2029 Sudan's war settled into a division of the country. The army held the north, the east, Khartoum and the Nile valley. The RSF held Darfur and much of Kordofan, with a rival government at Nyala. A ceasefire mediated by Saudi Arabia, the United States, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates took effect along the line between them in 2029. Cause. Neither side could take the other's heartland (see Africa, October 2025), and their foreign backers grew tired of a war that threatened the Red Sea and brought them nothing. Consequence. About 500,000 people died in the war from 2023 to 2029, most of them from hunger and disease, and about 12 million were driven from their homes. Sudan remains one country on maps and two in practice (see Africa, June 2059).
No deal before the elections
On 1 October 2026 the American president rejected Iran's latest ceasefire proposal, saying it would not open the Strait of Hormuz widely enough. He said Iran was "ready to fold up" and that the war would end soon after the November midterm elections, and the Pentagon was reported to be sending a third aircraft carrier to the region. Brent settled at 102.31 dollars. Cause. Each side thought time favoured it. Washington believed the blockade would break Iran's economy, and Tehran believed fuel prices would break Washington's patience before an election. Consequence. This is where the record ends and my reconstruction begins. The most likely outcome, in the view of most analysts at the time, was a deal soon after the elections, and that is what happened (see Asia, December 2026).
The fifth war winter
Between October 2026 and March 2027 Russia and Ukraine fought their fifth winter of the war mostly from the air. Russia launched up to 800 drones and missiles a night against Ukraine's power stations and cities, and Ukraine struck Russian refineries, ports and airfields. On the ground the line moved by a few villages. Cause. Neither army could advance (see Europe, September 2026), so each side tried to break the other's economy and morale instead. Washington's attention was on the Gulf. Consequence. Ukraine's cities endured blackouts of up to sixteen hours a day, but its government and army held. Russia's fuel shortages spread, but its budget held as well (see Europe, January 2027), and by the spring neither government had a reason to give way.
The midterms
In the American elections of 3 November 2026 the president's party lost control of the House of Representatives. Exit polls named fuel prices, which had averaged above four dollars a gallon since March, and the Iran war as the main reasons. Cause. The war had raised fuel prices (see Asia, March 2026), killed more than twenty American service members and shown no end in sight (see Asia, October 2026). The party of a sitting president usually loses seats in midterm elections, and the war made the loss larger. Consequence. With a hostile House able to block war funding, and no national election before 2028, the administration had both the reasons and the freedom to make a deal with Iran within six weeks (see Asia, December 2026).
The Muscat agreement
On 12 December 2026 the United States and Iran signed an agreement in Muscat, mediated by Oman, Pakistan and Qatar. The United States lifted its blockade and suspended most oil sanctions. Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz under a traffic scheme run jointly with Oman, with no tolls and no inspection of foreign ships. Iran's stock of uranium enriched to 60 percent was to be diluted inside Iran under IAEA supervision within twelve months, and Iran agreed not to enrich uranium for ten years. Ceasefires followed in Lebanon and, three months later, between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia (see Asia, March 2027). Cause. After the American midterm elections (see North America, November 2026), Washington no longer needed to look tough before a vote, and it needed lower fuel prices. Iran's economy was collapsing under the blockade (see Asia, September 2026), and its new leaders needed sanctions relief to survive. China, the largest buyer of Iranian and Gulf oil, pressed Tehran hard. Consequence. The war had lasted nine and a half months and killed about 10,000 people. Neither side got what it had wanted at the start: the Islamic Republic survived, and Iran gave up its enriched uranium and, for a decade, its enrichment. Shipping returned to the strait over the following months (see Asia, January 2027).
America steps back from Europe
Between 2027 and 2032 the number of American troops in Europe fell from about 80,000 to about 45,000, and European officers took over most of NATO's regional commands. The United States kept its nuclear weapons in Europe, its air bases in Germany, Poland and the Baltic states, and the alliance's top command. Cause. The withdrawal announced in Ankara (see Europe, July 2026) reflected a long shift of American attention to China and to the Western Hemisphere, shared by both parties. Europe's rising budgets made it easier to justify (see Europe, June 2025). Consequence. Moscow wondered whether the alliance would still defend its smallest members, and tested the question once (see Europe, September 2030). Europe's quick answer made the American drawdown safer than many had feared.
How Russia kept paying
Between 2027 and 2029 Russia paid for the war by borrowing from its own banks and taxing its own people, and its economy stagnated without breaking. Oil revenue fell after Hormuz reopened (see Asia, January 2027), and the liquid part of the National Wealth Fund, about 3.4 trillion roubles in mid-2026, was spent by the end of 2027. The government replaced it with domestic bonds bought by state banks, which in turn lent out the savings of households and companies. Public debt rose from below 20 percent of GDP in 2025 to about 31 percent in 2029. The economy shrank by about 1 percent in 2027 and grew by less than 1 percent a year in 2028 and 2029, and inflation stayed between 8 and 12 percent. Cause. Russia had entered the war with one of the lowest public debts of any large economy, a banking system the state controlled, and a population that could not easily move its savings abroad. It had already raised VAT from 20 to 22 percent in January 2026, and it could raise taxes again, cut civilian spending and let inflation shrink its obligations. China bought its oil and sold it machinery and components. Consequence. Money set the pace of the war but did not end it. The Kremlin treated stagnation as a short-term price for a lasting gain, and it kept paying until Ukraine ran out of what it needed most, which was soldiers (see Europe, June 2027). The bill came later, as a long stagnation (see Europe, March 2045).
Peak oil, brought forward
Between 2027 and 2035 the world's demand for oil stopped growing and began to fall. Demand peaked in 2029 at about 105 million barrels a day, as the International Energy Agency had forecast in 2024, and then fell faster than the agency had expected, to about 98 million barrels a day in 2035. Brent crude, above 100 dollars in the autumn of 2026, averaged 68 dollars in 2027 and about 60 dollars from 2030. Cause. The Hormuz crisis of 2026 (see Asia, March 2026) did to oil importers what the crises of 1973 and 1979 had done: it frightened them into change. China, India, Japan and Europe bought electric vehicles, heat pumps and storage as a matter of national security, and the price of batteries kept falling. Gulf producers built pipelines that bypassed the strait. Consequence. Cheaper oil did not end Russia's war, which Russia paid for by borrowing (see Europe, January 2027), but it deepened the stagnation that followed (see Europe, March 2045). And the Strait of Hormuz slowly lost its power to shake the world economy (see Asia, April 2041). Notice the irony: the war that closed the strait did more to end the age of oil than any climate conference.
Hormuz reopens
During 2027 traffic through the Strait of Hormuz recovered from a handful of ships a day to about 110 by the autumn. War-risk insurance, which had reached 3 to 10 percent of a ship's hull value at the height of the crisis, fell below half a percent. Brent crude averaged 68 dollars for the year. Cause. The Muscat agreement had ended the blockades (see Asia, December 2026), and the joint Iranian and Omani traffic scheme gave shipowners rules they could rely on. Consequence. Cheaper oil helped importers and hurt exporters, Russia among them, though not enough to stop its war (see Europe, January 2027). Importers did not forget how close they had come. China, India, Japan and Korea kept building strategic reserves, pipelines and electric transport, and the strait never again carried as large a share of the world's oil (see The World, January 2027).
Africa's bread crisis
Between February 2027 and the end of 2028 Africa suffered its worst food crisis in decades. Harvests sown with less fertilizer came in short, and the prices of bread, maize meal and rice rose by half or more in most countries that imported food. Protests in Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal and Ethiopia killed about 900 people, and two governments in the Sahel and Central Africa fell to military coups. Cause. Fertilizer had become unaffordable after the Hormuz crisis (see The World, May 2026), and governments already deep in debt could not pay for the subsidies that had kept bread cheap. Grain from the Black Sea was scarcer and dearer while Russia struck Ukraine's ports. Consequence. Hunger fed the Sahel's insurgencies (see Africa, July 2027) and sent hundreds of thousands of young people north toward Europe (see Africa, August 2027). Russia offered free grain to friendly governments in Africa, which bought it influence that outlasted the crisis.
The bread years
In 2027 and 2028 the world went through its worst food-price crisis since 2008. The FAO food price index, about 130 in 2025, passed 160 in the spring of 2027, above its record of March 2022. More than forty countries saw protests over food or fuel. Governments fell in six of them, and in three the protests turned into armed conflict. Aid agencies estimated that hunger killed several hundred thousand more people in those two years than in normal years, most of them young children. Cause. Three shocks came together: less fertilizer after the Hormuz crisis (see The World, May 2026), an El Niño that cut harvests in South and Southeast Asia, and Russian strikes on Ukraine's Black Sea ports that reduced grain exports. Countries that imported food, had young populations and owed heavy debts were hit hardest, the same countries where the protests of 2025 had begun (see The World, September 2025). Consequence. Hunger turned into politics, and politics into war. Pakistan turned its crisis outward against Afghanistan (see Asia, March 2028), the Sahel's jihadist groups recruited among the hungry (see Africa, July 2027), and hundreds of thousands of young Africans set out for Europe (see Africa, August 2027).
Iran under the generals
Between 2027 and 2033 power in Iran passed in practice from the clerics to the generals of the Revolutionary Guard. The Supreme Leader remained head of state, but the Guard's commanders ran the security services, most of the economy and relations with Iran's neighbours. Protests over prices and blackouts in 2029 and 2030 were put down, with several hundred people killed. Cause. The war had killed many of the clerics who ran the state (see Asia, February 2026), and the Guard had fought it. A state that had survived by force came to be run by those who held the force. Consequence. The generals cared less about exporting the revolution than the clerics had and more about staying in power and getting rich. They kept the Muscat agreement (see Asia, December 2027), and over the following decade they made peace with Iran's Arab neighbours (see Asia, April 2041).
Why the lines froze
From 2027 the defenders in almost every war of this history had an advantage the attackers could not overcome, and most wars ended where the armies stood. Historians call it the drone wall. Cheap reconnaissance drones watched every road within twenty or thirty kilometres of a front, cheap attack drones struck whatever moved, and cheap interceptor drones and electronic jamming made attacking aircraft and missiles cost more than the targets they hit. Cause. Ukraine had shown the pattern from 2023 to 2026: neither side could gather troops or vehicles without being seen and struck, and gains were measured in villages (see Europe, September 2026). The technology was cheap, and it spread quickly to every army. Consequence. A front line became a strip twenty to forty kilometres deep in which nothing could move safely, and armies dug in on either side of it. This made conquest costly and stalemate cheap. It is why Russia's advance in Ukraine, which Russia could afford to continue, took more than two years to cover the rest of Donetsk region (see Europe, June 2027), and one reason China never tried to carry an army across more than 130 kilometres of open water to Taiwan (see Asia, October 2049).
The frozen Kivu
From 2027 the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo stayed divided between the government and the M23 rebels, who had held Goma since January 2025. The peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda signed in Washington in June 2025 reduced the fighting without ending it, and mining companies from the United States, China and the Gulf competed for the minerals on both sides of the line. Cause. Rwanda wanted a buffer and a share of the minerals, Congo's army could not retake the region, and foreign governments cared more about the minerals than about who governed. Consequence. The Kivu became another frozen line. Deaths fell from tens of thousands a year to a few thousand by the 2030s, but more than a million people stayed displaced.
A truce in Yemen
On 10 March 2027 the Houthis and Saudi Arabia agreed a truce mediated by Oman. The Houthis ended their blockade of Saudi Arabia and withdrew from Perim Island, and Saudi Arabia ended its air strikes and agreed to pay salaries to public employees in Houthi-held areas. Shipping returned to the Red Sea within months. Cause. The Muscat agreement had removed the reason for the Houthi campaign (see Asia, December 2026), and Saudi Arabia, whose airports and refineries had been struck repeatedly in 2026, wanted quiet more than victory. Consequence. Yemen stayed divided between the Houthis in the north and a weak government in the south, as it had been since 2015. The truce held, with lapses, for the rest of this history.
Sabotage season
On the night of 11 March 2027 three drones hit the rail yard at Rzeszów in south-eastern Poland, the main hub for Western weapons bound for Ukraine, and killed two railway workers. The drones had been built from Ukrainian-made parts, and Moscow said Ukraine had attacked its own supply line. Polish and allied investigators traced the launch to a truck that had crossed from Belarus. It was the most serious of about 40 acts of sabotage, arson and cable-cutting in NATO countries that year. Cause. Russia wanted to raise the cost of supplying Ukraine without fighting NATO. Danish military intelligence had warned in 2026 that Russia might use exactly this kind of limited attack, including false-flag strikes with Ukrainian-made drones, even while the war in Ukraine continued. Consequence. NATO consulted under Article 4 and expelled diplomats, but it did not strike back. The attack divided European opinion: some governments wanted more support for Ukraine, others argued that the war was coming home and should be ended on whatever terms were available. The second argument won votes a month later in France (see Europe, April 2027).
Paris turns
On 25 April 2027 the National Rally won the French presidency for the first time, with about 53 percent of the vote in the second round. The new government kept France in NATO and the European Union, but it cut French military aid to Ukraine, opposed renewing the European loan, called for a negotiated peace and tightened immigration law. Cause. In August 2026 polls had put the National Rally's candidate at 30 to 35 percent in the first round, far ahead of every rival, and ahead in most second-round matchups. High fuel and food prices after the Hormuz crisis (see Asia, March 2026), the fear that the war was spreading (see Europe, March 2027) and worry about migration strengthened the trend. Consequence. France had been one of the two leaders of the coalition that promised to guarantee Ukraine's security (see Europe, January 2026). Without France the coalition shrank, and Europe's support for Ukraine came to rest on Germany, Britain, Poland and the Nordic countries (see Europe, January 2028).
The contest for the islands
Between 2027 and 2040 Australia, the United States, Japan and China competed for influence among the Pacific island states with aid, police training, ports and undersea cables. China gained police missions in three island states, and Australia and its partners gained defence agreements with seven. No base was built that threatened anyone. Cause. The islands lie across the sea routes between Australia and the United States and between China and the South Pacific, which made them valuable to all sides (see Oceania, October 2025). Consequence. The islands used the competition to win more aid than ever before. When the Kinmen crisis came (see Asia, August 2033), the region's governments called for calm, and none was drawn in.
The cartel war
Between 2027 and 2035 Mexico's war with its drug cartels went on at about 25,000 to 30,000 homicides a year. From 2028 American drones struck cartel targets inside Mexico under an agreement that limited strikes to targets both governments approved. Cause. Washington had designated the main cartels as terrorist organisations in 2025 and had begun striking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean that September (see South America, January 2026). Mexican governments preferred a shared programme to American action without their consent. Consequence. The strikes killed many cartel leaders but did not end the trade, which followed demand in the United States. By the 2040s violence had fallen to about 15,000 homicides a year, mostly because police reform and a falling number of young men took effect.
The slow grind
Between June 2027 and the end of 2028 Russia took about 6,500 square kilometres of Ukraine, a little more each month, close to its pace of 2025. Kostiantynivka fell in September 2027, Siversk and Huliaipole in the winter that followed, and by December 2028 Russian forces were on the outskirts of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Ukraine's losses of territory never became a rout. Its drone units killed or wounded about a thousand Russian soldiers a day, by Ukrainian count, but drones could not hold ground without infantry, and Ukraine was running out of infantry. Cause. Russia could keep paying (see Europe, January 2027) and kept recruiting with large bonuses, while Ukraine, with less than a third of Russia's population, could not replace its losses. Ukraine lowered its mobilisation age from 25 to 23 in 2027, which brought in fewer men than its army lost. Consequence. Each month the terms Ukraine could get grew worse, because each month Russia held more of the land it was demanding. The fall of Kramatorsk ended the argument about whether Ukraine could hold the rest of Donetsk region (see Europe, March 2029).
The arms race without a treaty
From 2027 the nuclear powers added weapons with no treaty to restrain them, but more slowly than many had feared. Between 2026 and 2040 the world's inventory rose from about 12,200 warheads to a peak of about 12,600, and deployed warheads from about 4,000 to about 4,900. By 2059 the inventory had fallen back to about 11,000, as old American and Russian warheads were dismantled faster than new ones were built. • China: about 620 warheads in 2026, about 1,000 in 2031 and about 1,500 from 2040 • United States and Russia: each about 1,800 deployed by 2040, against the 1,550 the old treaty had allowed • North Korea: a seventh test in 2031 (see Asia, September 2031) and an estimated 120 warheads by 2045 • New nuclear states: none Cause. Without the treaty (see The World, February 2026), each power planned against what the others might do. China's growth was the largest change, and the United States and Russia answered it by putting stored warheads back on missiles rather than building new ones. American plans for missile defence added to the pressure (see North America, May 2025). Consequence. It was a race in numbers. No power gained the ability to disarm another, because each kept enough submarines at sea to survive any attack. The informal limits of 2030 (see The World, November 2030) and the protocol of 2035 (see The World, March 2035) did not stop the race, but they made accidents less likely.
The Sahel bargain
Between 2027 and 2032 the military governments of Mali and Burkina Faso made deals with the jihadist groups they could not defeat. In Mali an agreement of 2029 left the junta in power in Bamako and the towns of the south, while JNIM ran much of the centre and north under its own courts, taxed the roads and promised not to attack the capital. Cause. The fuel blockades had shown that the jihadists could make the capital ungovernable (see Africa, September 2025), and the Russian mercenaries could not secure the country. The food crisis then gave the jihadists recruits in every village (see Africa, February 2027), and negotiation became the only alternative to collapse. Consequence. Violence in the Sahel fell after 2030, at the price of large areas governed by armed religious movements. Coastal states such as Benin, Togo and Ghana spent the 2030s guarding their northern borders against the spillover, and mostly succeeded.
From the street to the battlefield
Between 2027 and 2040 most new wars began as quarrels inside countries rather than between them. Of the armed conflicts that started in those years, about four in five began as protests, insurgencies or fights over who would rule, and in about two in five a neighbouring state or a distant power later joined in. Cause. The pattern followed a common path. A shock to prices or jobs brought young people into the streets (see The World, February 2027). A government that answered with force split its army or drove its opponents to take up arms. Armed groups found money in smuggling, mining and kidnapping, and cheap drones made small groups dangerous. Neighbours then intervened to protect their borders, their minerals or their allies, as in Sudan (see Africa, October 2026) and the Sahel (see Africa, July 2027). Consequence. Wars between states became rarer while wars inside states became the main source of killing (see The World, May 2059). The great powers learned to manage their own rivalries (see The World, March 2035), but they had few tools for the slow collapse of weak states and mostly left it to regional powers and mercenaries.
The road north
Between August 2027 and the end of 2029 about a million people set out from West and Central Africa and from Sudan for Europe, most of them through Niger and Libya. Irregular arrivals in the European Union rose from about 178,000 in 2025, the lowest since 2021, to about 410,000 in 2028, the highest since 2016. Tens of thousands died in the desert or at sea. Cause. The food crisis (see Africa, February 2027), the wars in Sudan and the Sahel (see Africa, October 2026) and a population in which half of all people were under 20 combined with what phones showed of life in Europe. Consequence. Migration became the main subject of European politics for a decade. It fed the radical right and the riots of 2028 (see Europe, July 2028), and it produced a hard new border (see Europe, November 2029). Africa's impact on Europe in this history came less through war than through the people its hungers and wars set in motion.
The uranium is diluted
On 8 December 2027 the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran's uranium enriched to 60 percent, recovered from the tunnels at Isfahan and other sites, had been diluted to below 5 percent under the supervision of its inspectors. The inspectors had counted 412 kilograms. Iran said the rest had been destroyed in the bombing, and the agency said it could not verify that claim. Cause. The Muscat agreement required the dilution within twelve months (see Asia, December 2026), and Iran's new rulers wanted the sanctions relief that depended on it (see Asia, February 2027). Consequence. Without highly enriched uranium and without enrichment, Iran was years from a bomb rather than weeks. About 30 kilograms remained unaccounted for, less than enough for one weapon, and that uncertainty troubled Israeli planners for years. Iran did not resume enrichment when the ten years ended in 2036, because by then it had more to lose than to gain (see Asia, April 2041).
Europe tires
Between January 2028 and mid-2029 European money for Ukraine shrank. The European loan agreed in 2025 (see Europe, December 2025) ran out at the end of 2027, and its successor, agreed in March 2028 after France and two other governments blocked a larger one, provided 40 billion euros for two years instead of 90. Germany, Britain, Poland and the Nordic countries paid more on their own, but Ukraine's budget gap in 2029 was about a quarter larger than the money promised to fill it. Cause. The French government elected in 2027 opposed new loans (see Europe, April 2027), the radical right led the polls in Germany, and voters across Europe were paying more for food and fuel (see The World, February 2027). The United States shared intelligence and sold weapons but gave little money. Consequence. Kyiv understood that time was no longer on its side. When Russia offered talks after taking Kramatorsk, Ukraine's government accepted, and so did its European backers (see Europe, March 2029).
Taiwan elects the opposition
On 15 January 2028 Taiwan elected a president from the Kuomintang, the party that favours closer ties with mainland China, with about 47 percent of the vote. The new government promised to keep Taiwan's democracy and its armed forces, to reopen talks with Beijing on trade and travel, and to avoid any step toward formal independence. Cause. Many Taiwanese voters had watched the blockade rehearsals (see Asia, December 2025) and the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf, and wanted less tension. The opposition had controlled the legislature, with a smaller ally, since 2024. Consequence. Beijing reduced its military pressure and agreed to talks (see Asia, March 2029). The election did not bring unification closer, since polls showed fewer than one Taiwanese in ten wanted it. What it brought was time, at the moment when China's army was least ready to use force (see Asia, August 2026).
The Durand Line war
Between March and May 2028 Pakistan fought a short war with the Taliban government of Afghanistan. After attacks by the Pakistani Taliban killed about 200 soldiers and police during the winter, Pakistan's army struck camps across the border, Afghan forces attacked border posts, and fighting spread along the Durand Line for nine weeks. About 2,500 people were killed before China and Qatar arranged a ceasefire. Cause. The two countries had already fought along the border in October 2025. In 2027 Pakistan's economy was hit hard by the food and fuel crisis (see The World, February 2027), and its army wanted a victory over an enemy it blamed for its troubles at home. Consequence. The war settled nothing. The Pakistani Taliban kept its bases, about 600,000 Afghan refugees were expelled from Pakistan, and the army's standing rose at home just as India and Pakistan moved toward their next crisis (see Asia, May 2031).
The court rules on Essequibo
In April 2028 the International Court of Justice ruled that the arbitral award of 1899, which gave the Essequibo region to what was then British Guiana, was valid. Venezuela, which claimed the region and had held a referendum on annexing it in 2023, rejected the ruling but did nothing about it. Cause. Guyana had taken the dispute to the court in 2018, and the discovery of large oil fields off its coast after 2015 had raised the stakes. Venezuela's new leaders had more urgent problems (see South America, October 2026). Consequence. The dispute that had threatened South America's only war between states in the 2020s faded into diplomacy. South America fought no war between states in this history (see South America, June 2059).
The Assab crisis
In May 2028 Ethiopia massed troops near its border with Eritrea and demanded access to the Red Sea port of Assab. After six weeks of mediation by the African Union, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Ethiopia withdrew in return for a long lease on expanded port facilities in Djibouti, financed by Gulf investors. Cause. Ethiopia, with about 140 million people, was the most populous landlocked country in the world, and its government had said since 2023 that access to the sea was an existential question. The Red Sea fighting of 2026 had shown how exposed its trade was. Consequence. The crisis ended without the war many had expected. The Horn of Africa stayed tense, but the war that analysts of the 2020s had feared most in the region did not happen.
The summer riots
In July 2028 riots broke out in Marseille, Lyon, Birmingham, Leipzig and a dozen other European cities, after a series of crimes blamed on recent migrants and a series of arson attacks on migrant hostels. In two weeks 11 people were killed and more than 3,000 arrested. Radical-right groups organised many of the attacks and radical-left and immigrant youth groups many of the counter-protests, and police in several countries were overwhelmed. Cause. Irregular arrivals in the European Union had more than doubled since 2025 (see Africa, August 2027), food prices were high (see The World, February 2027), and the war in Ukraine had made Europeans feel less safe. Social media spread rumours faster than police could correct them, as it had in Britain in 2024. Consequence. The riots pushed governments toward harder borders and ended in a European agreement to stop most crossings at sea (see Europe, November 2029). They also showed that the radical politics of the 2020s had a street as well as a ballot box.
Berlin's long count
In the German federal election of 25 February 2029 the Alternative for Germany came first for the first time, with about 30 percent of the vote. The other parties kept it out of government with a coalition of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Greens, which took four months to form. Cause. The AfD had led national polls since 2025 and stood at 29 percent in September 2026, when the Christian Democrats had fallen to 18 percent. Economic stagnation, migration (see Europe, July 2028) and fear of the war fed its rise. Consequence. Germany's government was weak at the moment Europe had to decide whether to keep paying for the war or to accept a settlement. It chose to support a settlement (see Europe, August 2029), but it kept Germany's defence spending rising, which mattered more in the long run (see Europe, September 2030).
Kramatorsk falls
On 18 March 2029, after a siege of three months, Ukrainian forces withdrew from Kramatorsk, the largest city of Donetsk region still in Ukrainian hands. Sloviansk, a few kilometres to the north, was surrounded on three sides. Two days later Moscow offered talks in Istanbul on the basis of the American plan of 2025 (see Europe, November 2025). Cause. The slow Russian advance of 2027 and 2028 (see Europe, June 2027) had reached the last large fortified cities of the region, and Ukraine no longer had the infantry to hold them. Consequence. With most of Donetsk region taken, Russia had achieved the aim it had pursued since 2022 and could stop at a price it called victory. Ukraine, short of men and of money (see Europe, January 2028), could not expect to take back what it had lost. Talks began in Istanbul in April (see Europe, August 2029).
Talks across the Strait
In March 2029 official representatives of Beijing and Taipei met in Xiamen for the first time since 2015. They agreed to restore direct flights to their level before the pandemic, to reopen tourism and to set up a hotline between their coast guards. Chinese military flights around Taiwan fell by about two thirds in 2029. Cause. The new government in Taipei had accepted talks without conditions on sovereignty (see Asia, January 2028), and Beijing wanted to show Taiwanese voters that a friendlier government brought benefits. Consequence. The coast-guard hotline would matter in the next crisis (see Asia, August 2033). The détente lasted four years, until Taiwan's voters changed course again (see Asia, January 2032).
The Istanbul armistice
On 14 August 2029 Russia and Ukraine signed an armistice in Istanbul, with the United States and Turkey as witnesses. Its terms were close to the American plan of 2025 (see Europe, November 2025). • Territory: Ukraine withdrew from the rest of Donetsk region, including Sloviansk, which became a demilitarised zone patrolled by international monitors. The lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were frozen where they stood. Russia held about 21 percent of Ukraine, and about 1 percent more became the demilitarised zone. • Recognition: the United States recognised Russian control of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk in practice. Ukraine and the European Union recognised nothing. • Military limits: Ukraine's army was capped at 600,000, Ukraine renounced NATO membership in law, and no foreign troops were to be stationed on its soil. European fighter jets would protect its skies from bases in Poland and Romania. • Sanctions: the United States lifted most of its sanctions within a year, and the European Union lifted some, step by step, in return for Russian compliance. Cause. Russia had taken most of what it demanded (see Europe, March 2029), Ukraine was short of soldiers and money (see Europe, January 2028), and Washington and the new governments in Paris and Berlin pressed Kyiv to accept (see Europe, April 2027, and Europe, February 2029). Consequence. The full-scale war had lasted seven and a half years. By the armistice about 2.6 million Russian soldiers had been killed, wounded or gone missing, about 700,000 of them killed, and about a million Ukrainians, about 200,000 of them killed. The armistice held, with violations, for the rest of this history, and no peace treaty followed (see Europe, June 2036). Within a year Russia tested whether the West would defend what it had not given away (see Europe, September 2030).
The Greenland compact
In August 2029 the United States, Denmark and Greenland signed a compact that gave the United States new military facilities in Greenland, a share in the island's mineral projects and a larger role in its Arctic defence, while confirming that Greenland's future was for its people to decide. Cause. American governments had pressed since 2019, and openly since 2025, for control of or influence over Greenland, citing Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic. Denmark and Greenland preferred a negotiated deal to a lasting quarrel inside NATO. Consequence. The compact ended the most embarrassing dispute inside the alliance and improved its watch over the routes Russian submarines would use to reach the Atlantic, which mattered in the close call of 2038 (see The World, April 2059).
Russia rebuilds its army
Between 2029 and 2034 Russia rebuilt and enlarged the army it had worn down in Ukraine. Defence spending stayed above 6 percent of GDP, the army grew to about 1.5 million soldiers, and new divisions were formed along the borders with Finland and the Baltic states. Western intelligence services judged that Russia could fight a limited war against a NATO neighbour within a year of the armistice and a regional one within about three. Cause. The Kremlin regarded the armistice as a victory and its army as the reason for it (see Europe, August 2029). The forces freed from Ukraine had experience of drone warfare that no European army had. Consequence. Europe matched the build-up, more slowly (see Europe, June 2025), and for several years the balance on the Baltic frontier was closer than at any time since the Cold War. Russia tested it once (see Europe, September 2030).
The Mediterranean pact
In November 2029 the European Union signed agreements with Libya's two rival governments, Tunisia, Mauritania and Senegal under which European money paid for coast guards, detention centres and processing camps in North Africa, and European navies returned most people intercepted at sea to African ports. Irregular arrivals, about 410,000 in 2028, fell to about 190,000 in 2031. Cause. The surge in crossings that followed the food crisis and the Sahel's troubles (see Africa, August 2027), and the riots of 2028 (see Europe, July 2028), made a harder border the price of keeping centrist governments in office. Consequence. The pact reduced arrivals and increased deaths, because more people took longer and more dangerous routes, and the camps in North Africa became notorious. It also gave North African governments leverage over Europe, which they used, as Turkey and Morocco had before them.
Golden Dome, slowly
Between 2030 and 2040 the United States built Golden Dome in stages. The first space-based interceptors were launched in 2030. By 2040 the system could stop a limited attack, of the kind North Korea could launch, but not a large Russian or Chinese one, and it had cost about 480 billion dollars, nearly three times the first estimate. Cause. The programme announced in 2025 (see North America, May 2025) survived three administrations because it had support in both parties and in the states where it was built. Consequence. Russia and China answered by adding warheads and decoys, which cost them less than the defence cost the United States (see The World, June 2027). The system made the United States safer against small attackers and changed nothing in the balance with large ones.
Ukraine's bitter peace
In February 2030 Ukraine held its first parliamentary elections since 2019. A coalition led by a new party of war veterans won, on a promise never to recognise the lost territories and to rebuild the army up to the limit the armistice allowed. Thousands of veterans marched in Kyiv against the armistice, and the officials who had negotiated it lived under police protection. Cause. Many Ukrainians felt that the armistice (see Europe, August 2029) had given away what their soldiers had died to keep, and close to a million men had come home from the front. Consequence. Ukraine's politics turned hard and nationalist, as the politics of countries that lose territory often do. The new government kept the armistice, because it had no alternative, but it made reconciliation with Russia impossible for a generation (see Europe, June 2036).
My neighbours go home
In April 2030 the Ukrainian family who had lived in the flat below mine in Valencia since the spring of 2022 went home to Kharkiv. The father had found work rebuilding a power station. The children, who had grown up speaking Spanish and Valencian, were less sure. About 1.2 million of the roughly 6 million Ukrainians abroad went home in the first three years after the armistice. Cause. The armistice had stopped the fighting (see Europe, August 2029), and reconstruction was beginning to create jobs. But Kharkiv was still within range of Russian artillery, and many families waited to see whether the armistice would hold. Consequence. Most Ukrainians abroad never returned, which left Ukraine with a smaller and older population than before the war. My neighbours stayed in Kharkiv. I visited them there in 2041, and the children, by then adults, had become Ukrainian again in everything except their jokes.
Rebuilding Ukraine
Between 2030 and 2038 about 260 billion dollars was spent rebuilding Ukraine, less than half of what the World Bank had estimated in 2025 for a war that had not yet done its worst. Most of it came from the European Union, international lenders and part of the frozen Russian state assets. By 2038 most of the damaged power capacity and about a third of the damaged housing had been rebuilt. Cause. The armistice made investment possible (see Europe, August 2029), but investors feared that the line could move again, and Europe's own budgets were stretched by rearmament. Consequence. Reconstruction tied Ukraine's economy to Europe's and prepared its membership of the European Union (see Europe, January 2038). About 5 million Ukrainians stayed abroad, and the population on the Ukrainian side of the line, about 28 million in 2035, was smaller and older than before the war.
The Narva incursion
On 7 September 2030 about 300 armed men without insignia crossed the river into Narva, a mostly Russian-speaking city on Estonia's border with Russia, and occupied the border crossing, the castle and the town hall, saying they had come to protect Russian speakers. Russian drones flew over eastern Estonia, satellite navigation across the Baltic was jammed, and two undersea cables were cut. On the third day a Russian drone shot down over Estonia was identified for forty minutes as a cruise missile. NATO moved about 25,000 troops into Estonia and Latvia within ten days. On 29 September, with Estonian and allied forces surrounding the town, the armed men withdrew across the river. Eleven people were killed, six of them Estonian police officers and soldiers. Cause. Russia wanted to know whether NATO would fight for a small member after the United States had reduced its forces in Europe (see North America, January 2027) and after Western governments had accepted the armistice in Ukraine (see Europe, August 2029). Western intelligence had warned that Russia could fight a local war within a year of the armistice (see Europe, September 2029). Consequence. NATO answered quickly, mostly with European troops, and Moscow drew back. It was the closest Russia and NATO came to war in this history, and the forty minutes over Estonia became one of the close calls historians study (see The World, April 2059). Russia never tested the alliance so directly again.
Limits without a treaty
In November 2030 American and Russian negotiators meeting in Geneva exchanged parallel declarations instead of signing a treaty. Each side declared that it would keep no more than 1,800 deployed strategic warheads, would notify the other of missile launches and large exercises, and would exchange basic data on its forces twice a year. There were no inspections, and either side could withdraw at a month's notice. Cause. Four years without information had been expensive and frightening (see The World, June 2027). The armistice in Ukraine (see Europe, August 2029) had made regular contact between Washington and Moscow possible again, and neither side wanted to pay for a larger arsenal. Consequence. The declarations were weaker than New START but much better than nothing, and both sides kept them. They also set a pattern of informal, unverified commitments that China could later join without accepting inspections (see The World, March 2035).
Five days in May
On 14 May 2031, eleven days after a bombing in Jammu killed 41 Indian pilgrims, India struck targets across Pakistan with missiles and drones. For five days the two countries fought in the air and along the Line of Control in Kashmir. On the third day Pakistan's National Command Authority, which controls its nuclear weapons, met in emergency session, and satellite images later showed missiles being moved out of storage. A ceasefire mediated by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took effect on 19 May. About 300 soldiers and civilians were killed. Cause. The pattern of 2016, 2019 and 2025 repeated itself (see Asia, May 2025): an attack blamed on a group based in Pakistan, an Indian strike larger than the last one, and a Pakistani reply. This time water made it worse: India's first new dam on the Chenab had begun to hold back water in the dry season (see Asia, April 2025), and Pakistan's army, confident after its war with Afghanistan (see Asia, March 2028), was in no mood to back down. Consequence. It was one of the most dangerous moments of the nuclear age, and both governments knew it. In 2032 they agreed to notify each other of missile tests and restored their military hotline, and the clash helped persuade the great powers to sign their own protocol (see The World, March 2035). There was no further war between India and Pakistan in this history, though the dispute over Kashmir remains.
North Korea's seventh test
On 9 September 2031 North Korea conducted its seventh nuclear test at Punggye-ri, its first since 2017, with an estimated yield of about 200 kilotons. Cause. With no treaty limits left among the great powers (see The World, February 2026), and Russia supplying technology in return for North Korea's help in Ukraine, Pyongyang saw little cost in testing a new, lighter warhead. Consequence. South Korea's debate about building its own bomb became serious. Washington answered in 2033 with an agreement allowing South Korea to enrich uranium for reactor fuel under American supervision, and with more visits by American missile submarines. South Korea stayed without nuclear weapons, though able to build one within about a year. North Korea tested once more, in 2044. No other country tested a nuclear explosive in this history.
Taiwan changes course again
On 10 January 2032 Taiwan's voters returned the Democratic Progressive Party to the presidency, with about 51 percent of the vote. The new president promised to continue the talks with Beijing but to raise defence spending to 4 percent of GDP and to strengthen ties with Japan and the United States. Cause. The détente had brought trade and tourism (see Asia, March 2029), but also Chinese pressure on Taiwan's media and politics, and many voters, the young above all, felt Taiwan was being drawn into Beijing's orbit. Consequence. Beijing suspended the talks and set out to show that it could squeeze Taiwan without fighting (see Asia, August 2033).
The submarines arrive
In August 2032 Australia took delivery of its first nuclear-powered submarine, a Virginia-class boat transferred from the United States under the AUKUS agreement of 2021. By 2045 it operated five: three built in America and two of the new AUKUS class built in Adelaide. Cause. Australia had decided in 2021 that the waters to its north could be defended only with submarines able to stay at sea for months, and tension over Taiwan kept the programme alive through every change of government. Consequence. The submarines added to the reasons a war over Taiwan looked too costly to Beijing (see Asia, October 2049), and they tied Australia's defence more closely than ever to the United States and Britain.
The Kinmen quarantine
From 1 August 2033 the China Coast Guard boarded and inspected every ship bound for Kinmen and Matsu, Taiwan's small islands a few kilometres off the Chinese coast, calling it customs enforcement. No warship fired. On 19 August an American destroyer and a Chinese coast-guard cutter collided east of Kinmen, and for six hours neither navy could reach the other's command. After ten weeks Taipei accepted a formula under which ships to the islands filed their cargo lists with a civilian office in Xiamen, and the inspections stopped. Cause. Beijing wanted to punish Taiwan's change of course (see Asia, January 2032) without risking a war its army was still not ready for. A quarantine of small islands by coast guards rather than navies was a step below war, and it had been rehearsed (see Asia, December 2025). Consequence. Beijing gained a precedent and some control over the islands, and Taiwan kept its government and the main island untouched. The collision frightened both sides more than the quarantine did, and it was one of the reasons for the protocol of 2035 (see The World, March 2035). Kinmen's population fell by a third over the next decade as younger residents moved to Taiwan.
The Three-Power Protocol
In March 2035 the United States, Russia and China signed a protocol on nuclear risk reduction in Singapore. The three powers agreed to keep permanent links between their military commands, to notify one another of ballistic missile launches, to keep a human decision at every step toward the use of nuclear weapons, and never to give that decision to an AI system. The protocol set no limit on numbers. Cause. Two crises had frightened all three powers: the clash between India and Pakistan in 2031 (see Asia, May 2031) and the quarantine of Kinmen in 2033 (see Asia, August 2033). In both, commanders had been unable to reach their counterparts quickly. The American and Chinese presidents had agreed in November 2024 that humans should control decisions on the use of nuclear weapons, and the protocol made that promise formal and three-sided. Consequence. China accepted the protocol because it limited nothing it was building. The links it created were used at least four times in the next twenty years to keep a misunderstanding from becoming a crisis (see The World, April 2059).
A new generation in Moscow
Between 2036 and 2040 the generation that had led Russia into the war left power, through age and retirement, and was replaced by officials drawn mostly from the security services and the state companies. The transition of 2036 brought six months of open rivalry between the security services and the army, the closest the Russian state came to breaking in this history, and it ended in a compromise rather than a fight. The system of government did not change. Its priorities did, slowly: the new leaders spoke less about Ukraine and more about the economy, the falling population and Russia's dependence on China. Cause. Most of the men who had decided on the war in 2022 had been born in the late 1940s and the 1950s, and by the late 2030s they were in their eighties. The constitution amended in 2020 had in any case set 2036 as the end of the long presidency that began in 2000. Consequence. No new leader could give up the occupied territories without being called a traitor, and none tried. But none wanted another war either. The armistice became the settled policy of a generation that had not fought for it (see Europe, June 2036).
The cold armistice
Between 2036 and 2050 the armistice line in Ukraine settled into the kind of border history knows from Korea and Cyprus. Incidents along the line fell from about 300 a month in 2030 to a few a year by the 2040s. The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2039. Trade across the line stayed minimal, and sanctions on Russia were eased slowly and only in return for specific steps, such as the restart of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant under international supervision in 2042. Cause. Neither side could change the line at an acceptable cost (see The World, March 2027), and the new leaders in Moscow had other priorities (see Europe, May 2036). Consequence. The line became permanent in practice while staying temporary in law. Millions of people on the occupied side grew up as Russian citizens, and the chance of reuniting them with Ukraine by agreement grew smaller every year (see Europe, June 2059).
Ukraine joins the European Union
On 1 January 2038 Ukraine joined the European Union, eight years after the armistice and twenty-four years after the protests in Kyiv that had begun over its agreement with the Union. The accession treaty suspended the Union's laws in the occupied territories until they returned to Ukrainian control, as Cyprus's treaty had done for the north of that island in 2004. Cause. Reconstruction had tied Ukraine to the Union (see Europe, June 2030). The armistice barred Ukraine from NATO but not from the European Union, whose treaties include a clause on mutual defence. Hungary's veto had disappeared with its change of government (see Europe, April 2026), and France's opposition faded after its presidential election of 2032. Consequence. Membership made the armistice line a border of the European Union. It settled the question that had started the conflict in 2014, whether Ukraine would belong to the West or to Russia, in the West's favour for the part of Ukraine that Russia had not taken (see Europe, June 2059).
The Gulf maritime pact
In April 2041 Iran, the six Gulf monarchies and Iraq signed a maritime pact in Doha. It created a joint centre to manage incidents at sea, set rules for passage through Hormuz that guaranteed freedom of navigation, and included a pledge of non-aggression. The United States and China signed as guarantors. Cause. Oil mattered less every year (see The World, January 2027), Iran's rulers had turned from revolution to business (see Asia, February 2027), and the Gulf monarchies wanted to trade with Iran rather than fear it. Consequence. The strait that had shaken the world in 2026 became an ordinary busy waterway. By 2059 it carries about 13 million barrels of oil a day, against about 20 million in 2025, and a growing share of liquefied gas and container traffic.
Why Russia did not collapse
In 2023, 46 percent of the experts surveyed by the Atlantic Council expected Russia to become a failed state or to break apart within ten years. It did neither. By 2045 Russia was poorer, older and smaller in population than in 2022, with about 135 million people and an economy that had grown by less than 1 percent a year since 2027, but its state was intact. Cause. Historians give four reasons. • It won enough. The armistice gave the regime a victory to point to (see Europe, August 2029). • It could pay. Low debt, state-controlled banks and captive savings let it finance the war without a crisis (see Europe, January 2027). • China. China bought its oil and gas and sold it what the West would not, at a price: by the 2040s Russia sold most of its raw materials east, on Chinese terms. • Control. The security services had removed every organised opposition by 2024, and many of the people most likely to protest had emigrated. Consequence. Russia paid for its war with stagnation, the price the Kremlin had chosen in 2027. The regions did not break away, but the gap between Moscow and the rest of the country widened, and the succession of 2036 brought the state closer to breaking than the war ever did (see Europe, May 2036).
The centenary without unification
On 1 October 2049 the People's Republic of China celebrated its hundredth anniversary. Its leaders had long described unification with Taiwan as essential to the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" to be achieved by the centenary. Taiwan was still governing itself, and China had never attacked it. Cause. Historians give five reasons why the invasion feared in 2026 never came. • Readiness. The purges left the army without experienced commanders in the late 2020s (see Asia, August 2026). • Defence. Drones, mines and missiles made a crossing of the Strait far more costly than the plans of the 2010s had assumed (see The World, March 2027). • Allies. Japan had said it would fight (see Asia, November 2025), and the United States kept its forces in the region. • Cost. The sanctions on Russia showed what a war would do to China's trade, and China's economy grew more slowly and its population shrank from the late 2020s. • Alternatives. Pressure short of war, as at Kinmen (see Asia, August 2033), brought some gains without the risks. Consequence. China has not given up its claim, and it will not. But each decade without war made war harder to start, because the generation that had planned for it retired and Taiwan's people grew more distinct. By 2059 most Chinese and Taiwanese have lived their whole lives under the status quo.
Why no one used the bomb
Between 1945 and 2059, 114 years, no nuclear weapon was used in war. In 2026 many people would have bet against that record lasting. Historians give four reasons, here in order of how much weight they carry. • No nuclear power faced total defeat. The wars of this period were fought for borders and leverage, never for the survival of a nuclear-armed government. Russia got most of what it wanted in Ukraine (see Europe, August 2029), China never attacked Taiwan (see Asia, October 2049), and Iran had no weapon to use. • Defence was stronger than attack. Because front lines froze (see The World, March 2027), no nuclear-armed army was ever routed, and no general had to choose between a nuclear weapon and a collapse. • The powers kept talking. The declarations of 2030 and the protocol of 2035 gave commanders a way to explain themselves in a crisis (see The World, March 2035). • Luck. At least five times the world came closer than the public knew (see The World, April 2059). Cause. The first two reasons follow from the shape of the wars, which the defender's advantage kept limited. The third was a choice, made after frightening crises. The fourth was not a choice at all. Consequence. The danger has not gone. Nine states still hold about 11,000 warheads, more than enough to end civilisation, and the record rests partly on luck. But the most likely future of 2026 did not include a nuclear war, and none happened.
The close calls
The close calls are the part of this history the public learned last, mostly from archives opened in the 2050s. Five stand out. • September 2030, Narva. A Russian drone shot down over Estonia was identified for forty minutes as a cruise missile (see Europe, September 2030). • May 2031, Kashmir. Pakistan's National Command Authority met on the third day of the fighting, and some missiles were moved out of storage (see Asia, May 2031). • August 2033, Kinmen. An American destroyer and a Chinese coast-guard cutter collided, and for six hours neither navy could reach the other's command (see Asia, August 2033). • November 2038, the North Atlantic. A Russian early-warning system reported a missile launch from the sea west of Greenland that was in fact a commercial rocket, and the officers on duty waited for a second source before reporting it, as a Soviet officer had in 1983. • February 2047, the Sea of Japan. A North Korean missile test failed and fell 40 kilometres from Japan's coast, and Japanese air defences fired before the Japanese government knew what had happened. Cause. Every close call came from the same mixture: weapons ready at short notice, information arriving faster than people could check it, and a crisis already under way. Consequence. Each close call led to a repair: a hotline, a notification rule, a second check before a report went up the chain (see The World, March 2035). The record of non-use is real, but it was repaired five times along the way.
The arithmetic of the wars
About 3.2 million people were killed in wars and political violence between 2027 and 2059, roughly as many as in the thirty-three years before. The yearly toll was highest at the start of the period and fell for most of it. • Battle deaths per year: about 245,000 in 2025, about 290,000 a year in 2027 and 2028 while the war in Ukraine went on, about 100,000 a year in the 2030s and about 65,000 a year from 2041 • Russia and Ukraine, 2022 to the armistice: about 900,000 soldiers killed and at least 23,000 civilians verified by the United Nations (see Europe, August 2029) • Sudan, 2023 to 2029: about 500,000 dead, most of them from hunger and disease (see Africa, October 2026) • The Iran war of 2026: about 10,000 dead in Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Gulf (see Asia, December 2026) • Hunger: the food crisis of 2027 and 2028 killed several hundred thousand more people than in normal years (see The World, February 2027) • Where since 2027: about two fifths in Africa, almost all of them in civil wars Cause. After 2029 wars between states became rarer and shorter, because conquest had become slow and expensive (see The World, March 2027). Russia had shown that a patient state willing to pay could still win slowly, but few states could pay as Russia did. Most of the killing after 2030 took place in civil wars (see The World, August 2027). Consequence. The world's population, about 8.3 billion in 2026, is almost 10 billion today, close to what the United Nations projected in 2024. In this history war shaped borders, budgets and fears, but it did not change the course of humanity's numbers.
Oceania in 2059
In 2059 Oceania has fought no war in this history. Australia spends about 2.5 percent of GDP on defence, runs its submarine fleet with American and British partners, and leads a group of Pacific states that patrol their own waters with ships Australia paid for. Cause. The region's danger came from a possible war over Taiwan, and that war did not come (see Asia, October 2049). The competition for the islands stayed peaceful (see Oceania, May 2027). Consequence. For Oceania, as for South America, the wars of this history were mostly felt as prices. The greatest threat to the Pacific islands in 2059 is the sea itself, rising faster every decade, and not any army.
North America in 2059
In 2059 no war has been fought on North American soil in this history. The United States keeps about 45,000 troops in Europe and about 90,000 in Asia, spends about 3 percent of GDP on defence and remains the strongest military power, with China close behind at sea in the western Pacific. Cause. American forces fought in the Gulf in 2026 (see Asia, February 2026) and stood guard in Europe and Asia, but the defender's advantage and the caution of the great powers kept them out of a major war (see The World, March 2059). Consequence. The question Americans argued about in 2026, whether to defend Europe and Taiwan, was never tested by a war. It was answered by preparation instead, which is the cheaper way to answer it.
Asia in 2059
In 2059 Asia holds most of the world's unresolved disputes, and none of them is at war. Korea is divided along the armistice line of 1953. Taiwan governs itself. India and Pakistan still dispute Kashmir. Iran is a nationalist state run by its military, at peace with its neighbours, without enrichment and without a bomb. Cause. The crises of 2031 and 2033 frightened the region's powers into building hotlines and rules (see Asia, May 2031, and Asia, August 2033), and the Gulf lost much of its importance as oil declined (see Asia, April 2041). Consequence. Asia's peace is armed and watchful, like Europe's. China, India, Pakistan and North Korea together hold about 2,100 warheads, against about 1,000 in 2026, and a single crisis could still undo much of what was built.
South America in 2059
In 2059 South America is the most peaceful continent between states and among the most violent within them. No two of its countries have fought each other since Peru and Ecuador in 1995, but organised crime still kills more people there each year than war kills in most of the world. Cause. South American states had few reasons to fight one another and settled their disputes in court, as over Essequibo (see South America, April 2028). Their violence came from the drug trade and weak policing, which no armistice could fix. Consequence. For South America the wars of this history were mainly economic events: the oil shock of 2026, the fall in oil prices that followed, and the world's demand for its copper, lithium and food. The most important events of an age are not always the ones that happen nearest.
Africa in 2059
In 2059 Africa is where most of the world's war deaths occur, as it was in 2025. About two fifths of the 3.2 million people killed in wars since 2027 died in Africa, almost all of them in civil wars (see The World, May 2059). But the yearly toll is lower than in the 2020s, and no two African states have fought a full war with each other in this history. Cause. The great wars of the 2020s had drawn foreign money and weapons into Africa's civil wars (see Africa, October 2025), and when those wars ended the money and weapons slowly dried up. African Union mediators, often working with Gulf states, ended several conflicts that would earlier have been left to burn. Consequence. Sudan is divided, the Sahel is half-governed and the Kivu is frozen (see Africa, March 2027). Africa's population passed 2.5 billion around 2050, and whether its next generation lives in peace depends more on jobs and water than on any of the wars in this history.
Europe in 2059
In 2059 Europe is at peace and armed. The armistice line in Ukraine is unchanged after thirty years. Ukraine is a member of the European Union, and Russia holds about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, recognised as Russian in practice by the United States and by no government in Europe. European members of NATO spend about 3 percent of GDP on defence, the European Union runs a joint defence industry and a shared air and missile defence system, and its southern sea border is the most heavily policed in the world. Cause. The wars of the 2020s convinced Europe that it could not rely on the United States alone (see Europe, July 2026), and the radical parties that rose in those years made migration and security the centre of its politics (see Europe, April 2027). The defender's advantage and Europe's rearmament made a large war unattractive to anyone who might have started one (see The World, March 2027). Consequence. Europe's peace is the peace of a frozen conflict. It has lasted longer than the peace between the two world wars, it costs less than the war that came before it, and nobody in Kyiv or Moscow calls it settled.