War and investment
The political narrative around Trump is that he does not want global conflict and war. However, it is clear Trump has no plan to affect the current conflicts raging that he promised to end within days of being elected.
The din of his Administrations antagonism against anyone that is not "American" and declaration of economic war against the rest of the world, allies and foes alike, has created a situation where war is more likely.
Like it or not, the Americans have situated themselves as the global superpower in economic and military force. The rest of the world has been forced into a subservient military situation or simply as a site of proxy conflict for American capital expansion.
This has now changed. It is a bit of a intuitive situation that if the Americans become less aggressive internationally that more conflict will result, but that is where we have landed. Intervention to stop conflicts that are destabilizing and not in America's interest is the counterweight to American imperialist conflict.
"Rearmament" of regions that had adopted a peace dividend in the face of cooperation in the shadow of empire is not likely to result in anything good.
There are many theories of how this is going to play out, but one thing is certain conflicts will erupt and without a counter lever they will last longer.
This is not a call for sustained imperialist power. Nor, is it a yearning for a different or new superpower acting as interrupter. Different war is not better than imperialist war to those killed or fighting in them. But, the dissolution of American power is not better if there is no replacement of the World's Cop by a collection of countries who have the capacity to fill the void in a non-imperialist way.
Simple solutions will not be found, but the response to expand defence capacity is not simply about filling the void left by American power and pleading with sociopathic regimes to stop killing.
All that is happening is that defence technology geared for empire (and the over production of those killing machines in the West) is being turned into local killing machines. Regional conflicts have already started to ramp-up on the use of these technologies.
For those wanting to engage in this conversation, we must bring a more wholistic view of the economy around defence, global security, and the economics of conflict. In the end, even regional conflicts, war is an economic battle. From funding the war, paying the soldiers, avoiding impacts of sanctions from other countries, and dealing with shifting trade. The only way to stop the killing in the name of resource security is to ensure that we manage our resources in a collective way and understand the costs.