Are you keeping your eye on the news? Have you noticed any worrisome patterns lately? Do you get the sense that we’re drifting toward war? And not just another Libya-style “destroy the country and leave” war, but an all-out war war?

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. There have been any number of developments in the last few weeks alone that feed into this narrative.

There was the tit-for-tat tanker seizures between Britain and Iran last month (with the MSM memory-holing Britain’s tit in the reporting on Iran’s tat, of course), which has enabled the always-insightful Russian Foreign Ministry to conclude that the US “is simply looking for a pretext to whip up the situation” in the Persian Gulf (shocking, I know).

There is the still-escalating situation in Hong Kong, where US-backed regime change NGOs and authentically angry Hong Kongers are struggling against Beijing’s encroachment on their regional autonomy (with China now warning the US to mind its own beeswax in the matter).

There was the incident late last month over South Korea, where, depending on whose side of the story you trust, South Korean forces fired warning shots on Russian military aircraft that violated their airspace or innocent Russian peace planes were totally not violating anybody’s airspace and no shots were even fired.

Oh, and there’s the breaking news story as I write this article about the US formally withdrawing from the INF nuclear treaty, a Cold War-era arms control deal that had hitherto limited development of mid-range ground-based nuclear missiles.

Yes, it’s safe to say that the world is beginning to feel like a powder keg and each one of these incidents is a lit match.

But as bad as all of these stories sound, the reality is even worse! Let’s take a look at a few recent developments that demonstrate how the world’s biggest powers are prepping for something huge.

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