Brinkmanship's Edge: How Putin, Maduro, and Trump Are Pushing the World Toward the Abyss, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)

It's December 2025, and the planet's fault lines are shuddering — Ukraine's mud churned to Pokrovsk's rubble, Venezuelan waters stained with the blood of 83 from U.S. strikes, and the East China Sea's waves lapping at Senkaku's contested shores. Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro, and Donald Trump aren't whispering threats; they're barking them, each a match held to the powder keg of global order. As Snyder warns (link below), wars ignite like dry tinder, but extinguish like infernos in hell. We're not just witnessing "wars and rumours of wars" — we're hurtling toward a cascade where one spark could engulf us all. This isn't hyperbole; it's the unvarnished calculus of escalation, backed by the dispatches from the frontlines of folly.

History's ghosts, 1914's tangled alliances, 1939's ignored ultimatums, whisper that leaders gripped by "war fever" rarely cool their heels in time. Putin eyes Europe's "unacceptable demands," Maduro dances defiance amid Cuban shadows, and Trump eyes land strikes like a real estate mogul appraising a hostile takeover. The triad's rhetoric isn't bluster; it's blueprint. And with NATO's phantom legions looming and Beijing's hulls probing Tokyo's red lines, 2026 isn't a forecast, it's a countdown.

Picture this: A U.S. carrier strike group, hulls slicing Venezuelan waters like a scalpel to a vein, has already claimed 83 lives in 21 boat strikes since September, no congressional nod, just executive fiat. Fentanyl's the pretext, Maduro the piñata. On November 21, Trump dialled Caracas, not for tea, but for an exit ramp: "Leave now, with safe passage for you, your wife, your son — or else." Maduro? He countered with global amnesty dreams, then hit the stage sword in hand, vowing "peace through defense" while bunking in rotating safehouses, Cuban spooks at his elbow.

Trump's not bluffing. Cabinet whispers of "land strikes very soon" echo like thunder, easier than sea ops, he boasts, with routes mapped, lairs pinpointed. Colombia's in the crosshairs too: "Anybody selling us their cocaine is subject to attack." A high-tech radar nest in Trinidad and Tobago, 70 miles from Venezuela's Paria Peninsula, scans not just speedboats but the horizon for hypersonics. Regime change? MAGA's old red line blurs; even anti-interventionists gulp at the Iraq echoes, but Trump's "America First" now flexes as "cartel kingpin hunt." Maduro's no fool, he's survived assassinations, hyperinflation, and 8 million exiles. But with U.S. warships amassing like the Cuban Missile Crisis redux, his bravado masks terror: "Psychological terrorism," he calls it, yet his TikToks pulse propaganda while prisons empty into migrant caravans. Strike Venezuelan soil, and it's not just Caracas that burns, it's the hemisphere's dominoes: Russia and China, Maduro's patrons, eyeing Panama's canal and Guyana's oil. Trump's drug war? Noble aim, but the road to hell's paved with good intentions, and F-35s.

This ledger isn't ledger; it's lit fuse. One errant Hellfire, and Latin America's powder keg rivals Europe's.

Eastward, the Donbas grinds on, Russia's meat grinder claiming Pokrovsk after a 15-month siege that swallowed 170,000 troops and uncounted graves. Putin, camo-clad at a forward post, hailed the "liberation" of this rail nexus, once Ukraine's logistics lifeline, now a ghost town of 60,000 souls fled or felled. Kyiv cries foul: "Bravura statements don't match reality" — urban snipers still prowl northern streets, rotations hold in Myrnohrad. But the flag's up in the square; 86 hamlets since September, fastest gains since 2022.

Cue Steve Witkoff, Trump's envoy, Kushner in tow, to Moscow's table. Peace pitch? Stalled. Putin accuses Europe of "sabotage," their demands "unacceptable." Then the hammer: "We don't seek war with Europe... but if they start it, we're ready right now." No bluster, this from the man who turned illusions of "strategic defeat" into Avdiivka's ash. NATO? Rutte retorts: "Ready to do what it takes."

Germany's 1,200-page OPLAN DEU? A war game's fever dream: 800,000 NATO boots, U.S., German, allied, surging east via Polish ports, Baltic bridges, to a "hypothetical" front by 2029. Maps detail every ford, every rail, echoes of Schlieffen, but with hypersonics. Antiwar MAGA squirms; Europe's "reparations loans" from frozen Russian assets fuel the frenzy. Pokrovsk's "foothold" eyes Kramatorsk, Sloviansk — Donbas's crown jewels. One NATO boot over the line? Article 5's domino teeters toward Armageddon.

The maths' merciless: Russia's "special operation" devours lives, but yields land. Europe's war machine revs — will it grind Ukraine to dust before the clash?

Pivot Pacific: Senkaku/Diaoyu's barren rocks, gas fields beneath, ghosts above, erupt anew. A recent clash: Japanese trawler "illegally" in Chinese waters, per Beijing; Tokyo's escort expels two CCG hulls from "its" EEZ. Conflicting logs, but the script's familiar: patrols probe, rhetoric ratchets. Takaichi's November vow — "Japan aids Taiwan's defense" — lit the fuse; missiles now stud Yonaguni, 110km from Taiwan.

Beijing's no slouch: Youth exchanges axed, J-pop tours cancelled — economic coercion's soft knife. Glass, U.S. envoy, reaffirms the treaty: Senkakus covered, Taiwan implied. Xi's silence? Deafening. One boarding gone wrong, and it's not fish at stake, it's the Strait, the chip chokepoint, the U.S. Seventh Fleet steaming in. Japan neutral? No more; Abe's legacy arms Tokyo for the fray.

This triad, Caribbean coercion, Donbas drive, Pacific probe, interlocks like a doomsday device. Venezuela pulls Russia/China; Ukraine tests NATO's spine; Senkaku yanks Uncle Sam East. Trump's "not just Venezuela"? A Latin domino chain. Putin's "swift defeat"? Europe's illusion shattered. Beijing's hulls? Taiwan's hourglass runs dry.

Snyder's right: Easier to start than stop. 2025's "fever" isn't flu, it's frenzy, leaders mistaking resolve for reason. Billions hang: supply chains snap, nukes twitch fingers, economies crater.

We're not doomed — yet. But ignore the triad's taunts, and 2026's "next level" is a nuclear war overture. Demand de-escalation: Congress clips Trump's leash, NATO shelves the 800k blueprint, patrols pull back from Senkaku.

The planet doesn't need more warriors. It needs wiser ones. Before the fever breaks us all.

https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/the-future-of-the-entire-planet-hangs