Will 2023 be a year when extremely destructive conflicts erupt all over the world? We are certainly already living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and tensions are approaching the boiling point in a number of key global flashpoints right now. If several more major conflicts were to suddenly begin next year, we could potentially witness an extended period of geopolitical instability that would be unlike anything that we have ever witnessed. It is easy to start wars, but it is much harder to end them. If you doubt this, just look at what is going on in Ukraine. There is no end in sight for that conflict, and there are several other wars that could literally erupt at any time. The following are 5 global flashpoints which could absolutely explode during the early stages of 2023…
#1 Serbia
Are you ready for another war in the Balkans? Ethnic tensions have risen to the highest level in more than two decades, and the president of Serbia just convened an emergency gathering of his national security council…
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has met his national security council as tensions rise in Kosovo between the authorities there and ethnic Serbs.
On Saturday a stun grenade was thrown at EU police in north Kosovo, where Serbs form a majority, and local police exchanged fire with unknown groups.
Ethnic Serbs set up road blocks after Kosovan police were deployed in a dispute over car number plates.
Some in the region now believe that war is “inevitable”, and Kosovo is already asking NATO to step in and intervene…
At a news conference in Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Sunday, Prime Minister Albin Kurti asked the Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led international peacekeeping force, to guarantee “freedom of movement,” as he accused “criminal gangs” of blocking roads.
A fragile peace has been preserved in Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following the 1998-99 war in which NATO intervened to protect Kosovo’s Albanian majority. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.
#2 The Disputed Border Between China And India
On Tuesday, we learned that there has been yet another violent clash along the hotly disputed border between China and India…
Soldiers from India and China clashed last week along their disputed border, India’s defense minister said Tuesday, in the latest violence along the contested frontier since June 2020, when troops from both countries were killed in a deadly brawl.
Rajnath Singh, who addressed lawmakers in parliament, said Friday’s encounter along the Tawang sector of eastern Arunachal Pradesh state started when Chinese troops “encroached into Indian territory” and “unilaterally tried to change the status quo” along the disputed border near Yangtze.
The Chinese just can’t seem to stop provoking India, and a full-blown conflict between the two nations could escalate out of control very rapidly.
Let us hope that does not happen, because both China and India possess nuclear weapons.
#3 Taiwan
For a long time, we have been warned that China will eventually invade Taiwan.
Unfortunately, tensions in the region just continue to escalate, and on Tuesday the Chinese sent more bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone than ever before…
China sent a record 18 nuclear-capable bombers into Taiwan’s air defence zone, Taipei said on Tuesday (Dec 13), just days after Beijing banned more Taiwanese imports in the latest sign of deteriorating ties.
Democratic Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by China, which sees the self-ruled island as part of its territory to be seized one day.
#4 Iran
There will be a war between Iran and Israel.
Of course the IDF has already been regularly hitting Iranian-backed forces inside Syria on a regular basis, but we should be thankful that a full-blown war in which missiles are flying back and forth between the two nations hasn’t started yet.
Unfortunately, we are closer than ever to that point. In fact, it is being reported that Israel is actually warning that it may bomb the airport in Beirut “if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes”…
According to Israeli media reports, Israel has warned Lebanon that Israel Defense Forces could bomb Beirut’s airport if it determines that Iran is smuggling weapons on civilian planes destined for the terrorist group Hezbollah. The alleged weapons smuggling was reported by a London-based Arabic language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, which quoted Israeli sources who said Israel issued the warning.
When a full-blown war between Iran and Israel finally starts, there will be no holding back by either side.
The death and destruction such a war will cause will shock the entire world, and the global oil trade will be thrown into a state of complete and utter chaos.
#5 Ukraine
The United States and Russia both continue to escalate the horrifying conflict in Ukraine.
Now that Russia is bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine’s power grid, the U.S. is choosing to respond by giving Patriot missiles systems to the Ukrainians…
Pentagon officials are in the final stages of preparing a plan to send a Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine to counter Russian aerial assaults, U.S. officials told CBS News.
The plan has not yet been approved by either the Pentagon or the White House, but that could come as early as this week.
This represents a major escalation, and it is also being reported that the Biden administration has given the Ukrainian government the green light to conduct drone strikes deep inside of Russia.
Needless to say, the Russians are not pleased at all about having to deal with drone strikes deep inside their own territory. In fact, some prominent Russian voices are warning that the U.S. and Russia are getting dangerously close to the unthinkable. The following comes from a British news source…
Mad Vlad Putin’s henchmen have fired a warning shot that the Ukraine conflict could turn into a “full-scale nuclear war.”
They made the stark comments after the US gave the go-ahead for Kyiv to kick off drone strikes into Russia.
We don’t see such talk on U.S. television.
The Biden administration continues to assure all of us that the risk of nuclear war is extremely low, but the Russians see things very differently…
One source in Putin’s circle said: “This is playing with fire, risking full-scale war which could easily go nuclear.”
Another added: “Who will now give Moscow the green light for strikes against Ukrainian decision-making centres?”
Most people never imagined that World War I would get as bad as it did.
And most people never imagined that World War II would result in tens of millions of deaths.
Now we have entered the early stages of a third world war, and this time the major participants are armed with nuclear weapons.
If we don’t pull back from the brink, the consequences could potentially be far beyond what most people could even imagine right now.
So let us pray for peace, because a global war in which hundreds of millions of people die is not an acceptable option.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.
I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.
I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
while i believe the risk of nuclear war is minimal i do believe regional wars that could easily escalate world wide are on the table….largely because the american people stupidly put an idiot in the white house…with a lot of help from the gop and supreme court of course and as a given. the uniparty and k-12 are destroying america.
Hey Donnie Boy maybe you should take your rear end back to Ireland and STFU. We didn’t stupidly put a moron in the White House. OUR ELECTION WAS STOLEN BY THE DEMONRAT PARTY AS THEY ALSO TRIED TO DO IN THIS LAST MIDTERM ELECTION. You need to understand just who the criminals are, and I can assure you it is not we Conservative Republicans. Biden’s weakness is giving everyone the Jitters thus they have their shaking fingers on that red button. You know, Just In Case !!!
This article is just plain old-fashioned fear mongering. The United States and her allies in Europe and the Pacific hold overwhelming economic and military superiority over Russia, Communist China, Serbia, and Iran. Overwhelming by any and every measure. This gives the United States and the “Rules Based International Order” the leverage and capabilities to resolve these various issues through diplomacy. There was a time when the United States and her allies in Europe sought to maintain stability throughout the world. To achieve this, various American Secretaries of State conducted “Shuttle Diplomacy” to resolve issues and reduce tensions. The United States and the European Union seem to have abandoned those kinds of policies.
I think you miss an important point. It is true that the US military and NATO have enormous qualitative and some quantitative advantage over Russia in land and sea and even air based forces. HOWEVER, it is also true that in nuclear weapons Russia has more and larger weapons although not as accurate weapons. Russia is fully capable of eliminating life from Europe and big sectors of the US. Ignoring this basic fact is just dumb.
The reality is that NATO assured Russia they would never expand eastward into the Eastern Bloc countries – but NATO repeatedly violated those agreements and pushed the borders of Nato hundreds of miles close to Moscow. The US Sec State basically threatened to have Ukraine join the EU and NATO – which would put NATO armies 2-3 days from Moscow. To the Russians, who have been invaded from the West four times in the last two centuries (Napoleon, WWI, western and Japanese armies alongside white Russians, WWII) and survived only by “defense in depth” meaning that the large distances required to attack Moscow led to supply line issues the doomed Western invaders – the idea of Ukraine in NATO is national suicide for Russia. In that situation, it is not irrational for Russia to escalate to whatever weapons are needed to prevent Ukraine joining NATO.
So far, the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian army together with advanced Western supplies has bled Russia white in terms of depleting their military. This is useful for NATO since it removes any real possibility of a Russian invasion of Europe. BUT it is done at the expense of putting nuclear-armed Russia up against the wall of national survival. Nobody wants nukes to be used but when the issue is one of national survival, it is foolish to think Russia would not resort to nukes and foolish to think that once that happens it will not lead to escalation. From a Russian point of view they would rather Ukraine become a nuclear smoking ruin than to have NATO armies 2-3 days from Moscow.
I think that this is the sort of situation that – if poorly managed – will lead potentially to very bad outcomes for Ukraine, Russia, and likely all of Eastern Europe and potentially all the NATO countries. So simplistic labeling it as fear mongering is not smart.
Are some governments forced to create crises to divert the attention of ‘ their ‘ people from the crises they have already created ?