.

The proxy wars have been about ideology, largely. Esp. VN and Korean War. The ideologies of the big boys are much closer than they were before.

With "recent proxy wars" I was more referring to the argued proxy wars in Syria etc.

I don't even consider Korean War or Vietnam as proxy wars (on behalf of USA), since USA clearly had substantial number of troops there (at least towards the end).

This sort of thing scares me more than Kim, because Kim is not going to start a war, and the US government has demonstrated, many times in the recent and not-quite-recent past, that it is willing to do so, and there's no doubt that it's got a large plurality, or perhaps majority, of the world's nukes.

www.yahoo.com/[...]

A lot of fake arms on that Day of the Sun parade

Yes. I agree. They have plenty of time to make mock weapons.

Tiger tiger said "The ideologies of the big boys are much closer than they were before."
An accurate statement as everyone will eventually loose with a rogue nuke owning state. The link below was the key article which made me post the opening question.
What's our situation here in china??
We get kicked out??
www.yahoo.com/[...]

I'm not sure about US citizens specifically, but I think China's integration to the west is "too big to fail" in such a way that it would be affordable to hurt the foreign expat and migrant population in China much at all.

Random shows of dissent against random foreigner by some drunk or otherwise on the edge locals is probably the extent of it.

@Mike: I agree with you about everyone losing with a 'rogue' nuke owning state, but the terminology of 'rogue state' masks a lot of bs, similar to the division of the world between 'free world' and...enslaved or communist or whatever term has been used by US leaders since about 1945. Is the US a rogue state? I leave the question open. And I think that we have all been losing since nukes were first created to arm maniacally-paranoid 'big boys', as well as others, in the defense of the competitive economic greed that runs the planet, sponsored in virtually every way by those who are benefiting from it...
OK, we're trailing away from the point here, mea culpa - but my point is, none of these bastards can be trusted - and that is not paranoia.

@Alien: "we have all been losing since nukes were first created to arm maniacally-paranoid 'big boys'"

I don't think that it is so simple.

For decades nukes kept a balance (of terror, but regardless) between the then world powers of USA and Soviet Union.

Without nukes and the obviously acknowledged risk of global destruction, direct confrontation (let's say in Europe) using conventional weapons between USA and Soviet Union would have been much more likely.

I don't want to condone nuclear weapons, but I cannot flat out claim that they have not served any purpose.

Similarly, the "economic greed that runs the planet" - that greed may be another big reason why third world war has not yet taken place.

There are mixed and interlinked interests among the economic powers, that rely on at least some level of stability.

Take China for example - if China had not opened up and built economic ties with the west (which inevitably created economic elites in both China and the west), who knows what other paths they might have taken, or could take as we speak, regarding Korean peninsula for example.