I wouldn't say it has minimal predictive power. Take all the predictions of global warming (seasonal changes, agricultural production, etc.), adapt them to a specific area that experiences greater warming due to less water and there you go.
It doesn't matter one bit to Australia what the "average temperature of the southern hemisphere" is or that it's less than NA in variance. What matters to Australia is whether the change impacts their water, food, energy, and regional temperature variance, not that because the Indian Ocean exists, their hemisphere is technically cooler.
Replace "Australia" with any country you feel like and it doesn't change. That one hemisphere has a different average temperature due to more water is not useful in predicting seasonal changes, agricultural production, or "etc." on the land masses. Australia could get hotter by more than any other place on Earth, and the ocean temperatures would still make the SH appear cooler and less variant.
They're bringing pretty much of it in Iraq and Afghanistan still.
Nonsense. We're not talking about political posturing wars in this hypothetical. We're talking about a theoretical where climate change introduces additional scarcity beyond what technology can keep up with. Afghanistan can try to invade the USA, Russia, India, EU (insofar as it would hold together in true crisis) or even Iran by itself all it wants, but it isn't going to take those places over and get more resources. Their guns are bigger.
And the difference would only grow in crisis times. Nations with unstable water supplies and limited technology are going to struggle to mobilize anything resembling an organized force. Maybe they can cause problems with massive exodus of refugees, but that's about it.
Oh, I have no doubt that US couldn't crush it's enemies. The question is more about how unpleasant those enemies will make the lives of the Americans in the meanwhile.
And also, US doesn't exist in vacuum. What about the cheap resources of Africa or the oil of Saudi-Arabia?
A world scarcity crisis goes way past just the US, but you're still going to see applied theory of how people act when they have (or don't have) scarce resources necessary to live. Realistically, US would feel some squeeze by migration but North America as a whole is in a better place wrt pop density and geography than Africa, Asia, or even Europe. There's fewer political entities of similar power, longer traveling distances to leave one area of governance, and less people per square area. Even so, it would be hell, but less hellish than elsewhere unless the strife fractured the USA (only a legitimate possibility if the military turns on the government or divides, but history has seen exactly that happen more than once elsewhere, and the US civil war nearly tore it apart).
All nationalist chest-pounding aside though, the main point I'm trying to make is that there is a reason the have-nots of the world haven't done anything to change their spot on the global pecking order; it's because there's nothing they can do about it.
That's not completely true. It's easy to say "Africa" as an entity, but the countries in Africa have different situations, and while none are as well off as USA/Europe/China/India (and given the geography, population, and natural resources aren't in the same boat) some are far in front of others in terms of government stability, median wealth, and military capability, and that's true even if you separate North Africa out from nations south of the Sahara. This disparity exists at least in part (and it could be a very large part) due to how the leadership of a given country has progressed there, and is a similar reason for the disparity between North and South Korea.
No, Mali can't march into Europe and conquer Italy (unless we're talking distant future), but that's besides the point.
Free trade is rarely of mutual benefit to third world nations who can't keep up with the cheap consumer goods that first world nations produce.
It might be useful for governments in Africa to look at some of the nations in Asia that vaulted forward in economic wealth and mirror some of the tactics.
your timescale is way off.
Please. The fighting is Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than isolated regional insurgencies that would stand absolutely zero chance against the West if the US and EU brought their full military might to bear against them.
