China has friends in low places - North Korea, Iran, Russia and Pakistan.
Then you have two of the EUs biggest Marxists, Merkel and Macron, pushing to align with China, since their ideals are much the same. The rotating presidency falls with Berlin this year.
Marxists have no morals, so it will depend on the rest of the EU to keep those two mongrels in line.
All-in-all, I think the world must confront China, Russia and Iran but I believe it could cost us all dearly. As it will absolutely take war and maybe several to do so effectively.
I disagree.
The nice thing about China is you can count on it acting in its own best interests. Not true of Iran.
North Korea is just China. Russia will also act in its own best interest, but economically their economy is about the size of New York State. The only war they can afford to sustain is one in which they are not involved.
And Germany, for whatever reason, thinks it ought to rule the world. With the EU thing, they attempted to do economically what they couldn’t do militarily last century. An argument could be made that taking out Germany would make the world as safe as if you took out Mecca (and Iran).