I find history fascinating. I especially study American military history between 1900–1946; the causes, the consequences, the interactions of events, the opportunities not taken, the mistakes made.

It is necessary for the historian, especially the amateur historian, to be on constant guard against two mistaken habits of thought. The first mistake derives from scholarship’s efforts to reveal the long networks of factors in the chain of events and forces and ideas that produce the final event being studied. A caused B which led to C and eventually the assassination of an Archduke cause World War One. Our confidence in a well studied chain of causality begets the mistaken belief that the links in the chain of history are actually related as cause and effect, are determinative, that the first link caused the final event.

History is not like that at all. The butterfly that flaps its wings in China may have been the first step in the chain that ended with the hurricane in Bermuda, but it was not the cause of the hurricane. There were a trillion ways intermediate events could have gone differently. After the fact, we can say that the butterfly and the assassination were the first steps in the chain. But the second step that followed was only one of a hundred that could have occurred, ninety nine of which would not have progressed to the hurricane or the war. And that is true for the thousands of intermediate steps that actually led to the final outcome. It is only in the past that the actual event is frozen; at the time, the millions of possible next events were still all possible.

Looking at history as a chain of causation that actually occurred leads one to mistakenly think that one can think that way of the future; that one can look at an event today, like which candidate will be elected, and forecast a series of future events to arrive at a future outcome, as you did by concluding a higher likelihood of major power war. The mistake is thinking that the next step will be caused in some way by the last step. In reality, the next step will be one of millions of possible next steps, all consistent with that last step. And which one it will be is the cumulative result of millions of factors by millions of people and millions of natural happenings. It’s the height of conceit to think anyone can say what that next step will turn out to be. And there have to be thousands of steps in any chain of events that will actually produce a serious outcome from this election.

And that is the second mistake that comes from misunderstanding the chain of events that historians like to produce — the false notion that history is composed of only these few building blocks of events. On any given day, our world processes millions of factors, happenings, ideas, events that move history across those 24 hours. There is no way on earth to know which of those will be important or how they will play into any future historical event. Only after the fact can we tease the important ones out of the millions.

Your list of future consequences that you say will result from those conditions you name is nothing more than allowing your bias to influence your choices for the chain of future events that you believe will result in the final outcome you declare. There are a million ways our future can unfold differently than you declare it. For all you know, electing a corrupt politician might be worse than electing a flawed businessman, worse in different ways.