There is, as of now, no evidence China is preparing to invade anything. There's always sable rattling, hasn't happened yet.
> Wars happen when two or nation's drive for self-preservation collide
That's a naive view of war, which ignores individual a-holes. There's no self-preservation in Russia invading Ukraine...
I understand it's easy to despair and fear seeing some of the things happening in the world. I am much more optimistic.
Russia was massively clear during the pre-invasion buildup that it was about Ukrainian NATO aspirations. They offered to deescalate and remove troops from the boarder if US declared opposition to Ukrainian admission. They publicly stated they saw it as an existential threat and were willing to invade over it.
It is still not clear if the threat was real or imagined, I'd the "deescalation" proposition had real things or was just a very unrealistic set of terms and essentially an excuse to proceed. NATO was less ready to accept any new members half a year ago than it is now.
That's probably the case for many of the nordics but not Ukraine.
In 2021 NATO declared verbatim that Ukraine would become part of NATO and its process would proceed. Now it is on hold because NATO doesn't admit Nations with active conflicts and territorial disputes.
Of course russia doesnt get a formal vote in who NATO admits, but they have a de facto vote via the invasion. The US and NATO are scaling back military exercises in the Black Sea this year[1], which historically threatened Russia.
https://gcaptain.com/us-navy-ships-stay-home-nato-flexes-bla...
(Which is what matters.)
A prospering, west-oriented, large and largely Russophone country on their borders would be a terrible reminder for both populations what a massive failure the Russian state is.