War among old, dying nations - whose death comes first?

The civilized world is voluntarily dying towards extinction, and has been for decades, due to chosen sub-fertility - less than two children per woman (and falling) despite conditions of peace and prosperity. 

Indeed, this gradual suicide has been going on for considerably longer among the upper classes, because increased wealth, intelligence, education and conscientiousness are all associated with reduced number of children (mostly strongly among women - the most intelligent women only average half a child each). 

The current world war is therefore one between dying nations - a war between nations that have all chosen to exercise their health, wealth, and freedom of choice to have fewer, ever fewer, children.  

Furthermore; substantially because of this low and falling fertility (but also because of increased average and extreme lifespan); the civilized world is now old. 

Modern societies are - on average and at the extreme - the oldest by far in the history of the world; with a substantial majority of the population in the second half of their natural (c70 year) lifespans. 

This is accelerating almost inevitably because a very small and shrinking proportion of the women are of reproductive age.

This fact of such old and declining nations must make a difference to the nature and conduct of war - it cannot help but be so; yet the subject is hardly ever raised, let alone its implications understood. 

This description of old and dying nations fits all the most developed world, and all participants in the current world war (especially when recent immigrants for the third world are excluded from the averages - as they should be). 

There are quantitative differences between nations, and between the sides, relative differences in trends; but all are essentially on the same trajectory. 

This is an extraordinary situation; given that the war is being fought on an existential basis - that is both sides believe that the their continued existence as socio-political entities depends on either not-losing (in the case of the Fire Nation) or winning (in the case of The West). 

On the one had; the war is being fought by nations that have (in an ultimate sense) chosen to become extinct -- while, on the other hand, they two sides are fighting for the proximate (short-term) survival of their 'systems'. 

There is therefore a dissociation of motivation, and profound incoherence at work. It seems that biological extinction is either regarded as inevitable, accepted or embraced; while ideological survival (for the Fire Nation) or global expansion (in The West) is apparently regarded as absolutely vital. 

None of this is surprising if - as seems true - the war has been engineered and escalated merely a pretext for mass infliction of human suffering and increased human annihilation.  

On the other hand, the spiritual aspects of such dissociations are very peculiar indeed! I am convinced that the chosen sub-fertility of the entire civilized world  is an index of profound and nihilistic despair. 

Despair and a covert desire for annihilation is the ultimate and underlying reality of this war - whatever the apparent strength of short-term surface motivators. 

And this is an extremely dangerous situation; spiritually as well as the more obvious physical risk. 

When nihilistic despair is the deep motivator it would take very little to trigger purposively and mutually destructive decisions. And to die in despair - and remain so - is to make the choice of hell. 

Since The West operates increasingly on the basis of value-inversion (at the level of metaphysics - of primary assumptions about reality) - the evil of The West is purposive and worsening. 

I am in no doubt that The East started the war as the lesser evil; but that is not good enough. There have been some remarkable and encouraging signs suggestive of a partial good-affiliation; but mostly of a negative nature (i.e. what they have Not done, rather than what they actively espouse). 

But to withstand the escalating temptations of war; The East would need explicitly and coherently to affiliate, with a positive trajectory, to the side of Good. 

As yet; the situation remains uncertain; and the effect of war (and the activity of demons) is to abandon Good in pursuit of expedient military goals, or for sinful reasons such as vengeance. 

All the time, things are changing; and one of these changes is that the participant societies are ageing and dying - and, especially, the causes of these demographic trends are continuing to operate, and perhaps increase. 

How will such nihilistic and covertly-suicidal societies behave in a war? History provides no valid examples for comparison; and the answer is currently a mystery.

...And likely to remain so since the reality and deep-causes of civilizational subfertility and strategic self-extinction are ignored or trivialized. 

But the outlook seems pessimistic. A society that chooses not to have enough children even to replace itself - and then not to talk about the inevitable consequences, or pretend that this is 'a good thing'; is an unrealistic and unwise society - operating on the basis of false priorities, and motivated by lies.