Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.
I’m sure they thought the same before the outbreak of WW2 as The-War-To-End-All-Wars had been so destructive.
I’ve heard other analysis that suggests the current state of play in the world resembles that in the run-up to WW1 and WW2. It would only take something like North Korea escalating aggression for the Trilateral Axis/Axis of Evil to become emboldened by the hope that the US is too distracted elsewhere and they could make their play for Taiwan, the Baltic states and/or Israel in the hope that they can radically change the status quo into one that better favours them going forward, shifting the balance of power away from the West. That could get messy very quickly.