One of the HUGE aspects that you see taken away from the World Wars and Cold War is that fascism, capitalism and communism wasn’t only a war of economic systems, but all three were fighting for their definition of what the human species should look like.
Most people understand that the Germans had an eugenics program, but think it to have been some moronic attempt that focused on phenotypes such as blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes. In reality the Germans had a more complex (and perhaps absurd) belief: They believed that an ancient race of supermen (those who populated the mythological land of Atlantis, a story Plato took from Egypt) eventually populate the mainland. The heroes of both Greek and Nordic sagas were known to have fitted these phenotypes of blue and grey eyes, white skin and blonde or red hair. These Atlantians had Nordic races according to these Germans, but eventually intermixed with the populations of the mainland Europe, giving rise to the Celtic look of brown eyed and brown hair to blue eyed red hair. The Nazis then believed that the European race was a mix raced, hybrid of these immigrants from Atlantis (or the heroic race) and the baseborn natives of Europe. The breeding program was then designed to reintroduce this lost race through selective breeding based on the supposed characteristics of these Atlantis immigrants which came about mainly from the phenotypes described (so there was some logic to this process, despite the most likely false premise of Atlantian super race). Fascism in both Germany and Italy wanted to revive the men from the heroic bronze age (Germany saw this as a factor of biology, while Italy of culture).
Note: There is archeological and DNA evidence of an original European population with brown eyes and hair, later being met with the Nordic peoples that came from the Caucasus maintains and spread throughout Europe. Italians were a mixture of these original people and Nordic racial migrations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latins_(Italic_tribe)#Origins), the Athenians considered themselves as the “original people of Greece” while the Spartans were part of the Dorian race, a group of Nordics that fought their way and settled the Peloponnese and were described to be blonde, red haired with blue/grey eyes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorians). There is evidence that there were other ethnic groups that eventually merged with these prehistoric mass migrations. The Atlantis hypothesis is a complete fantasy and would be rather surprised if there’s any evidence for this.
The Soviets on the other hand had their goal of the New Soviet Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man). This new Soviet Man had their individuality eradicated, didn’t even identify with their family, and acted much like an insect in a colony, its interest in the benefit of the colony. The communist Chinese were very similar in their new men with their cultural revolution. The communists officially didn’t believe in genetics and evolution and attacked this idea in a similar way they attacked organized religion. The claimed I’ve read by historians is that Darwinism went against the ideological belief that everyone was born equal. Karl Marx wrote that differences in peoples abilities (including the sexes) was attributed to social conditioning. An artist doesn’t deserve praise or money for his skill because he gained his skill by having the unfair advantage of having parents who paid for his musical training. Thus all supposed advantages gained from competition aren’t real, but a product of unfair access to resources. If everyone had the same resources everyone would perform the same… The Soviet education system worked hard to create a general equal education to gain this supposed equal performance. They claimed it would turn the average man into an equal to Aristotle or Beethoven.
The American way can heavily been seen by the propaganda we are left against fascism and communism. It was a sense of individuality, but this was tied to a duty to the community. American comic books are one example of what I call the “domesticated hero” whose strength and abilities are used to the service of society and not his personal gain (the Nordic and Hellenic heroes on the other hand are concerned principally with themselves, and their family members, the community as a whole not being put above personal and family gain). It came from a sense of the family unit and immediate community being the foundation of society. While there were some eugenic programs, these were not aimed for radically changing the nature of man or bringing a new species, but simply promoting healthier and more beautiful individuals but the species remained the same. There were later (after the world wars) forced sterilization of the mentally retarded and criminals (this happened in a larger scale in Sweden also). But again, these were attempts to eliminated what was perceived as dangerous anomalies, not bringing about a new species or changing human nature. Also, the Americans had a strong theist sense they generally used without specifying a particular religion. God created man in his image, and thus we shouldn’t change man.
These were then, broadly speaking, fights for the very future of the species. This existential threat of equal or greater proportions to the conflict of Greece with Persia. The Greeks were very familiar with heredity within the Greek communities, and overall with the Asiatic foreigners who they believed had suffered of bad breeding habits. The Greek aristocracy hardly ever married their children off purely for financial or political reasons, but demanded the suitors proved their biological superiority to the other candidates with multiple contests of diverse skills such as those in music and poetry, conversation and physical exploits. The Spartans as you probably know discarded their children from Mount Taygete if deemed weak or misshape. Many Greeks deemed themselves superior to others by tracing back their genealogy to a certain god or hero (something that even the Romans did, as was the case of Caesar with Venus). Thus defeat to the Persians would have meant a pollution of the Greek blood and race that they fought to maintain, and a literal genocide in the eyes of many Greeks (granted not everyone thought this way, Alexander the Great later forcing his officers to marry Asian women despite already having families in Europe). The Greeks were fighting for the very existence of what their ideals of humanity should be which they had been developing for thousands of years of selective breeding, not merely a social and political system.
Which now we come full circle to the modern age and the possibilities that will come with Trans-humanism and gene editing. You can already see the origins of political movements mouth watering for implementing their social engineering agendas with this tech. I’ve heard arguments with the “intellectual” atheist (usually an obese white man pseudo-intellectual) saying we should gene edit our animal instincts away and become pure intellect. You have general claims of eliminating propensity for violence from the gene-pool. Genopolitics is in its infancy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genopolitics), but you know that once it’s better understood and the tech exists to influence the genes, they’ll move on from indoctrinating children to their beliefs to specifically gene editing them for the propensities they desire. You already have feminists openly claiming that men should entirely disappear and sperm cells artificially created or men reduced to a slave population, its numbers reduced by 90% whose only purpose is reproduction (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gkkj5/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-90-percent-the-solution-to-all-our-problems), (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/26/sperm-men-lesbians-fertility). You already see them at full speed attacking every aspect of Western Civilization they disagree with, and your very manhood deemed a vice that needs to be eradicated, putting in its placed a domesticated psychologically castrated male that would be a laughing stock to his ancestors, subservient to its masters like a loyal dog.
There are arguments that this technology will be used by the rich to enhance themselves and their children, leaving the masses behind evolutionary. This will certainly cause social conflict and even further isolation between the haves and have nots. Then there’s the conflict described by Elon Musk, where the tech elites are looking to transfer their brains into AI and replace humanity with smart machines, Elon attempting to make a compromise between humans with brain implants. It’s unlikely these two will coexist. Will the biological human accept the rights granted or demanded by a machine? Will the supposed conscious machine accept the orders of a human? There really isn’t a scenario where I see these two groups coexisting in harmony as equals, either one rules and the other submits, or one eliminates the other.
You’re going to see a massive upheaval in the coming decades as this technology becomes a reality, and ideological conflicts will arise by the social engineers as to what your very DNA (or replacement with AI) will be. Those in power will want to enforce their social engineering view unto the societies they control first, then unto the world. The future wars will not necessarily be over economic models or dispute for resources (even if these are the official excuses given), but just as the past wars of the Greeks and Persians and World Wars and Cold War weren’t entirely based on economic models or resources by for what future man would be, this will be the conflict we are faced with. You will have internal struggles inside regions to define what the future of humanity is, then you’ll have struggles between those regions. The Russians and Chinese aren’t going to abandon their traditional standards of masculinity as the West is doing with their social engineering for example, while they’re likely to be the major Western rivals with this new technology. And the level of social control being implemented by the Chinese government isn’t going to be generally adopted by the West as of right now.
Note: This is probably just a matter of time, since the calls to fight “hate speech” and “fake news” will used as an excuse, it’s already a successful tactic to justify censorship in China and a significant portion of the Western population are asking for this both from the general population and political leaders (https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/chinas-wechat-has-a-great-new-tool-for-fighting-fake-news-but-theres-one-little-problem-beijing/)
A conflict between these groups, and within these groups as to which ideology gets to shape the future of the species, will be the main cause of future wars. And once this conflict is solved and a victor emerges, you’re likely to have a new ideal. The Christians were against the type of men that carried out the Crusades and the Conquistadors of the new world, since these strong virile men were closer to the pagan ideals the Christians attempted to destroy, but used these man as long as they had a practical purpose in fighting the enemies if Christendom. But if these threats weren’t immediate, the very same men they had once praised as emissaries of Christianity became the poster child for the vice they attempted to eradicate and attempts to make them submit and become docile took place. This same way the elites may promote a certain ideal while the conflict exists, but one Pax is achieved, the efforts will be made to have an obedient population incapable or revolt, so a new ideal will emerge. Many European states moved away from Feudalism to a free Republic and introduced capitalism and armed its citizens not because the elites had an idealistic love for freedom in the population, but this system made the population more competitive against their enemies (part of the “European Miracle” theory). But once these vulnerabilities to foreigners ends, the elites look to take away the arms and financial freedoms the population had in order to secure their power base that is no longer threatened by a foreign enemy. So even if the winning side had X ideals, these are likely to change once all enemies are no longer a threat.