I do think that most of us here acknowledge that it's entirely possible to make a more modern setting/timescale with some creative manipulation of current events.
For instances, perhaps Russia and China start messing with each other over borders and this leads to low level warfare between the two. Their fighting spills over into Mongolia who asks for UN help to keep control of its borders. Both Russia and China ignore Mongolian sovereignty and UN troops get killed in the process causing the UN to place sanctions & embargoes on both countries. Russia tells the West to keep it's nose out of local business and reduces the sale to European UN members of those resources that the UN still allows it to sell (e.g. natural gas, petroleum fuels, timber).
China in an effort to continue (and hopefully win) the war against Russia, ramps up its exploiting of Africa and the Pacific Ocean nations for resources. Both these actions cause further tensions for the UN.
Eventually China & Russia use nukes and do so indiscriminately with Mongolia being hit directly and Japan being indirectly affected by residual effects of weapons used on the China/Russia border between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. Finally the UN has to take real action to protect member nations, this leads to a declaration of "peace enforcement" by UN troops but when the Russians or the Chinese accidentally use a nuke against UN forces (accidentally, deliberately, or maybe don't actually care who they hit...) peace enforcement degenerates into open warfare.
Is this scenario possible? Maybe.
Is it likely? Probably not - I think it's highly unlikely.
Is it plausible? Well... I think this is the most important question because it depends on how willing your Players are to suspend disbelief and accept the world view you need to make this scenario happen for your game. The big bonus we have here is that many members of this forum have good knowledge or access to information of this sort of thing so any scenario can benefit from their constructive criticism.
However, it still comes down to what your Players are willing to accept. Some of them don't actually care about the world background of the game, they just want to play it, some Players are happy to have quirky or unconventional things thrown into the game and some prefer to keep the realism. Basically I'm saying I think you can get away with anything... or nothing... based on your Player group.
Me personally, I still want a plausible world background but I don't tend to worry so much about all the little details needed to make that background, a broad overview works for me so I would happily suspend my disbelief and accept the scenario above to get a good game.
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