Are we not in the midst of a great war now? While not massive like the previous world wars, the US has been in active military operations since 9/11. Russia has been involved in ground invasions. I'll admit these conflicts aren't huge, but they are constant and sustained.
Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
81–90 of 400 posts
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#82What's the point of war in the modern world? Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point? You could try to exploit the people/resources there, but the profits in that seem (at least compared to a world power) pretty thin. Unskilled labor and unimproved land are just not worth what they used to be. Specific resources mig…
>> Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point?
Natural resources are often one point.
Access to key geographies are another (e.g., sea access.)
Note: NOT justifying this, just recounting the past 20yrs.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. Why did the aggressor nations invade (since 2000): Afghanistan Anjouan Crimea Gambia Georgia Iraq Lebanon Somalia Syria
Crimea is Ukraine. Donetsk and Crimea were captured by Russia because Ukraine signed contract with Shell to develop natural gas field near Donetsk, and because dispute with Romania about natural field in Black Sea was ended, so Gasprom owners worried about competition at European market. Syria - to stop natural gas pipeline from Qatar’s north Field through Syria on to Turkey and to the EU. Gasprom owners are worried…
Funny how I always heard that Crimea & Syria were about people and terrorists, respectively, whereas Afghanistan and Iraq were about oil.
Maybe all of these were really about resources?
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#84At this point wars between powerful nations are almost impossible. Proxy wars are the current fashion, and those tend to be controlled in scale by the puppetmasters behind it. I'm more scared about a great civil war in a powerful nuclear nation. Civil wars are a savage affair where no rules apply.
War between developed nations was unthinkable 10 years ago, today it is very much thinkable. In Europe there is now an ongoing low intensity trench war already. Russians are mentally conditioned for total war by five years of nonstop propaganda, and their leader's idea of compromise is doubling down. NATO has switched back from the 00s cumbersome CONINS and relief mission training to combined arms war exercises.
If the political vectors of the last few years remain unchanged, a large war is very likely.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#85A modern "great war" would require countries of relatively equal military industrial power, so either it would be a great war without the US involved, i.e. China/India, Russia/China (with caveats), etc. In those situations the countries may temporarily forgo the use of nuclear weapons, at least until one side is pressed beyond the point of rational response. I'd also suggest the last time countries were so dominant i…
Are you really sure that the US is undisputed in those 4 categories? A list of obvious weaknesses: * The US economy and industrial power is dependent on IT and brittle supply chains. Nobody knows how much the cyber infrastructure holding this up is already compromised. * Russian S-400s can already deny air superiority to Israeli planes, which are not far behind US planes. * How does the US have space superiority when…
> * Barely half of US fighter planes are combat ready at any given moment. The trillion dollar F-35 had to be flown with VFR the first time it crossed the IDL. Who knows what else is lurking in that software?
I was not able to find any sources corroborating that story. Are you confusing it with the F-22?
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really sure that the US is undisputed in those 4 categories? A list of obvious weaknesses: * The US economy and industrial power is dependent on IT and brittle supply chains. Nobody knows how much the cyber infrastructure holding this up is already compromised. * Russian S-400s can already deny air superiority to Israeli planes, which are not far behind US planes. * How does the US have space superiority when…
You know what is absolutely undisputed though? America's love for guns. There are 120 guns in the US for every 100 people. American civilians own 393 million guns, both legally and otherwise, out of a worldwide total of 857 million firearms [1]. Good luck occupying that. Also, FWIW under every circumstance that isn't some kind of military invasion phantasy porn I generally look less positively on our relationship wit…
Yeah. Recently I realized that alien invasion/zombie outbreak movies couldn't possibly have different setting than United States, because no other country on Earth has enough firearms just lying around for survivors to mount an armed defense against the invaders.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#87We need to take a MUCH harder stance against Russia poisoning the public discourse with conspiracy theories, fake news and alternative medicine/science/history/morality. We have to restore values and trust to the public affairs.
To me, there is a better word for those things, and I don't understand why we do not use it. That word is: propaganda. Is there a good argument that fake news etc. Is not propaganda? To me calling it propaganda paints a clearer picture, because new words make it easy to claim that something is unprecedented. The problem is that if our own government falls victim to propaganda, then we have propagandistic narratives b…
The reach and effectiveness of Russia's propaganda is unprecedented. Also recent revelations make it clear that they were merely sowing dissent, rather than pushing any particular point of view. That's not new, but it's also not what comes to mind when one says "propaganda."
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#88We need to take a MUCH harder stance against Russia poisoning the public discourse with conspiracy theories, fake news and alternative medicine/science/history/morality. We have to restore values and trust to the public affairs.
Pretty sure no one can disagree with that, but HOW do you do it? Even harder, how do you do it and respect free speech?
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
>if they pull sufficiently ahead in China, which is a fair possibility, looking at the current state of the US and Europe Be careful with extrapolation. People said the same thing about the USSR, Japan, and the EU. Sure the US won't be as dominant as they are now forever, but extrapolating China's growth from a very poor developing country to their current level and assuming that means that they might make some kind…
I don't think it's going far enough. There are several hundreds variables completely separating China and the USSR and Japan from a blanket comparison. I would like to hope that they hit the breaks in the same way that Japan did, and there's certainly plenty of evidence that it's possible. However, if their model remains viable and they continue growing at the same rate, they'll certainly eclipse us in political and…
>and they continue growing at the same rate,
That's what I mean by the problem with extrapolation. There is absolutely no reason to think that they will continue growing at the same rate. The likely scenario based on all the historical evidence we have is that they won't.
Their GDP growth rate has been declining since 2010, there's no reason to assume that they'll be able to stop it. The most likely scenario is that it flattens out to a more reasonable rate.
Also this is the state reported GDP, which no one believes is accurate. And this is without taking into account China's demographic problems and potential hidden debt issues.
And even if China's economy does overtake the US, it took decades and a World War for the US to eclipse the rest of the world politically and militarily after it's economy became the largest.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#90I kind of agree, but for different reasons. Part of the reason WWI came out the way that it did is that both technology and social organization had changed so much since the last big war that nobody really knew what would happen or what to do with it all. And we find ourselves in that situation again with nuclear weapons, modern air power, drones, and cyber war.
I'm thinking that nuclear weapons will continue to preclude any large-scale direct war between the great powers. The downside is that cyber-war by both nation-states and small groups and individuals, along with civilian conflict amplified by modern social-media based divisions and filter bubbles have a lot of potential to spiral out of control, especially when further provoked by foreign interference. Particularly because nobody knows for sure how it will all work or what will happen when determined adversaries exploit all of these to the maximum potential.
It's also entirely possible we'll see some new thing as equivalently stupid, bloody, and pointless as tightly massed soldiers in brightly colored uniforms with no protection doing foot-charges against dug-in machine guns behind barbed wire and artillery.