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Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

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Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#91

Post by hevi_jos »

jeffdavis wrote: post #29

What'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…

>What's the point of war in the modern world?

Let's see:

Why the US, with the support of Europe supported the coup against the democratically elected government in Ukraine?

- Because they could. Because that way they could force Sevastopol out of Russia's hand and remove the Rusia's access to the only not frozen port of Russia. They could also control the Black sea and the gas and oil it has, and more than this, control all the pipelines that connect or will connect in the future Asia and Europe.

Why they invaded Syrian territory? Something very similar. Access and control of oil and gas reserves in the Mediterranean sea or pipelines from places like Saudi Arabia. Removing Russia army from Mediterraneans ports.

Why the US invaded Afganistan? Control of natural resources. Cutting the access of Rusia-China to the Indic Ocean(Russia invaded Afganistan first so it was very important for them). Pipelines.

Why the US invaded Iraq? Because 20 people living 1000Kms away committed a terrorist attack in the US? not really, this was just an excuse they gave, the reason was controlling oil.

So it is very clear at this point that in 2018 war continues being one of the most important activities for the powers that be, specially the US.

Without war for example, the US dollar will not be what it is, as Europeans or Chinese or Japanese need dollars to buy energy, as the producers only trade in dollars(or they get invaded by the US). In the case of Saudi Arabia, they use dollars because the US gobertment supports the dictatorship that holds a minority in charge. Without US support, the system could collapse fast.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#92

Post by antocv »

dandare wrote: post #60

We 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.

God damn Ruskies are up at it again, poisoning our public discourse and our precious bodily... wait.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#93

Post by kiliancs »

thereare5lights wrote: post #72

Nationalism. This has been rising up like a plague in recent years and it isn't going away any time soon. When ego and emotion come into play, the question of what is the point because a matter of pride and the point is just to win regardless of the costs.

Not only nationalism. Current conflicts are rooted in the same prejudices as a hundred years ago. The root cause (this idea that somehow my nation/religion/race/etc is superior) hasn't been resolved, only more or less patched, and thus these conflicts are bound to reappear and escalate sooner or later until we recognize that that despite the valuable diversity humanity is essentially one and align the political and economic structures of this world with this reality.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#94

Post by v_lisivka »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #83
v_lisivka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When a mosquito will bite you into nose, you will crush it with power enough to crush all mosquitoes in the house and more. How many resources you can extract from mosquitoes?

Stop repeat the Russian propaganda. USA now is the largest oil producer in the world, so give me reason.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#95

Post by tboyd47 »

Our world looks similar to 1914 in a lot of ways, but it looks different in a lot of ways too.

1) Mutually assured destruction.

2) No major empires dissolving.

3) Global news keeps everyone on the same page as crises unfold.

4) World powers separated by vast seas, neutral countries, and demilitarized zones.

5) The UN exists (not always effective, but at least it's there).

6) Less chauvinism. Kaiser Wilhelm II makes Trump look diplomatic and cordial in comparison.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#96

Post by dandare »

peterlk wrote: post #76
dandare wrote: post #60

We 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…

Propaganda may be the end goal but the global mind poisoning operation includes all kind of BS - from alternative medicine & anti-vax, the flat earth theory and chemtrails, to white supremacism and religious bigotry - all used to spread doubts, alienation and confusion.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#97

Post by Erik816 »

mirekrusin wrote: post #63
turc1656 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a possibility but that's provided everything else holding up the system(s) actually holds up. The minute supermarkets stop having enough food on their shelves is the minute panic sets in. After that it's not long before any nation runs the risk of turning into Venezuela and people are killing their neighbor's dog for food. I don't think you're giving enough weight to the grim reality of human nature. T…

Also it feels like food supply is much more fragile now (more dependent), almost 8 bln people now compared to ~1.5 bln 100 years ago, if this collapses, it'll collapse big time.

Just being bigger doesn't make it more fragile. Yes we have more people to feed, but there's a lot more people who can grow food now (and of course we have leveraged technology to an incredible degree to reduce the number of people and amount of land needed to produce that food). The food supply could be more fragile, but you would need a lot more data to convince me. I think it is actually far more stable. Look up Norman Borlaug for an example of the kind of improvements we've made within the last 100 years.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#98

Post by ridewinter »

jpollock wrote: post #46
jeffdavis wrote: post #29

What'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…

I don't know. Why did the aggressor nations invade (since 2000): Afghanistan Anjouan Crimea Gambia Georgia Iraq Lebanon Somalia Syria

Where is North Korea not on this list? Right...they have nuclear weapons. The surefire way of preventing invasion & war. That's why the Great War isn't going to happen again. If WWIII does happen it's game over folks.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#99

Post by umvi »

stareatgoats wrote: post #28

> This is why the U.S. chose to stay so deeply engaged in the affairs of Europe Aside from this rather endearing naivete, the gist of the article is fine: we need to fear another 'Great War'. Modern warfare grants (perceived) first-strike capability to almost any state, rendering the power of MAD and military alliances close to negligible. We live in the 21st century now, things are different than before, and highly…

> rendering the power of MAD and military alliances close to negligible

Are you implying you can destroy the enemy's nuclear arsenal in your first strike? If so, you don't understand MAD. Any submarine arsenal will be nearly impossible to destroy. If you first strike North Dakota (for example) to destroy all the missile silos, subs will simply eradicate your country.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#100

Post by soylentcola »

lozaning wrote: post #78
us-throw1 wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

My (admittedly uninformed and probably based on too many movies/novels) expectations would be less about traditional occupation and more about neutralization.

I can't imagine the "Red Dawn" scenario of Russian troops invading and occupying US territory. If anything, the goal would be to knock out critical communication/shipping infrastructure to effectively disrupt all normal activity--can't buy or sell, can't get food, can't depend on modern mass communication to organize and maintain order.

Alongside that, the use of modern weapons to do serious damage to centers of power would speed up collapse. That's the goal if your intention is to hit us at our weakest point: catastrophic societal collapse.

If it's our military against some other military, we've got odds as good as anyone else (and almost always better). But if you've knocked out electronic commerce, disrupted civilian use of things like cell networks and internet access, and made it hard enough to get food on supermarket shelves, all those armed people aren't gonna just keep calm and carry on while they're hungry and several cities are burning.

Sure, it's probably a bit too "straight-to-Netflix" but it's much easier for me to imagine someone applying force at the points we're weakest and letting things fall apart than facing off plane vs. plane, ship vs. ship, and tank vs. tank on the battlefield.

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