>authoritarian revisionist powers such as China and Russia
"Revisionist" in what sense?
Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
201–210 of 400 posts
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#202How is it possible to write this article without mentioning MAD? The presence of nuclear self defense is what keeps nuclear armed nations from engaging in aggressive wars with other nuclear armed nations.
Consider what happens when effective ballistic missile defense is developed. This still leaves the threat of tactical nuclear weapons (artillery) and short range missiles from submarines. It will also spur the development of improved ballistic missile delivery systems. However, if technology brings MAD into question and causes a shift in thinking to acceptable risk/losses, we may find ourselves in a destructive situation very reminiscent of 100 years ago.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#203The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time. Will China's big sea grab start a war? So far, they've been able to smother any of their neighbor's push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them. What about when they invade Taiwan, which t…
You forgot to mention Israel's aggression on adjacent countries Lebanon and Palestine. Would Israel's constant belligerence start a war?
I'm not aware of Israel making it a matter of national policy to annihilate Iran or any other country. However, that is Iran's stated policy, and what they've said they'll do when they get nukes.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/04/21/Iranian-g...
Iran is training proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine to attack Israel. And that's what they're doing. They just launched a missile barrage, the largest ever, at Israel.
It seems that Israel is just defending its existence.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Israel (and, unlike GP, also Iran) are too small-time to start real global war. They're more the potential Bosnias or Serbias - small, belligerent countries that could drag their patrons into conflict.
Israel has "the bomb", they definitely could start a global war.
According to Colin Powell they have 200 of them.
More than enough to bring the Fallout series to life.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#205A 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…
A counterpoint would be examining each country's idea of "acceptable losses". If losing 1 major city to nuclear weapons is considered unacceptable, then the major nuclear power are essentially on equal footing. Nuclear deterrence seems to be so effective because no nation to date has seemed to be willing to trade 1 of their cities for 2+ of their enemies.
That's not how these systems work, at least in the US and Russia. "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" by Daniel Ellsberg (who was involved in war planning before he leaked the Pentagon Papers) has some fascinating and scary info about this.
Apparently there are backup systems in both countries that will fire nuclear weapons automatically (!) at predefined targets if certain cities are hit with nuclear attacks - e.g. Washington, Moscow, etc.
That's why deterrence is effective - because any strike can automatically lead to hundreds of millions of people dying (and, if the modelling of nuclear winter is correct, potentially pretty much all large mammals within a few years)...
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#206The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time. Will China's big sea grab start a war? So far, they've been able to smother any of their neighbor's push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them. What about when they invade Taiwan, which t…
I find it laughable that you completely disregarded USA as one of the other "aggressive, belligerent" countries out there...
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'd add that it need only be a solution to the person who can start the war. Authoritarian leaders find fights with external enemies extremely useful to quash dissent. Given the global drift toward authoritarianism and nationalism, and especially given how the world's largest military is in the hands of an authoritarian, I think the risk for war is disturbingly high.
Was Obama an authoritarian? What about Bush? What about Clinton (Bill)? The previous few presidents got the US involved in lots of stupid wars. This president has expressly said he doesn't want to do that and has avoided it.
> Was Obama an authoritarian? What about Bush? What about Clinton (Bill)?
> The previous few presidents got the US involved in lots of stupid wars. This president has expressly said he doesn't want to do that and has avoided it.
I'm not sure how you can find fault with Obama and Clinton but absolve Trump. What do you make of his continuation of the many wars we are involved in? Or his bombings in Syria?
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#208We are so close, probably within 50 to 100 years, of having technology far beyond what we can comprehend now. We have the chance to be multi-planetary, automate pretty much all work, and fullfil everyone's basic needs...if we don't destroy everything first. I'm going to be real pissed off if we screw this up.
We already have the means to automate pretty much all work and fulfill everyone's basic needs. We choose not to. As for multi planetary, why? Earth is paradise.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#209This article does appear to conclude many points on the premise of nationalism and it’s varied outcomes. Nationalism has only existed for not much more than 200 years which is not very long at all compared to all of human history. In the USA we are given this notion that these ideas are a solid foundation but I tend to think that America is very young and most national concepts are still very experimental. It will ta…
I can't read Greek or Latin so I don't have access to the primary sources, but it is my understanding that nationalism was a prevalent part of political life in antiquity, particularly from the death of Alexander through to the end of the Roman empire, and reemerged in Europe around the same time as absolutism.
In many ways, the United States, and to a larger extent the West, has significantly more in common with the late roman republic than it does with any point in it's own modern history.
Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 N…
Yeah, I'm not so sure about a food shortage. The midwest has a ton of grain stored away hoping for a good price someday.
South America and the rest of the world has taken note of our high yield practices and are crowding the market with their own grain. Granted, you wouldn't want to eat field corn, but then we are talking about tough times which could call for tough measures.
I'm more worried about dealing with the runoff, byproducts and foolish policies that might waste our foodstuff.