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Henry Kissinger in the Wall Street Journal last week: > “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” he says. Could the U.S. manage the two adversaries by triangulating between them, as during the Nixon years? He offers no simple prescription. “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off…
I have a quite different (and most likely biased) opinion than most people (here or in Western countries). WWIII is already happening. The US is closing up on Russia now for more than a decade. China is growing economically but they are still far away militarily and except for Russia there isn't really another contender for the US militarily speaking. Before 2010 the world was quite multi-polar with the US being the…
> Before 2010 the world was quite multi-polar with the US being the leader. Now, we are moving to a uni-polar world Don't you mean the opposite? It was unipolar since the end of WW2, with US being the top superpower. Now other countries want, and can get, a piece of the pie. To be fair that means pretty much only China.
In fact, the US was not much at that time. It had power but little influence. Think of someone who is very rich $$ wise, but can't influence the politicians, police, or the mayor and has no connections whatsoever.
I doubt it simply because there's still a massive power imbalance between western and non-western countries. A war with China and Russia would obviously be awful for the human race, but there's almost no way China and Russia would win such a war, nor would it make sense to fight it. I mean what does the "winner" of WWIII gain? You might win the war, but now the planet is a nuclear waste land. I think China and Russia…
I doubt it simply because there's still a massive power imbalance between western and non-western countries. A war with China and Russia would obviously be awful for the human race, but there's almost no way China and Russia would win such a war, nor would it make sense to fight it. I mean what does the "winner" of WWIII gain? You might win the war, but now the planet is a nuclear waste land. I think China and Russia…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but there's almost no way China and Russia would win such a war For any sensible definitions of 'win', there's also no way the US can win against China, or even Russia. Both China and Russia are impossible to successfully invade and they both have nuclear weapons (same applies to the US). These 3 countries do not want to go to war against each others and they won't. As the WOPR once wisely concluded, the only winni…
When did the US 'flex their muscles' over Ukraine? There was absolutely zero talk of the US/NATO directly intervening militarily in Ukraine. As for Taiwan, it's an unknown and if you claim otherwise, you're doing it based on nothing. Biden has clearly and repeatedly stated that the US would defend Taiwan. Not saying the US actually wants to, maybe it's just a deterrent. However, if China does attack and the US backs…
And he was rebutted by the White House when it looked like he meant that the US would intervene militarily
No-one doubts that the US would help, e.g. by supplying intelligence, weapons, etc. as they do now. But they would not send troops and they would not engage (nice word to mean 'attack') the Chinese.
WW3 will not happen. Countries are not stupid to destroy the Earth. Local wars here and there happened and will happen in the future. There's nothing special about Ukraine or Taiwan in that regard. World will move from US-centric model to multi-polar model. One pole is China, one pole is Russia, one pole is EU, one pole is US, one pole is Iran. Confused about India but probably it'll be a separate pole as well. Proba…
First assumption is faulty. That a nuclear war would "destroy the earth". It would not destroy the planet nor render it significantly uninhabitable. Which leads you to poor conclusions. It does have significant consequences, will render some limited land area as radio active for a limited period of time (weeks to months). Survivors of the infrastructure destruction, chaos, and troop invasions will need to be careful…
And you are 100 percent sure that your assumption is correct? For if it is not, the potential cost of error for your hypothesis (total destruction) are infinitely higher than that of OP's (no nuclear war even though we could survive it). And that is independent of which assumption is more likely to be true. I wonder which conclusions are poor then.
What about nuclear winter?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but there's almost no way China and Russia would win such a war For any sensible definitions of 'win', there's also no way the US can win against China, or even Russia. Both China and Russia are impossible to successfully invade and they both have nuclear weapons (same applies to the US). These 3 countries do not want to go to war against each others and they won't. As the WOPR once wisely concluded, the only winni…
The problem with war is that you lose control of the situation extremely fast. Whether the countries want to go to war doesn’t matter when a bluff that isn’t a bluff is called.
WW3 will not happen. Countries are not stupid to destroy the Earth. Local wars here and there happened and will happen in the future. There's nothing special about Ukraine or Taiwan in that regard. World will move from US-centric model to multi-polar model. One pole is China, one pole is Russia, one pole is EU, one pole is US, one pole is Iran. Confused about India but probably it'll be a separate pole as well. Proba…
Except for the climate change.
> China preparing to invade Taiwan ... There is, as of now, no evidence China is preparing to invade anything. There's always sable rattling, hasn't happened yet. > Wars happen when two or nation's drive for self-preservation collide That's a naive view of war, which ignores individual a-holes. There's no self-preservation in Russia invading Ukraine... I understand it's easy to despair and fear seeing some of the thi…
Russia was massively clear during the pre-invasion buildup that it was about Ukrainian NATO aspirations. They offered to deescalate and remove troops from the boarder if US declared opposition to Ukrainian admission. They publicly stated they saw it as an existential threat and were willing to invade over it.