Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?

This take is based on alternative realities.

The western conspiracy over Russia is the Russian narrative and doesn't make any sense whatsoever because if you look closely won't be able to explain why Europe opted to depend on energy from Russia when conspiring to start a conflict with Russia. In reality, the west was simply naive to believe that what worked for EU would work with Russia too and that is the peace model through inter-dependence. Why would you start a conflict with your neighbours when you depend on their wellbeing? It turns out, when the neighbours leaders don't stay in power by providing prosperity for its people the model doesn't work.

For the West, Russia is relevant as a petrol station. Russia has turned into a petrostate and unlike Norway they chose to live off it and not do much more. Russia is no contender to the west in any form. Some might blame this too on the west but it's not west that has chosen Putin.

The EU is only weak in the Energy department(that's why they actually wanted this Russia thing to work). EU has a well educated and healthy society that is going through demographics crisis, which means there will be problems related to it but it's in much much better shape than China or any other place in the world with exception to the USA.

EU/Schengen etc might end at its current form but this is not a video game and those who fail don't simply disappear. Whatever replaces EU will be like EU in different configuration because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to have 30 smallish countries trying to do their thing without cooperating. EU might fail and become an EU sans social security and human rights.

China, on the other hand, isn't going away and will be the primary contenders to the west because during the de-industrialisation of the west they build up huge production capacity and know how on industrial production and technology and west almost completely lost it. The main problem with China is that now they are actually very close to the west to catch up on science, technology and culture and design too which would mean complete Chinese dominence. Their primary disadvantage is that they have very serious demographics issues and they are poor on energy like EU.

There's room for debate, but several High ranking members of the German military thought it was suicidal and actively tried to get the UK and other's to nip it in the bud before it got out of hand. And note, these weren't "good guys" trying to save the world or anything, they were just slightly less reckless bad people in most cases.

> The high-ranking German military leaders believed that if Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia or any other country, Britain would declare war on Germany.[52] MI6 was of the same opinion. The British declaration of war would have given the General Staff, it thought, both the pretext and the support for an overthrow of Hitler, which many of them were planning because of the prevailing "anti-war sentiment of the German people".[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris

Yes of course. And why not? As long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight then it makes total sense to support them. It doesn't cost very much relative to our defense budget. The losses Russia is suffering will take them many years to rebuild, and will temporarily eliminate them as a conventional threat to our allies in the region. We get to see whether our weapons actually work or need improvements. And we are partially rebuilding our reputation as a reliable international partner after the debacle in Afghanistan.

If the Ukrainians don't want to fight the war then they can surrender at any time.

That's an open question, and the reality is that you have no clue what will really happen. Most likely the US would intervene militarily at some level with sea and air attacks, perhaps a blockade.

Some level of hubris everybody has.

Go read any thread here about Russia-Ukraine, almost unanimously most comments read like Russia is destined to lose, no matter what they do. You will also read how China is absolutely a weak military power and will lose in case of a Taiwan invasion.

Patriotism like many other emotional attachments can make you blind to your biases. The common theme among most US citizens in this very forum is American exceptionalism - That is - USA will win no matter how many wrong moves it makes, its opponents will lose no matter how many right moves they make.

Its not hard to imagine Germany with its universities, industries, scientists, engineering prowess etc- To have similar illusions of grandeur.