All agree that world war brings far more destruction than benefit. It is therefore irrational. Why would it happen nonetheless? One clue can be the mental flexibility of the leadership. Unfortunately, there is little reason for optimism here. China’s extreme lockdowns seem to have more to do with CCP prestige than epidemiology. Western policies regarding inflation, budgets, internal cohesion also indicate lack of ability. Russia also made grave miscalculation in its invasion.
So, all major leadership is sorely lacking. This was a significant factor in the breakout of the First World War.
Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
161–170 of 173 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#162Yes. For more about the actual plan - I recommend looking into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare - the Chinese plan to take over the world. The have recruited Russia in this effort (Russia doesn't mind getting their hands dirty - China likes to avoid physical wars, when possible see Sun Tzu - "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."). They plan to divide the spoils once the w…
And the Russian counterpart of that book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
My half Ukrainian wife says that the US is willing to fight the war in Ukraine until the last Ukrainian.
The fact that USA is doing anything for Ukraine is astounding all in itself. Russia is not even a remote threat to USA, besides nuclear weapons. Russia is a threat to Europe - Ukraine, Georgia, Baltics, Poland, Finland, Kazahstan. And still Germany and France would be happy to give up Ukraine whole to Russia if not for USA. Germany was happily making itself dependent on Russia and paying Russia to modernize their arm…
Yeah, completely agree. European countries are almost helpless without USA's weapons to defend them... they just thought they were too civilized to go to war again anytime soon, I guess, letting the USA bear the burden of actually investing in the military while they just did the bare minimum. But the situation between Russia and Germany is more complicated than that... Germany did not see Russia as the enemy as far as I see it even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The large dependencies on Russian gas/oil/coal/etc that Germany incurred make sense when you consider that... they had a weird kind of debt to Russia for helping remove the Nazis from power and were working under the assumption that the only way to keep a big neighbour from trying to destroy you is to keep friendly relations with them, which I find is the right approach even when sometimes that doesn't work too well. The alternative of always seeing the big neighbour as a threat and with utmost suspicion (I guess that's Poland the and the Baltic states approach, as well as most of Ukraine after the Orange Revolution) is bound to lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy as that's obviously going to lead to hostilities with enough time (just try that with your suburban neighbours).
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Being sure that nobody else would intervene directly in Ukraine is why the Russians could do on a nationwide scale what nobody thought they would do: bombing every building civilian homes, malls, schools and hospitals is unheard of, at least when done on purpose and on a such large scale. What i find disgusting is that we're slowly adapting to it, and the Russians know that. However, it is possible that if China inva…
> bombing every building civilian homes, malls, schools and hospitals is unheard of...
I have read that this exact strategy was used successfully and quite recently by Russia in most of its previous conflicts, most notably the complete destruction of Grozny in the 1990's[1], not to mention the bombings in WWII with were completely indiscriminate from both sides, so I think you're just uninformed, with all due respect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%9...
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
China isn't weak, but for now they still lack the airborne and amphibious lift capacity to invade Taiwan. This has nothing to do with patriotism, it's a simple matter of geography and weather. There are only a few months per year when sea conditions make an invasion possible, and only a few ports or beaches where an invasion force could potentially put ashore. Look at a map. Those points are relatively easy for a sma…
You don’t need to bomb Taiwan. A blockade of 1-2 years would be plenty. They don’t need to fire a single missile at the mainland.
A blockade is an act of war. If China instituted a blockade then Taiwan would certainly respond kinetically. The situation would escalate from there, and the US would eventually be drawn into the conflict.
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being sure that nobody else would intervene directly in Ukraine is why the Russians could do on a nationwide scale what nobody thought they would do: bombing every building civilian homes, malls, schools and hospitals is unheard of, at least when done on purpose and on a such large scale. What i find disgusting is that we're slowly adapting to it, and the Russians know that. However, it is possible that if China inva…
> bombing every building civilian homes, malls, schools and hospitals is unheard of... I have read that this exact strategy was used successfully and quite recently by Russia in most of its previous conflicts, most notably the complete destruction of Grozny in the 1990's[1], not to mention the bombings in WWII with were completely indiscriminate from both sides, so I think you're just uninformed, with all due respect…
I knew about the bombings of Dresden (Berlin, Hamburg etc.) in WWII and Grozny; what I meant was the extension of the bombings in Ukraine: the Russians bombed pretty much every city in the center, south and west regions, including lots of villages of no or little military importance.
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#1671) Russia is about to lose bigley to a backwater country called Ukraine. 2) China has a tin-pot military that has not really fought an external war since Korea. No.
China and Russia have deployed hypersonic missiles - America has not. Notice the investment from China in "Carrier Killers" https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/10/the-unusual-car... - both in boats and planes.
And if Russia could build half a million of them and another 2000 Mig-31s to fire them it might be a serious threat.
Russia can develop high tech weaponry, it just lacks the economy and industry to really build and field large amounts of it.
It should be firing thousand of cruise and ballistic missiles a day at Ukraine, instead you hear of a couple of missiles here and there.
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It would not destroy the planet nor render it significantly uninhabitable. 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 poo…
I've read a lot of the source material for nuclear winter. My conclusions are that it's very unrealistic. The assumptions it depends on are extremely slanted and have not been observed anywhere I can find. It's pretty baseless.
There is a lot of ignorance and emotion clouding reality and reason in this space.
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It would not destroy the planet nor render it significantly uninhabitable. 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 poo…
Additionally, the idea that we could kill everyone on earth or kill everyone x times over is based on the idea that we are rounding up people and putting them in perfect concentric circles based on optimum detonation height and having everyone in the kill circle.
I mean, yeah, we could do that with the gun ammunition and kill everyone too, but it's ultimately a meaningless number.
Nukes are very very expensive to build and maintain. They are very destructive. But there is a lot of emotional arguments tied up in this that makes rational discussion about what actually happens almost impossible.
Radiation is either hot and thus has a very short half life or is long and also not particularly dangerous. The only element that straddles this line is cobalt. Hot enough to be dangerous, long lived enough to seriously impede life returning. To date it isn't known if anyone really has cobalt bombs, Russia might if anyone does.
But that's the closest thing I've ever seen that's a potential long term mass area denial weapon.
Re: Ask HN: Is WWIII already in its early stages?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that USA is doing anything for Ukraine is astounding all in itself. Russia is not even a remote threat to USA, besides nuclear weapons. Russia is a threat to Europe - Ukraine, Georgia, Baltics, Poland, Finland, Kazahstan. And still Germany and France would be happy to give up Ukraine whole to Russia if not for USA. Germany was happily making itself dependent on Russia and paying Russia to modernize their arm…
Yeah, completely agree. European countries are almost helpless without USA's weapons to defend them... they just thought they were too civilized to go to war again anytime soon, I guess, letting the USA bear the burden of actually investing in the military while they just did the bare minimum. But the situation between Russia and Germany is more complicated than that... Germany did not see Russia as the enemy as far…
When a country is trying very hard to delete you from existence for hundreds of years it's very hard to not be suspicious of that country. Poland lost 20% of population in WWII started by Germany and Soviet Russia. Every fifth person dead.
You may also notice that Poland and Ukraine are on perfectly friendly terms with Germany. Because Germany came to terms with Nazism and Holocaust.
But Russia never gave up on their imperialism. It wasn't even until 2011 that Russia admitted that Stalin ordered Katyń Massacre despite clear and direct orders in Russian archives.
It's really hundreds of years of Russia trying to subjugate us. Russia partitioned Poland in 1795. We've been subject to forced russification. Despite many brutally crashed uprisings and revolutions we did not regain independence for 123 years. Then after WWI we got almost immediately plunged in war with Soviet Union due to unsettled borders and them wanting to spread communist revolution to the west. Then we got attacked by both Germans and Soviets in 1939. Last Russian soldiers left Poland in 1993.
Behavior of Russian soldiers did not change from WWII till this day. What my grandmother lived trough during WWII is happening now in Ukraine. Senseless killing of civilians and mass rapes of women and children. That's exactly what my grandmother remembers.
It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like telling a women beaten by a husband that she did not make enough attempt at appeasing him.
Even damn Pushkin "To the Slanderers of Russia" from 1831 describes Russian attitude today very well.
Why rave ye, babblers, so — ye lords of popular wonder?
Why such anathemas ‘gainst Russia do you thunder?
What moves your idle rage? Is’t Poland’s fallen pride?
‘T is but Slavonic kin among themselves contending,
An ancient household strife, oft judged but still unending,
A question which, be sure, you never can decide.
Which shall stand fast in such commotion
The haughty Liakh, or faithful Russ?
And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean? –
Or il’t dry up? This is point for us.
Leave us!: Your eyes are all unable
To read our history’s bloody table;
Ye’re bold of tongue — but hark, would ye in deed but try it
Or is the hero, now reclined in laurelled quiet,
Too weak to fix once more, Izmail’s red bayonet?
Or hath the Russian Tsar ever, in vain commanded?
Or must we meet all Europe banded?
Have we forgot to conquer yet?
Even what you read in poems like Reduta Ordona from 1832 after November Uprising could very well describe today. Just replace Polish references with Ukrainian:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-tribute-to-adam-mickiewic...
When Turks beyond the Balkans are threatened by your bronze,
When the Paris legation lick the feet of yours, -
Warsaw alone your power hurls abuse at,
Raises its hand on you and takes off the ‘hat',
The crown of Kazimierz, Chrobry Dynasty of your head,
Because you son of Wasil, have stolen it and with blood stained!
The tsar is surprised - the Petersburg men shiver in fear,
The tsar gets angry - out of fear die his courtiers;
But the armies pour, who's God and faith
The tsar is - angry tsar: we die, we'll amuse him.