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What If World War III Has Already Started?

39 points by gamechangr 5y ago

bragr 5y ago
I mean arguably WWII started in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War (or even 1935 with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and took a few years to spin up into a global inferno. Alternatively you could possibly compare the current Russian invasion to the Winter War prior to Operation Barbarossa and the Continuation war. All of that's to say this could very well could very well be the prelude to wider hostilities, even if things simmer down in Ukraine in the short to medium term. I hope this isn't the case but we'd be fools to not consider the contingencies.
blamestross 5y ago
Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption. The only real surprise here is that Russia/Putin has decided to light some sparks on the kerosene laden mess to drive it hot. Nobody wants a hot war in an industrialized nation, our weapons and our defenses are too effective to "take" anywhere without destroying all the infrastructure that makes it valuable. Armed conflict in industrial nations will yield only pyrrhic victories.
- lolsal 5y ago
  > Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption. Can we avoid the "We have always been at war with Eurasia" style rhetoric? There have been explicit conflicts and wars over the years (US/Middle East, Israel/Palestine, etc) but we aren't at a constant state of global war or global Cold War.
  - blamestross 5y ago
    China too. Just because we haven't been shooting the entire time and because we are polite on the world stage doesn't change that those in power have made choices and policy with the understanding that we are in a cold war. I don't know what criteria you require to call it a "Cold War" or "War with Eurasia" or some other state of affairs, but it seems a reasonable description of reality to me.
    - zardo 5y ago
      The fact that one side of 'The Cold War' collapsed and no longer exists seems relevant.
      - blamestross 5y ago
        Putin clearly disagrees. Literally. All of this is based on the narrative that he and his government are successors to the legacy of the USSR and the "fall" was a mild inconvenience.
        zardo 5y ago
        He roots Russia's claim to Ukraine in the Russian Empire, not the USSR.
        wahern 5y ago
        There's very little distinction there. Stalin made the same claims: > An anecdote attributed to Molotov showed Stalin perusing a map of the Soviet Union saying: “Everything is all right to the north. Finland has offended us, so we moved the border to Leningrad. Baltic States ‑ that’s age-old Russian land! ‑ and they are ours again. All the Belorussians live together now, Ukrainians together, Moldovans together. It’s ok to the west.” https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/ https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/ The territorial claims have continued unabated. This is why Russia was so peeved (and remains peeved) about NATO intervention in Bosnia; why Russia supports the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria; why it props up the Belarusian dictatorship, and has tried to do the same in Ukraine, ultimately resorting to a full-scale invasion. There's continuity because there's alot of truth in Putin's claims regarding historical cultural affinity. The problem is, it's not the whole truth, and becomes less so every day, only accelerating since the breakup of the USSR.
- specialist 5y ago
  Yes and: Moving from bipolar to unipolar, Cold War morphed into Forever War. Multipolar will be the likely next arrangement. I can't even guess how warfare will adapt. Free for all? Move from meatspace into cyberspace? First to weaponize space wins? All of the above? Who knows.
durnygbur 5y ago
Everything until months before pandemic had been tremendously saturated and overpriced. Many relationships turned down by pandemic have no interest to reinitiate now. We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war?
- nebula8804 5y ago
  >We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war? What areas would these happen in? In my life I have tried to purge all this fat but it won't go away. :)
armitron 5y ago
> People in these countries are scared of World War III. I understand the fear—but don’t you understand that World War III may have already arrived? WW3 hasn't arrived and won't arrive unless colossally stupid decisions are made, decisions that this superficial opinion piece tries to advocate for?! > Ukraine’s Defense Secretary Olexiy Danilov has said it might be Lithuania, a NATO member. Will NATO act only after Lithuania is invaded? Ukraine's defense secretary can say whatever he wants. There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member. I feel very bad for the people of Ukraine, but these appeal-to-emotions zero-substance-full-of-idiocy opinion pieces make me double down in my isolationist attitude. Having NATO confront Russia over Ukraine is a line that simply can not be crossed.
- labrador 5y ago
  - kwinten 5y ago
    Besides being a dumb ass comment that fails to address any of the points raised, why would you think that people who have a fondness for the Soviet Union would be fond of Russia, an imperialist capitalist oligarchy that has completely shed itself of all associations with socialist values?
    - labrador 5y ago
      Because I'm not in the mood for someone to call a cry for help from a victim in Ukraine "superficial" and blanket statements that Russia means no harm ("There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member") and then saying we should just stick our head in the sand ("isolationist attitude") when clearly Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union and has rejected capitalism in his own country, leaving socialism as the most likely choice. Everything old is new again.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago
Craighead 5y ago
2342dfagfg 5y ago
Actually, most if not all the support for Ukraine looks awful a lot like they are trying to gain time to build up back some military strenght into EU. I suspect if you start to peek behind the curtain, you'll find Reforger alike - or even the step-by-step actual Reforger - actions ongoing right now. At full speed. Some other red flags would be the quick replacement of key - rather old, unfit for combat duty - officers across NATO forces, fleets of planes constantly being flown out of usual airbases (to prevent massive loses in a surprise attack), big bases in NATO countries emptied of troops (deploying troops in a very wide geographically distributed fashion, to protect them from being mass destroyed - soldiers + hardware - in a surprise attack), many trains and planes traveling / flying with closed windows at very unsual times, to fastly move troops across Europe to be ready for the probably coming war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger
2342dfagfg 5y ago
Think about a hypothetical strategy to use ground forces - fully avoiding to escalate to a nuclear war - to actually assault baltic NATO countries. You just can't deploy massive russian forces to the NATO's frontier without triggering countermeasures. But, if you massively deploy troops into Ukraine, simulating it is the target, then you start to pump troops, hardware, infrastructure for the actual invasion, NATO has to operate necessarily under the premise Russia isn't there to attack NATO, then it cannot massively deploy reinforcements to baltic members. They are by any military measure - except nuclear deterrence - undefendant. Russian generals just have to sustain the maskirovka enough time to build up a sufficiently capable strike force to attack, basically a replay of the first movement against Ukraine. Then they could be in position to attack Poland, unbalancing NATO, triggering a defensive position in this country, then russians could invade the baltic states ("recovering" the whole old Eastern Europe of URSS age), Then they could just abandon Poland, fastly signing an armistice but retaining the baltic states. Europe as a whole probably will just sign the accords, in order to prevent a full nuclear escalation. Game over. NATO has lost.
- muzika 5y ago
  It’s scary that this is quite a possibility at this point.
- zaphirplane 5y ago
  A military with that logistics, capabilities and equipment would have wrapped up the invasion by now.
- ladyattis 5y ago
  Nope, this isn't in the cards. Russia has effectively mustered all they want to spend on war into Ukraine. To redeploy or muster more soldiers would take a year and likely that would be detected by intelligence operatives. Hell, just watching from space you would see the training camps. It's not like you can hide them in the equivalent of a Planet Fitness or big box store for an entire year to train and outfit them. And that's just infantry. You'd likely need trucks and the Russia armed forces are focused on trains which as we've seen with Ukraine is their biggest weakness. Just blow up the switches and fall back to more defensible positions and let the Russians wear themselves out.
simonblack 5y ago
Oh, it has, it has. And, the West is not going to win this one. The country most like the US of 1942 in today's world is China. The US of today is pretty much most like the Britain of 1940: a has-been empire on its last legs. When a country's 'time in the sun' is over, it's best for them to walk away quietly, like the British did.
- Matthewiiv 5y ago
  After fighting for years for the safety of Europe against and imperialist dictator.
lifeplusplus 5y ago
WW1 7/28/1914 WW2 9/1/1939 Ukraine invasion 2/24/2022 7+28+19+14=68 9+1+19+39=68 2+24+20+22=68

39 points by gamechangr 5y ago

I mean arguably WWII started in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War (or even 1935 with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and took a few years to spin up into a global inferno. Alternatively you could possibly compare the current Russian invasion to the Winter War prior to Operation Barbarossa and the Continuation war. All of that's to say this could very well could very well be the prelude to wider hostilities, even if things simmer down in Ukraine in the short to medium term. I hope this isn't the case but we'd be fools to not consider the contingencies.

blamestross 5y ago

Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption. The only real surprise here is that Russia/Putin has decided to light some sparks on the kerosene laden mess to drive it hot. Nobody wants a hot war in an industrialized nation, our weapons and our defenses are too effective to "take" anywhere without destroying all the infrastructure that makes it valuable. Armed conflict in industrial nations will yield only pyrrhic victories.

lolsal 5y ago
> Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption. Can we avoid the "We have always been at war with Eurasia" style rhetoric? There have been explicit conflicts and wars over the years (US/Middle East, Israel/Palestine, etc) but we aren't at a constant state of global war or global Cold War.
- blamestross 5y ago
  China too. Just because we haven't been shooting the entire time and because we are polite on the world stage doesn't change that those in power have made choices and policy with the understanding that we are in a cold war. I don't know what criteria you require to call it a "Cold War" or "War with Eurasia" or some other state of affairs, but it seems a reasonable description of reality to me.
  - zardo 5y ago
    The fact that one side of 'The Cold War' collapsed and no longer exists seems relevant.
    - blamestross 5y ago
      Putin clearly disagrees. Literally. All of this is based on the narrative that he and his government are successors to the legacy of the USSR and the "fall" was a mild inconvenience.
      - zardo 5y ago
        He roots Russia's claim to Ukraine in the Russian Empire, not the USSR.
        wahern 5y ago
        There's very little distinction there. Stalin made the same claims: > An anecdote attributed to Molotov showed Stalin perusing a map of the Soviet Union saying: “Everything is all right to the north. Finland has offended us, so we moved the border to Leningrad. Baltic States ‑ that’s age-old Russian land! ‑ and they are ours again. All the Belorussians live together now, Ukrainians together, Moldovans together. It’s ok to the west.” https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/ https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/ The territorial claims have continued unabated. This is why Russia was so peeved (and remains peeved) about NATO intervention in Bosnia; why Russia supports the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria; why it props up the Belarusian dictatorship, and has tried to do the same in Ukraine, ultimately resorting to a full-scale invasion. There's continuity because there's alot of truth in Putin's claims regarding historical cultural affinity. The problem is, it's not the whole truth, and becomes less so every day, only accelerating since the breakup of the USSR.
specialist 5y ago
Yes and: Moving from bipolar to unipolar, Cold War morphed into Forever War. Multipolar will be the likely next arrangement. I can't even guess how warfare will adapt. Free for all? Move from meatspace into cyberspace? First to weaponize space wins? All of the above? Who knows.

durnygbur 5y ago

Everything until months before pandemic had been tremendously saturated and overpriced. Many relationships turned down by pandemic have no interest to reinitiate now. We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war?

nebula8804 5y ago
>We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war? What areas would these happen in? In my life I have tried to purge all this fat but it won't go away. :)

armitron 5y ago

> People in these countries are scared of World War III. I understand the fear—but don’t you understand that World War III may have already arrived? WW3 hasn't arrived and won't arrive unless colossally stupid decisions are made, decisions that this superficial opinion piece tries to advocate for?! > Ukraine’s Defense Secretary Olexiy Danilov has said it might be Lithuania, a NATO member. Will NATO act only after Lithuania is invaded? Ukraine's defense secretary can say whatever he wants. There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member. I feel very bad for the people of Ukraine, but these appeal-to-emotions zero-substance-full-of-idiocy opinion pieces make me double down in my isolationist attitude. Having NATO confront Russia over Ukraine is a line that simply can not be crossed.

labrador 5y ago
- kwinten 5y ago
  Besides being a dumb ass comment that fails to address any of the points raised, why would you think that people who have a fondness for the Soviet Union would be fond of Russia, an imperialist capitalist oligarchy that has completely shed itself of all associations with socialist values?
  - labrador 5y ago
    Because I'm not in the mood for someone to call a cry for help from a victim in Ukraine "superficial" and blanket statements that Russia means no harm ("There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member") and then saying we should just stick our head in the sand ("isolationist attitude") when clearly Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union and has rejected capitalism in his own country, leaving socialism as the most likely choice. Everything old is new again.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
5y ago

Craighead 5y ago

2342dfagfg 5y ago

Actually, most if not all the support for Ukraine looks awful a lot like they are trying to gain time to build up back some military strenght into EU. I suspect if you start to peek behind the curtain, you'll find Reforger alike - or even the step-by-step actual Reforger - actions ongoing right now. At full speed. Some other red flags would be the quick replacement of key - rather old, unfit for combat duty - officers across NATO forces, fleets of planes constantly being flown out of usual airbases (to prevent massive loses in a surprise attack), big bases in NATO countries emptied of troops (deploying troops in a very wide geographically distributed fashion, to protect them from being mass destroyed - soldiers + hardware - in a surprise attack), many trains and planes traveling / flying with closed windows at very unsual times, to fastly move troops across Europe to be ready for the probably coming war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger

2342dfagfg 5y ago

Think about a hypothetical strategy to use ground forces - fully avoiding to escalate to a nuclear war - to actually assault baltic NATO countries. You just can't deploy massive russian forces to the NATO's frontier without triggering countermeasures. But, if you massively deploy troops into Ukraine, simulating it is the target, then you start to pump troops, hardware, infrastructure for the actual invasion, NATO has to operate necessarily under the premise Russia isn't there to attack NATO, then it cannot massively deploy reinforcements to baltic members. They are by any military measure - except nuclear deterrence - undefendant. Russian generals just have to sustain the maskirovka enough time to build up a sufficiently capable strike force to attack, basically a replay of the first movement against Ukraine. Then they could be in position to attack Poland, unbalancing NATO, triggering a defensive position in this country, then russians could invade the baltic states ("recovering" the whole old Eastern Europe of URSS age), Then they could just abandon Poland, fastly signing an armistice but retaining the baltic states. Europe as a whole probably will just sign the accords, in order to prevent a full nuclear escalation. Game over. NATO has lost.

muzika 5y ago
It’s scary that this is quite a possibility at this point.
zaphirplane 5y ago
A military with that logistics, capabilities and equipment would have wrapped up the invasion by now.
ladyattis 5y ago
Nope, this isn't in the cards. Russia has effectively mustered all they want to spend on war into Ukraine. To redeploy or muster more soldiers would take a year and likely that would be detected by intelligence operatives. Hell, just watching from space you would see the training camps. It's not like you can hide them in the equivalent of a Planet Fitness or big box store for an entire year to train and outfit them. And that's just infantry. You'd likely need trucks and the Russia armed forces are focused on trains which as we've seen with Ukraine is their biggest weakness. Just blow up the switches and fall back to more defensible positions and let the Russians wear themselves out.

simonblack 5y ago

Oh, it has, it has. And, the West is not going to win this one. The country most like the US of 1942 in today's world is China. The US of today is pretty much most like the Britain of 1940: a has-been empire on its last legs. When a country's 'time in the sun' is over, it's best for them to walk away quietly, like the British did.

Matthewiiv 5y ago
After fighting for years for the safety of Europe against and imperialist dictator.

lifeplusplus 5y ago

WW1 7/28/1914 WW2 9/1/1939 Ukraine invasion 2/24/2022 7+28+19+14=68 9+1+19+39=68 2+24+20+22=68