6 ms·

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 awfu

by kypro 4y ago

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 are likely to continue to make moves that economically hurt the West or amplify social divisions here, but I don't see WWIII-type conflict happening personally. The Taiwan situation is interesting but ultimately China knows they won't be able to take Taiwan by force without extreme consequences - nor would it be easy. China's economy depends on being able to export to the West where as the West could, if needed, find other trading partners. For that reason I think there are limits in how far China will be willing to go with Taiwan. Even if it didn't escalate into direct conflict with the West it would still be economically devastating for China. Maintaining the status-quo is in everyone's best interest. Then again geopolitical events are nearly impossible to predict. At the end of the day it's just a handful of people who get to decide these things and people can be irrational, emotional and have complex motivations. WWIII will probably happen at some point, I just doubt the probability of it happening soon is as high as some people think.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
> 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 winning move is not to play. So every time the US 'flex their muscles' over Ukraine or Taiwan we pretty much know that this is rhetorics and that they won't actually intervene directly. Edit: I'm bowing in shame and have corrected WOPR (not Whopper). Thanks @jgrahamc.
- simmerup 4y ago
  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.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    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 invades Taiwan, that event could trigger also an intervention against Russia, at least if one takes for granted that in a direct US vs China conflict, they would quickly escalate to nuclear and Russia would be sucked in as well.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      The firebombing of Dresden was done on purpose.
    - brabel 4y ago
      > 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%931995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%9...
      - squarefoot 4y ago
        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.
- api 4y ago
  So instead we see endless proxy wars where these three powers use other countries as battlegrounds killing other people.
  - brabel 4y ago
    My half Ukrainian wife says that the US is willing to fight the war in Ukraine until the last Ukrainian.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      And Russia is willing to fight it to the last Dagestani, Ossetian etc.
    - Isinlor 4y ago
      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 army. Germany was even bypassing their own sanctions after 2014 to deliver weapons components to Russia that are now being found in wrecks in Ukraine. All while Germany is deeply relaying on USA for defense from Russia. It's crazy that USA was so chill about it until Trump. As a Pole born and raised 40km from Kaliningrad oblast it's really weird that I trust USA more than I do Germany, France, Italy etc.
      - brabel 4y ago
        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).
- jgrahamc 4y ago
  I can’t leave “Whopper” uncorrected. It’s WOPR and stands for War Operation Plan Response.
- rocgf 4y ago
  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 off, that would mean the end of American supremacy regardless.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    >There was absolutely zero talk of the US/NATO directly intervening militarily in Ukraine. NPR hosted the former commander of NATO who called for the US to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, to include shooting down Russian jets. Numerous Senators and Congressmen backed one as well. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084310587/former-nato-commander-says-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-must-be-on-the-table https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084310587/former-nato-comman...
    - porbelm 4y ago
      Yeah but the U.S. didn't do that, did they?
      - deepdriver 4y ago
        The assertion was "zero talk" of such intervention, my point is that there quite a lot of public and private discussion on the matter. Yes, Biden ultimately shot down the idea (thankfully). Unsettling to me that it picked up enough steam where he felt he had to make a statement on it.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    > Biden has clearly and repeatedly stated that the US would defend Taiwan 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.
netsharc 4y ago
> the West could, if needed, find other trading partners Caveat: I'm not an expert, but I think this is too simplistic. If both sides completely divorced from each other, Western factories would probably struggle to manufacture a lot of things, because they rely on components from China, components you and I have probably never considered necessary. E.g: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-to-further-strain-us-chip-supply.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-...
- akmarinov 4y ago
  It’ll be very very very painful, Great Depression and beyond levels of pain, but doable. If it starts today, in 10-15 years the western world can be back to its current level.
  - t-3 4y ago
    Without globalization and huge trade volumes, the west would be far less influential in the world. I'm no fan of US imperialism, but abandoning the plan at this point seems foolish. The western public isn't in favor of the more overt military dominance that would be necessary to maintain supremacy while cutting out foreign manufacturing dependence.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    If it started today you might be right the people that knew how to build things could unretire and save us but 10-15 years from now they will be dead and the knowledge will be lost
- mathgeek 4y ago
  There's no doubt that our current Western way of life would be hard or impossible to recreate without the goods and services provided outside of the West, but there's certainly a smaller experiment in the same vein going on since 2020. The amount of national security threats alone caused by not being able to reliably ship goods internationally has created an interesting drama to watch unfold.
qwerty456127 4y ago
> The Taiwan situation is interesting but ultimately China knows they won't be able to take Taiwan by force without extreme consequences - nor would it be easy. Is there a reason to be sure they are this rational? Some people just get mad and kill others just for sake of "honour" as their weird philosophy defines it, no matter the consequences.
- rocgf 4y ago
  Indeed, I feel many are betting on rationality coming on top and that simply makes no sense to me. For example, does it seem like the Russian public is rational in any way? There are many approving of the 'denazification' rhetoric in Ukraine. Since the CCP has been pushing the narrative that Taiwan is China, it's somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - qwerty456127 4y ago
    Meanwhile, believing what do politicians say is among the most absurdly irrational acts possible. It is a well known fact lying and manipulating is their everyday job. Historically this has been especially intense and well known in Russia. To me it seems really weird and fascinating there still are people trusting politicians in Russia.
arethuza 4y ago
Regarding defining the "winner" of a global war, I can't help thinking of the quote from General Thomas Power, head of US SAC in the late 1950s and early 1960s: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power
rich_sasha 4y ago
I would like that to be true. Did Germany stand a chance to win WWII? Probably not, or at best a slim chance; it made huge, surprising victories against most of continental Europe, but it just picked on too many opponents. By the time the US was in, it was (slow and deadly) game over. They believed their own BS and went ahead with it regardless. I guess the risk here is that Russia or China could also believe their own BS and do something stupid regardless. Russia clearly did in Ukraine. As far as I can tell, WWI started kind of because everyone wanted a war. All the belligerents were convinced this is their moment to shine, 3 months and it will be all over, with [shiny new territory]. Alas it was not to be so.
- arethuza 4y ago
  Indeed, I think people tend to forget that Germany declared war on the US - which I have seen described (in a fantastic bit of understatement) as "most puzzling": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...
  - 300bps 4y ago
    Thank you for the interesting link! It seems to hold the key to why Germany declared war against the U.S. - essentially it was a condition of Japan’s first strike against the U.S.: On 28 November 1941, Ribbentrop confirmed to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, what Hitler himself had told Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka: that if Japan got involved in a war with the US, Germany would enter the war on Japan's side. When the Japanese asked for written confirmation of this, Hitler provided it, along with Mussolini's consent.
    - setr 4y ago
      Further down clarifies that the agreement only triggered for defense, not offense > According to the terms of their agreements, Germany was obliged to come to the aid of Japan if a third country attacked Japan, but not if Japan attacked a third country. Ribbentrop reminded Hitler of this, and pointed out that to declare war against the US would add to the number of enemies Germany was fighting, but Hitler dismissed this concern as not being important,[3] and, almost entirely without consultation, chose to declare war against the US, wanting to do so before, he thought, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt would declare war on Germany.
athrowaway3z 4y ago
> China's economy depends on being able to export to the West China's import is far more important for now. It imports vast amounts of food and fuel by boat. It would be trivial to stop those.
timeon 4y ago
Sometimes one thing leads to another. WWIII-type conflict could be started by states that are not superpowers.
xkcd1963 4y ago
"At the end of the day it's just a handful of people who get to decide these things" I disagree, there are far more factors playing at hand. A government is made of many people. Or as example, general A decided to attack, but the army couldn't progress due to bad weather. He did his decision but it didn't matter.
nradov 4y ago
China is unlikely to directly invade Taiwan in the next few years because they know they lack the airborne and amphibious lift capacity to make it stick. The greater risk is some sort of minor incident or miscalculation which then escalates out of control. They might try to land forces on one of the small outlying islands claimed by Taiwan. Or there could be an accidental collision at sea involving significant loss of life.

by kypro 4y ago

mytailorisrich 4y ago

> 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 winning move is not to play. So every time the US 'flex their muscles' over Ukraine or Taiwan we pretty much know that this is rhetorics and that they won't actually intervene directly. Edit: I'm bowing in shame and have corrected WOPR (not Whopper). Thanks @jgrahamc.

simmerup 4y ago
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.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  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 invades Taiwan, that event could trigger also an intervention against Russia, at least if one takes for granted that in a direct US vs China conflict, they would quickly escalate to nuclear and Russia would be sucked in as well.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    The firebombing of Dresden was done on purpose.
  - brabel 4y ago
    > 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%931995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%9...
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      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.
api 4y ago
So instead we see endless proxy wars where these three powers use other countries as battlegrounds killing other people.
- brabel 4y ago
  My half Ukrainian wife says that the US is willing to fight the war in Ukraine until the last Ukrainian.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    And Russia is willing to fight it to the last Dagestani, Ossetian etc.
  - Isinlor 4y ago
    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 army. Germany was even bypassing their own sanctions after 2014 to deliver weapons components to Russia that are now being found in wrecks in Ukraine. All while Germany is deeply relaying on USA for defense from Russia. It's crazy that USA was so chill about it until Trump. As a Pole born and raised 40km from Kaliningrad oblast it's really weird that I trust USA more than I do Germany, France, Italy etc.
    - brabel 4y ago
      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).
jgrahamc 4y ago
I can’t leave “Whopper” uncorrected. It’s WOPR and stands for War Operation Plan Response.
rocgf 4y ago
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 off, that would mean the end of American supremacy regardless.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  >There was absolutely zero talk of the US/NATO directly intervening militarily in Ukraine. NPR hosted the former commander of NATO who called for the US to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, to include shooting down Russian jets. Numerous Senators and Congressmen backed one as well. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084310587/former-nato-commander-says-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-must-be-on-the-table https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084310587/former-nato-comman...
  - porbelm 4y ago
    Yeah but the U.S. didn't do that, did they?
    - deepdriver 4y ago
      The assertion was "zero talk" of such intervention, my point is that there quite a lot of public and private discussion on the matter. Yes, Biden ultimately shot down the idea (thankfully). Unsettling to me that it picked up enough steam where he felt he had to make a statement on it.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  > Biden has clearly and repeatedly stated that the US would defend Taiwan 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.

netsharc 4y ago

> the West could, if needed, find other trading partners Caveat: I'm not an expert, but I think this is too simplistic. If both sides completely divorced from each other, Western factories would probably struggle to manufacture a lot of things, because they rely on components from China, components you and I have probably never considered necessary. E.g: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-to-further-strain-us-chip-supply.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-...

akmarinov 4y ago
It’ll be very very very painful, Great Depression and beyond levels of pain, but doable. If it starts today, in 10-15 years the western world can be back to its current level.
- t-3 4y ago
  Without globalization and huge trade volumes, the west would be far less influential in the world. I'm no fan of US imperialism, but abandoning the plan at this point seems foolish. The western public isn't in favor of the more overt military dominance that would be necessary to maintain supremacy while cutting out foreign manufacturing dependence.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  If it started today you might be right the people that knew how to build things could unretire and save us but 10-15 years from now they will be dead and the knowledge will be lost
mathgeek 4y ago
There's no doubt that our current Western way of life would be hard or impossible to recreate without the goods and services provided outside of the West, but there's certainly a smaller experiment in the same vein going on since 2020. The amount of national security threats alone caused by not being able to reliably ship goods internationally has created an interesting drama to watch unfold.

qwerty456127 4y ago

> The Taiwan situation is interesting but ultimately China knows they won't be able to take Taiwan by force without extreme consequences - nor would it be easy. Is there a reason to be sure they are this rational? Some people just get mad and kill others just for sake of "honour" as their weird philosophy defines it, no matter the consequences.

rocgf 4y ago
Indeed, I feel many are betting on rationality coming on top and that simply makes no sense to me. For example, does it seem like the Russian public is rational in any way? There are many approving of the 'denazification' rhetoric in Ukraine. Since the CCP has been pushing the narrative that Taiwan is China, it's somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  Meanwhile, believing what do politicians say is among the most absurdly irrational acts possible. It is a well known fact lying and manipulating is their everyday job. Historically this has been especially intense and well known in Russia. To me it seems really weird and fascinating there still are people trusting politicians in Russia.

arethuza 4y ago

Regarding defining the "winner" of a global war, I can't help thinking of the quote from General Thomas Power, head of US SAC in the late 1950s and early 1960s: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power

rich_sasha 4y ago

I would like that to be true. Did Germany stand a chance to win WWII? Probably not, or at best a slim chance; it made huge, surprising victories against most of continental Europe, but it just picked on too many opponents. By the time the US was in, it was (slow and deadly) game over. They believed their own BS and went ahead with it regardless. I guess the risk here is that Russia or China could also believe their own BS and do something stupid regardless. Russia clearly did in Ukraine. As far as I can tell, WWI started kind of because everyone wanted a war. All the belligerents were convinced this is their moment to shine, 3 months and it will be all over, with [shiny new territory]. Alas it was not to be so.

arethuza 4y ago
Indeed, I think people tend to forget that Germany declared war on the US - which I have seen described (in a fantastic bit of understatement) as "most puzzling": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...
- 300bps 4y ago
  Thank you for the interesting link! It seems to hold the key to why Germany declared war against the U.S. - essentially it was a condition of Japan’s first strike against the U.S.: On 28 November 1941, Ribbentrop confirmed to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, what Hitler himself had told Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka: that if Japan got involved in a war with the US, Germany would enter the war on Japan's side. When the Japanese asked for written confirmation of this, Hitler provided it, along with Mussolini's consent.
  - setr 4y ago
    Further down clarifies that the agreement only triggered for defense, not offense > According to the terms of their agreements, Germany was obliged to come to the aid of Japan if a third country attacked Japan, but not if Japan attacked a third country. Ribbentrop reminded Hitler of this, and pointed out that to declare war against the US would add to the number of enemies Germany was fighting, but Hitler dismissed this concern as not being important,[3] and, almost entirely without consultation, chose to declare war against the US, wanting to do so before, he thought, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt would declare war on Germany.

athrowaway3z 4y ago

> China's economy depends on being able to export to the West China's import is far more important for now. It imports vast amounts of food and fuel by boat. It would be trivial to stop those.

timeon 4y ago

Sometimes one thing leads to another. WWIII-type conflict could be started by states that are not superpowers.

xkcd1963 4y ago

"At the end of the day it's just a handful of people who get to decide these things" I disagree, there are far more factors playing at hand. A government is made of many people. Or as example, general A decided to attack, but the army couldn't progress due to bad weather. He did his decision but it didn't matter.

nradov 4y ago

China is unlikely to directly invade Taiwan in the next few years because they know they lack the airborne and amphibious lift capacity to make it stick. The greater risk is some sort of minor incident or miscalculation which then escalates out of control. They might try to land forces on one of the small outlying islands claimed by Taiwan. Or there could be an accidental collision at sea involving significant loss of life.