Look at the complexity of events leading up to World War Two:
And look at the Axis-Allies distribution in July 1943:
Are current conditions much different?
Let's talk about World War III
I'm thinking that Mohamed Bouazizi might be 2011's version of 1914's Archduke Ferdinand. Similarly, Saudi Arabia's recent excursion into Bahrain might be seen (in retrospect) as a repetition of Germany entering Poland.How many wars does the United States have to be engaged in before we recategorize it as a global war?
(oops, somebody already used GWOT).Could the world be in the first stages of WWIII?
- Japan is in an economic, food, and energy crisis.
- China is feeling its muscle in Asia and its influence globally.
- Don't even ask about Taiwan.
- Recession/ Depression in the First World.
- Global monetary conflict.
- Israel and Iraq would like the other to disappear, and they're both currying proxies.
- Pakistan and North Korea have nuclear weapons. Iran is working on it.
- Russia is in the tank.
- From the Straights of Gibraltar, across Africa and Asia to Indonesia, a new flavor of Islam is preaching holy war.
- Simultaneously, France, Britain, and the United States are restaging the Crusades.
Just to assert some small rationality on my part, I'm not going anywhere near the Mayan 2012 concept. To be sure, other timeframes could have been seen as early WW3 and they weren't. Korea, Hungary in '56, Suez, Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pristina incident, etc. It would be okay if this was not the start of WW3. The possibility cannot be excluded.
It might be an interesting time. I'd like to ask: Why won't it end up as World War Three?
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Not to be overly argumentative, because I agree a bigger conflict is a concern, but quite a few people were expecting WWII well before it happened. Even if you exclude the people who were trying to start it (or trying to grab as much as they could without starting it), it was a fear that drop much political maneuvering.
One can't even allude to the turning of the ancient Mayan calendar without sacrificing a share of rationality.
There seems to be a multitude of elements. If not WWIII then perhaps the preamble (I suppose of necessity. How's that for a hedge?).
More importantly. It's been 66 years since the end of WWII. Mightn't the next one get its own name? The Great Energy War or some such? I think the Betting Window has closed on prognosticators of a WWIII.
How can you mock the Mayan calendar? It was so advanced that it had Lincoln's Birthday. (I stole that from Dave Barry.)
On the question at the end of the post ("Why won't it end up as World War Three?"), I'd guess that we are safe from a really big war as long as the U.S. is responsible for half of global military spending. There are only a few countries that could spend enough on weapons to make that possible and only one of them has shown any indication that it wants to and it is more concerned with other problems. Lots of bad things can happen, but I suspect we are safe from global war until Michael Cera looks old enough that he doesn't get carded at a bar.
Bou'azizi is more like Gavrilo Princip than the Archduke, I think. And if you're drawing parallels, today looks much more like 1914 than 1939: (1) economically, our new Gilded Age and the original; (2) culturally, today's digerati and the Modernists; (3) technologically, waves of sudden, rapid innovation; (4) demographically, massive regional population shifts and the explosive growth of cities.
MH 12:09 - On being safer from global war because we are responsible for half of global military spending: but what if we START said war? It could be that our global predominance mitigates the usual deterrent of the possibility of losing. Defense spending or no, it doesn't cost much to do some damage if you have the home field advantage and the home crowd behind you.
Bram, I agree that lots of damage could happen, but I don't think it would be a global war. There are many ways to define it, but you'd need two sides in kind of the same ball park, capability-wise, for a "global war" as most people use the term.
I agree with Ken that today is more like 1914 than 1939, but it probably more like 1890 or so than 1914. We are coming to the end of relatively long "peace" (in the sense of no global war) and it is perfectly obvious that the structure for maintaining that peace (British naval power in 1890, U.S. overall power now) has been eroded.
Except that nuclear weapons mean it is probably fundamentally different from any time before 1945.
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