Buckle up for WW3

[robnisch]

Looks like it will be a drone, robot and cyber war.

 

[JohnG]

At this point I can’t take anyone seriously who thinks “woke” is or was a thing, I wish cancel culture was a thing because a lot assholes needed to actually be cancelled,

 

[ZiprHead]

At this point I can’t take anyone seriously who thinks “woke” is or was a thing, I wish cancel culture was a thing because a lot assholes needed to actually be cancelled,

Trump wants to cancel all kinds of people. Jimmy Kimmel, Christine? Welker, James Comey. Too many more to list.

 

[DrZoidberg]

But an actual massive world war looking anything like WW2 just isn't going to ever happen again.

If the situation in Ukraine is any guide, WWIII will look a lot more like WWI than like WWII.

I am not sure why anyone would expect something similar to WWII, and indeed, I am not sure that anyone even does - saying "anything like WW2 just isn't going to ever happen again" is a strawman, built to make the speaker appear wise while he spouts the bleeding bloody obvious.

Who is saying that WWIII will look like WWII? I am not aware of any serious commentator who says that.

During the Cold War, the near universal assumption was that WWIII would entail a massive thermonuclear exchange. Today that's seeming less likely, (though far from impossible, at least as an endgame to a more conventional conflict).

The two world wars so far have been rather different in character, both militarily and (to a lesser extent) geopolitically, despite both having had Germany star as the lead villain.

It would be strange to expect the next world war to be a near duplicate of either of the others.

The first war led to technologies that gave the second a totally different character; The second did the same for the Cold War, to the extent that it never even entailed mass casualty conflict between the major belligerents. The next might reasonably be considered WWIV, rather than WWIII, but whatever it is called, it's clear that the technologies and strategies from the preceeding wars will ensure that it is very different again.

The Ukraine war doesn't look like WW1 any longer. Its continually evolving. Drones oblitterate everything in the dead mans zone. And its very wide. Small commondo teams navigate across it and go deep into enemy territory.

We haven't seen anything like this before. Its a new paradigm.

 

[Derec]

Don't be absurd. The State of Sachsen-Anhalt doesn't even have an army.

Are you sure about that?

I kid, of course. It's from here.

A bunch of yokels who pine for East Germany and who revere Putin are not in a position to start any wars. Wake me up if AfD get an outright majority in the Bundestag.

That is not at all likely, but they could become the biggest faction and make formation of a stable governing coalition very difficult. As of right now, the increasingly misnamed "grand coalition" would not have a majority, but the so-called Kenya coalition between C?U, Greens and SPD would have a majority. But with their very different political positions, it will be difficult.

 

[DrZoidberg]

WW3 Is Coming! is more than a bit hyperbolic. Jeez.

Anyway, it looks like Europe is dissatisfied with their governments for the same reasons Americans are: immigration, inflation, etc. If right of center parties were in charge, they'd be losing ground. Right now the left is in charge, so they're the ones taking shit for current problems. Right now it all seems business as usual.

I suspect that the real reason is more mundane. A lot of the European left (1960 to 2020) was a kind of priviliged leftist who loved being rich while feeling sorry for the poor. They felt safe in being perpetually wealthy. As long as the poor part of the world stayed poor, they could inflate their sense of importance and Jesus complex. I remember a friend pointing out in the late 90'ies how leftists don't read Marx anymore, and haven't the basic concept of the ideological underpinning of socialism.

In the late 1980'ies the developing world stopped doing dumb shit (because USSR was falling apart) and got their act together. They have had had 30 years of explosive growth. The west is still richer today, but not obviously superior. The old priviliged leftists with Jesus complexes, who loved going on cheap flights to poor countries to feel sorry for the empoverished natives, that world is disapearing. The brown people aren't as poor now and flights aren't as cheap.

Or to put it in simpler terms. Westerners didn't used to see the developing world as a threat. Now they do. So it's a hard swing to nationalism. What the leftists with a bleeding heart with a Jesus complex has in common with right wing nationalists is an overly inflated ego, and zero basis upon which to feel superior. Empty people with empty lives fill it with consumerism. But now their money can't buy as much happiness. And now they're panicking.

How about that theory?