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World War III over some river islands?

lpetrich

lpetrich

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While researching history-map animations, I came across ▶ The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict - YouTube by EmperorTigerstar - YouTube, who has made a *lot* of map-animation videos.

 Sino-Soviet border conflict In 1969, China objected that the Soviet Union was claiming too much territory as a result of some treaties decades earlier, all the islands of rivers on the border instead of just those on the Soviet side. This led to an actual shooting war over one of the islands, (Soviet) Damansky Island / (Chinese) Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River between northeastern China and the Soviet Far East.

During the war over that island, the Soviets deployed a then-secret weapon, four of their newest tanks, T-62's. One of them was hit and its commander was killed. After letting the Soviets recover the bodies of their fallen comrades, the Chinese kept them from recovering the tank, and the Chinese captured it and took it to their territory.

The Soviet leaders got concerned that these squabbles might escalate, or even drag in the US on the side of China, so they and the Chinese decided to quit fighting. However, it was in 1991 that they officially agreed on the status of Damansky/Zhenbao Island; the Soviet Union accepted that it was Chinese territory.

But what a thought. A fight over a river island leading to World War III.

But then again, the assassination of a member of a royal family by a nationalist terrorist is what started World War I.
 
It could be worse. WWIII could start over whether God's best prophet died and rose again to bodily float up in the air or whether he did so via winged horse.
 
I don't think it will be religion. Syria has shown us the world is perfectly fine with letting fundamentalists kill themselves in designated arenas of destruction.

I doubt China will start an old style war. They are going the cyber/finance aggressive style. I really don't see another world war yet, we have quite a few nice hot regional conflicts to keep us occupied.
 
Hell, it could have started because no one knew light glinting off a glacier looked like missile launches to a satellite....
 
That's not even the stupidest way WW3 almost started.

While my dad was on Temporary Duty in South Korea, minority American troops became so disgusted at how they were being treated that they started a goddamned race riot on the doorstep of the demilitarized zone. Thankfully, the North Koreans realized what was going on and stood there laughing at us instead of taking it as a sign of aggression.

This, by the way is what prompted the US military to finally get serious about integration. Truman gave the order to integrate years earlier, but they did a half-assed job of it for what should be obvious reasons. When their mistreatment of minority troops almost started WW3, they freaked out and decided to really fix the problems of inequality in the military.

I did a cursory search on Google and found nothing, although the military did everything it could to keep the whole thing quiet. They were understandably embarrassed about the whole thing.
 
I've seen the Cuban Missile Crisis mentioned as an event that almost started World War III.

It seems to me that the current conflict in Ukraine has that potential. Russia has been taking over its pro-Russian parts, and it remains to be seen how much of a fight the pro-Western part of Ukraine will put up. Though Ukraine is not in NATO, the Baltic states are: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. These nations have sizable ethnic-Russian populations, and Putin has made noises about "protecting" the ethnic Russians of Estonia. Will Putin try to pick a fight with NATO?
 
Look how Sino and Russo global influence has shaped our strategic and tactical military oversea's strategy for years.

There are some important points in this thread that I would like to add Ipetrich which most Americans have neither a clue or inclination. We all know that after WW2 Europe was all about the military influence of the Russia Bear. Over the years the Russia arm forces continued to grow and modernized surpassing America and Nato's ability to offer a guaranteed chance of survival on the battle field. Hell the Soviets had over 20 thousand AFV ready to over run the central plains of Europe. IMO if it was not for America's development and deployment of short range tactical battlefield nuclear weapons the Soviets knew they could drive their tanks through Germany and right through to the coast of France. This is why America developed weapons that were designed to combat the hordes of Soviet tanks in the 60's-80's. Hence the perfect answer to tanks; the A-10 Warhog, the Apache Attack helo and the best tank in the world today the Abrams M1A1. All designed to deploy in Europe. And where do we end up using these state of the art machines? In the fregin desert! We spent Billions $$$ for the defense of Europe and used them in the invasion of countries in the desert.

The other point is in like manner to Russia in Europe all geo-political, tactical and strategic moves in Asia are influenced by China. The Sino influence today is used as an excuse, IMO, to expand and enlarge America's Pacific Rim clout. We can see this day in and day out with military exercises and expansion of military bases throughout the pacific. Yet the irony is that China does not spend $$trillions like America does on military expansion. China buys an old Russia VTOL carrier with no electronics and planes and you would have thought that the Chinese Army was invading all the WallMarts on the west coast.

America is the only "super power" left in the world. We spend more that the next 10-15 militaries combined depending on how one counts. Our military is bigger than the next 8-10 militaries combined! We have 10 carriers and their accompanying escort groups that have a bigger air wing than most countries' air forces. We have the greatest "forth generational " ground forces ever seen on the planet and we have wasted it in those hell holes Iraq and Afghanistan. How does one deploy state of the art weaponry against a bunch of guys in the mountains with AK's, RPG's and IED's? Hence the waste of the greatest armies ever seen on Earth.

The Russians and the Chinese hate each other. And the only, IMO, country that they hate worst is Japan. The second any nation dares uses a nuclear device today there will be swift retaliation. China and Russia both know that nuclear weapons are like lawyers. They have theirs and we have ours. And when you use them they F*** everything up.

Thanks for the cool thread. Oh and with that madman Nikita Khrushchev with his finger in the trigger the world did come the closet to WW3! That was some scary shit. Good thing we had Kennedy before they decided to off him.


Peace

Pegasus
 
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