Will there ever be another World War?

[Mr.Mattress]

War is an inevitable thing with Humans, but a World War 3 can only happen when extreme Nationalism are coupled with Expansionism and a Top Tier nation. So far, Nationalism is a small creature compared to his less crazy brother, Patriotism. Expansionism is a dead animal. And Most Top Tier Nations know of the horrors of combining Nationalism with Expansionism. Until the Criteria is met by a couple of Top Tier Nations, then we will not see World War 3.

But who knows, a lot of things can change at any time: Maybe American Patriotism will become Nationalism? Maybe Japan will start getting the idea that they are meant to be the Dominant world power again? Maybe Greece and the Ukraine will get Fascist Revolutions and they begin making seedy deals on taking over their former Yugoslavian neighbors? Only time can tell.

 

[kurokotetsu]

That's not the way information works these days. Scientists don't write single formulas that can't be recreated on single pieces of paper. We have these things called computers. Not only are they routinely backed up, but when you "steal" information from one, it doesn't automatically destroy the original. This is why, you know, music piracy happens.

For an "Information War" to be credibly called anything remotely comparable to a World War, we'd need to see direct casualties clearly caused by information warfare. Things like nuclear powerplant control systems being sent into meltdown mode, or more likely shutting down water or power grids during the height of summer/winter.

i never implied thats how information works, merely assuemd you knew that hackers and viruses can do more than just copy information. Lets say a government designed virus infects a computer of one of the scientists. it quickly spread to other scientsits computers and backup drives during backup process, while remaining dorment, and keeping score of how many copies it has created. then it gets a signal to act, waits till it can relay all this signal to all of its own copies (backup drives are supposed to stay offline when not bkacuping), and then all drives get to delete all the info at once.
bam, no backups.
the virus would be complex, but such is informational warfare.

Yeah, that virus is almost impossible. The amount of offline backups is huge, especially considering the magnetic tapes that Google and the NSA have, which probably are never all at the same time online and have multiple copies of the information.

There is no single scientist network that can be infected and scientists not necessarily interconnect to each other directly meaning that there are a great deal of other computers and servers being infected by this hypothetical virus, so a direct count wouldn't be able to do it, since it is probable that they would infect a great deal of other machines and not only those of scientists.

In that point also, the virus won't be able to convinently remain doing the count. A single computer would only be able to keep track of the computers it has infected, or the progeny the computers that were infected before. Unless all the virs keep comunicating with each other (which would be easyly traceable, that new amount of packages, very similar, with the same origins, etc. I'm sure would be easy to identify) and somewhat you program it so that it doesn't try to infect an already infected computer so that no repeated numbers (meaning each "update" the virus would have to send a list of all infected cooputers to each other) are, then you would be able to at least more or less keep count (with all those troubles). A virus like the one you talk about can't be wholly dormant.

Then the virus would have to be multiplatform. Scientists over the world not all use a single OS, as there are Mac, Windows, Ubuntoo, Debian, Red Cap, propertary systems, with different versions all over (I myself use on a regular basis WIndows 7, XP and Debian while working) which each has to be penetrated. After finding a vulenrability, as the virus would take a lot time to spread (by sheer amount of number of backups and devices)so subsequent updates may find and close the vulnerability (these being systems that regularly update), meaning that your virus may become useless at the time of attack.

And there are a large amount of physical copies of the works that you are eliminating, so even a succesful attack on the major scientific communities of the world, a good amout of that information may be recovered (even if slowly).

Your information war (which you seem ot be sure it is happening now) seems hard presed to come by.

Stuxnet and Flame worked very differently form this proposed virs, attcking very specific components of very specific systems (either nuclear reactors or secure networks), with an specific OS (Windows), opening certain components, and almost not transmitting (well Flame opened a gate to become a Blutooth trasnmiter, but that is an specific gate for a specific form of communication), being mostly dormant. One only attacked one system and the other only copied until someone new the gate to the virus. Also, those were aimed at Iran not done by it.

Thre is an information War but it isn't a World War. No huge amount of casualties or anything. THis is just spying, which has happened a lot and will keep happning.

More OT, while MAD stands, there is no GOvernment silly enough to try it. The great powers won't attack each other because that would spell their doom, so not WOrld War while MAD stands. If a single country does not abide, well by us. But it needs to many people to be incredibly stupid to do it (not a single individual). So there will be wars, but no World War.

 

[gdv358]

1) The world powers have to be divided into two neatly divided camps

This was something that existed for the entirety of the Cold War. But since the fall of the Soviet Union there really aren't neat and even divisions between the world powers. Everyone has started to be either in it for themselves or in it for the "global community" and that isn't the kind of environment that sparks a "World War".

Not sure about that. WW2 ended up like that, yeah, but took a while to get to that point. Out of interest, would you say it'd count as a world war if the USSR, US and Japan had stayed out of it?

3) A major world power has to think they CAN WIN

When the World Wars started, both of them began on the idea that someone could effectively fight all of the other powers in the world and WIN. You look at Germany's progress in WW2 and you can see pretty clearly that they had a fair reason to think they could.

I'm not sure there. Germany flat out could not win against the UK and USSR. Japan could not win against the US. However, people in power would not accept this, they'd promised victory to their leaders. The Emperor had been promised victory, so victory had to be achievable. Likewise, to an extent, with Hitler.

For anyone who thinks differently about the balance of power right now, I leave you with this: I've been told by a couple people in the military (on both sides) that in the 90s we actually managed to lose a couple of war games against Canada - CANADA of all places. Think about that the next time you picture someone trying to rule the world.

A war game that pits the nation of Canada against the US, or a war game that pits a Canadian force against a US one?

Canadian is a small nation, with a small military and no nuclear capability of its own, but that doesn't mean it's forces are worse than comparable US forces. Notably, they use a lot of the exact same equipment.

Actually, if you look at the history of both of the world wars you'd find that the precursor to them becoming "world wars" rather than a series of smaller wars was that major alliances began to form between countries with large military forces. The alliances at the beginning of the wars and towards the end of the wars may have been very different, but they still existed. By the beginning of the second world war, the Axis powers were already starting to form (with the USSR acting in cooperation with them without being an actual member) while the Allies were pretty much anyone who didn't want to be invaded by the Axis (with joining the allies something that happened primarily in order of who was under the threat of invasion first).

Also, without the (previously) unassociated powers in Asia and North America there would have been a massive change in how WW1 and WW2 actually panned out. It's true that the UK managed to stand its ground in WW2, but it managed to do so under what was essentially a brutal war of attrition where major cities in the UK were under constant bombardment. Had Germany continued to focus only on the UK, then they would have been much more effective. Honestly, if the Axis hadn't provoked the USA and USSR then it's very likely that the UK would have fallen eventually despite their best efforts. They fought tooth and nail to prevent that from happening but the turning point in the European Theater was having the USSR suddenly breathing down on Germany's neck(in no small part thanks to the Axis getting a little cocky and thinking they could take out the USSR easier than the UK).

As for my example about Canada, yes, they have a smaller military, one that actually lacks much of a naval presence. But the point was to drive home that even smaller nations can fight us on even ground until we escalate towards nuclear weapons. The fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons don't act as motivation towards a war because no one who actually has them right now really wants to use them. If nuclear weapons were our go-to and we were going to launch them whenever things got truly hairy out there then the only two nuclear detonations to happen in an act of war wouldn't have been almost 70 years ago. The Cold War was two major nuclear armed superpowers staring each other down for decades seeing who would be twitchy enough to launch the first nuke. Neither one was willing to do it regardless of how much they may have wanted to.

Everyone likes to say "politicians and military leaders don't care who dies" but that's never accurate when you consider that the first nuclear weapon on an ICBM pointed at the United States would be aimed right at Washington. Every politician and military leader cares about when the first nuke gets launched because none of them believe that they're going to survive the counter-attack. So the idea that the third World War would involve nuclear weapons by default is the idea that the third World War would be a situation where all of the nations in question were on the brink of collapsing and no one had anything to lose anymore. Honestly, by that point, we're probably all dead anyway.

 

[Mahoshonen]

It may happen. It may not. I disagree with anyone that says it's impossible, but also with anyone that says that it will occur eventually.

Many thought that a big war would never happen again in the early 1910's. And almost everyone was certain a dust-up between the U.S. and Soviet Union was inevitable.

 

[___________________]

We're already at war. Just look around.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Actually, if you look at the history of both of the world wars you'd find that the precursor to them becoming "world wars" rather than a series of smaller wars was that major alliances began to form between countries with large military forces. The alliances at the beginning of the wars and towards the end of the wars may have been very different, but they still existed. By the beginning of the second world war, the Axis powers were already starting to form (with the USSR acting in cooperation with them without being an actual member) while the Allies were pretty much anyone who didn't want to be invaded by the Axis (with joining the allies something that happened primarily in order of who was under the threat of invasion first).

Certainly, in that sense, yes.

Also, without the (previously) unassociated powers in Asia and North America there would have been a massive change in how WW1 and WW2 actually panned out. It's true that the UK managed to stand its ground in WW2, but it managed to do so under what was essentially a brutal war of attrition where major cities in the UK were under constant bombardment. Had Germany continued to focus only on the UK, then they would have been much more effective. Honestly, if the Axis hadn't provoked the USA and USSR then it's very likely that the UK would have fallen eventually despite their best efforts. They fought tooth and nail to prevent that from happening but the turning point in the European Theater was having the USSR suddenly breathing down on Germany's neck(in no small part thanks to the Axis getting a little cocky and thinking they could take out the USSR easier than the UK).

Not sure. Certainly, Operation Barbarossa was a turning point in the war, but Germany simply couldn't bring Britain to defeat any time soon. Maybe in a few more years, but it's hard to say.

As for my example about Canada, yes, they have a smaller military, one that actually lacks much of a naval presence. But the point was to drive home that even smaller nations can fight us on even ground until we escalate towards nuclear weapons.

I disagree. Canada cannot compete with the US in conventional forces, because the US military is overwhelmingly larger, if not necessarily superior on a piece by piece basis.

The fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons don't act as motivation towards a war because no one who actually has them right now really wants to use them.

Certainly. Once you have nuclear weapons involved, your nation faces destruction. Much safer to sit quietly and do nothing rather than take a move that may cause that to happen 20 moves further on.

Everyone likes to say "politicians and military leaders don't care who dies" but that's never accurate when you consider that the first nuclear weapon on an ICBM pointed at the United States would be aimed right at Washington. Every politician and military leader cares about when the first nuke gets launched because none of them believe that they're going to survive the counter-attack.

Not true, the US (for example) has been opposed to decapitation strikes for decades. You don't want to kill off the only people on the other side who can order a surrender or otherwise halt the fighting.

Also, destroying the civilian leadership actually helps the military.

However, it's in nobody's interest to see their nation burn down around them, even if they personally survive.

So the idea that the third World War would involve nuclear weapons by default is the idea that the third World War would be a situation where all of the nations in question were on the brink of collapsing and no one had anything to lose anymore. Honestly, by that point, we're probably all dead anyway.

Well, yes, that seems to be the assumption. I don't see how we can have another World War without that being true.

It's not the case that humanity would be wiped out, but the great nations of the time would certainly be facing destruction.

 

[rednose1]

Figure we'll always have wars , only now they are apparently called conflicts. It'll take quite a bit to set off a full blown, country vs. country deal, but it could still happen.

My money is on Japan vs. China for the start of something really major. Tons of historical hostility towards one another, both have the clout to carry out big plans, both countries capable of near fanatical levels of nationalism (but really, who isn't?), and both have designs on a bunch of rocky islands for energy reasons (and energy needs are only going up, making them more and more important).

Plus, if Japan goes to war, the U.S. goes to war. North Korea would probably join in, happy to finally use it's weapons. So now North and South Korea are fighting. Plus you have 2 permanent members of the Security Council fighting each other, who knows what that'll bring about. My money would be on U.K. joining U.S., and Russia going along with China.

Now, not saying this is definitely gonna happen, just if anything would start country on country, old fashioned boomy time, this would be it. Much more likely are these smaller-scale conflicts that people don't seem to mind as much, even tough plenty of people are still dying.

 

[Leemaster777]

Nah. World War 2 left an unignorable, unforgettable, horrific impact on the world, and it was followed by the Cold War, in which multiple generations of people lived through constant threats of total annihilation. Then comes the information age, where billions of people all over the world are suddenly able to talk to one another at a capacity which grows exponentially each day. It's easy to see today that the younger generations are already fed up with the bullshit still left over from wars past and want to move forward, forgive and forget. The two biggest points of tension are the Middle East with Iran and the Pacific with China and it's neighbors. Iran's oppressive regime is living on borrowed time, their military sucks and they have almost NO allies. China is economically tangled with the US to the point that neither really wants to do anything to each other, and their biggest ally, North Korea, is so backwards and insane that even China hates them at this point.

I'm not naive enough to say that we're on the fast track to world peace or that we're moving past violent conflict, because clearly we aren't. But huge, grandiose wars fueled by bigotry and propoganda with death tolls in the multiple millions aren't going to happen. Anyone who thinks so is just so cynical that they've become blind to the positive trends made by people in the modern world. And that's just sad.

Well done, my friend. Well-worded, well thought-out, and not a wall of text. You deserve the highest of fives.

I concur, it's extremely unlikely that we'll ever see another World War, at least as we understand them. Power struggles will most certainly continue between nations, but with the ever-present threat of the nuke, and with the current world economy so tightly interwoven, conflict on the scale of a World War is highly unlikely. There's no benefit in it for anyone. And, sadly, the lack of benefit to conflict is the only thing that'll keep it from happening. Not "morals" or "enlightenment", sadly.

 

[gdv358]

I disagree. Canada cannot compete with the US in conventional forces, because the US military is overwhelmingly larger, if not necessarily superior on a piece by piece basis.

Of course not, the United States outspends the rest of the world combined in terms of military (though I've heard that recently they've caught up enough that we only outspend MOST of the world combined). I was never arguing that Canada could somehow "compete" in a sense that they could win.

The problem with a World War scenario is that they don't have to "compete" with us. The idea that they can be equipped well enough to win any engagement means that we could face much better equipped resistance forces than have existed historically. Looking at just how attempts to control Afghanistan have gone in the past, for instance, shows us that taking over a country and then being able to move onto the next country is more costly than it has been before. When the USSR tried to control Afghanistan during the Cold War the act of the US quietly arming the resistance with something more modern made it a situation where the USSR realized they had to pull out. This action later bit us in the ass since we forgot the lessons we learned from that same conflict and ended up trying to do the same thing that Russia had tried to do decades earlier. Now we've been fighting it out in Afghanistan for over a decade.

Now if you were to take a modern military and did the same thing, it'd become a much messier prospect. Germany had severe issues with the rebels in France during WW2. So imagine if those rebels had the kind of portable destructive power that we have today in shockingly ample amounts. If a few guys in Afghanistan can rain hell down on a military base using some stolen or second-hand RPGs, imagine the sort of destruction a splintered military could do in the same circumstances. Would "Canada" be victorious over us? No, not at all. But to think that we could stomp on the country and then move onto the next front to fight another country with similar equipment and continue to do so for multiple fronts is wishful thinking at best. Every military in the world has analyzed their chances of winning against any potential aggressor and it has become less and less likely to win against multiple countries at once. Entering a World War, regardless of who is on your side, means exactly that. You have to be willing and able to not just fight one country but every country that throws themselves at you at the same time. It just isn't feasible at today's level of technology to do that. There would have to be either a massive shift in technology in favor of a single power or there would have to be a motivator of profound merit to make people look beyond what I've long considered the "clusterfuck factor".

I'm not arguing that there will never be another World War. What I'm saying is that all of the right elements for generating a World War existed for the majority of the 20th century and those elements simply have not existed for almost 2 decades. Now if and when we start to see those elements return, it'll be another matter all together. But as it is right now, the most likely nations to start such a war are China and the US and those two powers, in particular, are economically dependent on each other in a way that makes it very unlikely they'd ever take a direct shot at each other any time soon. Europe definitely isn't going to be starting this one (unlike the last two) because the European Union has made it so that such a war breaking out on their continent again would make all of their current problems worse. So when I hear people talking about the impending WW3 I just can't take it seriously in today's climate.

No offense to anyone who believes it could happen, it probably could eventually. But I've heard people (even in my family) who think that the latest conflict of the month in the middle east is going to jump-start WW3 and most of it comes from people who still think we're in the Cold War. NATO was originally formed to gear up for such a conflict but they haven't dealt with an equivalent alliance for the majority of the lifetimes of the people on this forum.

tl;dr - I'm sorry to say it, but the era we live in right now is probably the closest to world peace we're likely to get before some huge development changes the human experience.

 

[freaper]

The real question is: will I, or anyone I care about, be around for the next World War?

 

[Childe]

Of course there will be. Humans have never been able to exist peacefully and we never will. Lets just hope nuclear winter doens't happen in our lifetime

 

[Tom Roberts]

I think that while brilliant, the Einstein quote is all wrong. He should have stated, more grimly, that there would be no one LEFT for World War 4.

"The fourth World War will be fought with Fang and Claw, Horn and Mandible."

 

[AngloDoom]

It amazes me how often people use the word 'humans' when discussing matters of war and peace. I've known a lot of humans in my time and I'd say that almost all of them weren't unintelligent psychopaths.

OT:

It depends entirely on what you call a 'world war'. I find it hard to imagine we'll have any long drawn-out conflicts with the ultimate objective is 'enslave/kill the natives' simply because of the threat of nukes: if it ever gets to the point where you look like you're going to lose your whole country, why not just wipe the opposition off of the face of the map?

I imagine wars will become less explodey and more information-y in future, but I'm certainly no expert.

 

[FalloutJack]

I think that while brilliant, the Einstein quote is all wrong. He should have stated, more grimly, that there would be no one LEFT for World War 4.

"The fourth World War will be fought with Fang and Claw, Horn and Mandible."

No no no... I've got an even BETTER one. The fourth war will be fought with...

 

[Your Rival]

Yes, and I know how it will begin. Germany will attack Belgium to bypass French defenses. Russia and the Western Europe will become unlikely allies and Italy will simply be incompetent.

 

[omega 616]

I very much doubt it, there are too many nukes just waiting to be launched. The weapons that are available would mean vast swathes of the population would be massacred (even if nukes weren't dropped).

Anyway, there is just way too much political back stabbing and jostling to do anything like declare war on another first world country, it would be career suicide to do it. As for third world vs first world, the difference between arms is too vast, America alone could easily combat the middle east.... Fuck, America has cast its self as world police.

The next world war type event will interplanetary, if I had to guess.

 

[Agayek]

Wow, I couldn't agree more with what you said, that was very well worded. I'm curious though, do you think a civilisation can have advanced enough technology to prevent violent conflicts?

No. It's not possible to completely eliminate violent conflict without eliminating the need for resources and differences in ideology. As long as those two exist, there will be cause for conflict which could potentially erupt into a shooting war.

We can reduce the likelihood, mitigate the damage, and generally make it less of a disaster, but we'll never be able to eliminate it entirely without giving everyone lobotomies and/or reaching the point where physics no longer applies.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Spoiler: snip

I disagree. Canada cannot compete with the US in conventional forces, because the US military is overwhelmingly larger, if not necessarily superior on a piece by piece basis.

Of course not, the United States outspends the rest of the world combined in terms of military (though I've heard that recently they've caught up enough that we only outspend MOST of the world combined). I was never arguing that Canada could somehow "compete" in a sense that they could win.

The problem with a World War scenario is that they don't have to "compete" with us. The idea that they can be equipped well enough to win any engagement means that we could face much better equipped resistance forces than have existed historically. Looking at just how attempts to control Afghanistan have gone in the past, for instance, shows us that taking over a country and then being able to move onto the next country is more costly than it has been before. When the USSR tried to control Afghanistan during the Cold War the act of the US quietly arming the resistance with something more modern made it a situation where the USSR realized they had to pull out. This action later bit us in the ass since we forgot the lessons we learned from that same conflict and ended up trying to do the same thing that Russia had tried to do decades earlier. Now we've been fighting it out in Afghanistan for over a decade.

Now if you were to take a modern military and did the same thing, it'd become a much messier prospect. Germany had severe issues with the rebels in France during WW2. So imagine if those rebels had the kind of portable destructive power that we have today in shockingly ample amounts. If a few guys in Afghanistan can rain hell down on a military base using some stolen or second-hand RPGs, imagine the sort of destruction a splintered military could do in the same circumstances. Would "Canada" be victorious over us? No, not at all. But to think that we could stomp on the country and then move onto the next front to fight another country with similar equipment and continue to do so for multiple fronts is wishful thinking at best. Every military in the world has analyzed their chances of winning against any potential aggressor and it has become less and less likely to win against multiple countries at once. Entering a World War, regardless of who is on your side, means exactly that. You have to be willing and able to not just fight one country but every country that throws themselves at you at the same time. It just isn't feasible at today's level of technology to do that. There would have to be either a massive shift in technology in favor of a single power or there would have to be a motivator of profound merit to make people look beyond what I've long considered the "clusterfuck factor".

I'm not arguing that there will never be another World War. What I'm saying is that all of the right elements for generating a World War existed for the majority of the 20th century and those elements simply have not existed for almost 2 decades. Now if and when we start to see those elements return, it'll be another matter all together. But as it is right now, the most likely nations to start such a war are China and the US and those two powers, in particular, are economically dependent on each other in a way that makes it very unlikely they'd ever take a direct shot at each other any time soon. Europe definitely isn't going to be starting this one (unlike the last two) because the European Union has made it so that such a war breaking out on their continent again would make all of their current problems worse. So when I hear people talking about the impending WW3 I just can't take it seriously in today's climate.

No offense to anyone who believes it could happen, it probably could eventually. But I've heard people (even in my family) who think that the latest conflict of the month in the middle east is going to jump-start WW3 and most of it comes from people who still think we're in the Cold War. NATO was originally formed to gear up for such a conflict but they haven't dealt with an equivalent alliance for the majority of the lifetimes of the people on this forum.

tl;dr - I'm sorry to say it, but the era we live in right now is probably the closest to world peace we're likely to get before some huge development changes the human experience.

Oh, in that sense, yes, certainly...though oddly enough it didn't happen after WW2.

However, I'd argue that that's only a concern if you want to conquer nations. If you simply want to bring them to their knees, to remove their capacity to harm you, then you don't need an occupying force, you can pound them from the sky. Their people and their resources will never be yours, but you can be made safe from them.

 

[gdv358]

Oh, in that sense, yes, certainly...though oddly enough it didn't happen after WW2.

However, I'd argue that that's only a concern if you want to conquer nations. If you simply want to bring them to their knees, to remove their capacity to harm you, then you don't need an occupying force, you can pound them from the sky. Their people and their resources will never be yours, but you can be made safe from them.

There actually were problems after WW2 for the occupying forces, but the US started to play good cop to Russia's bad cop and it panned out fairly well for us. If there hadn't been a USSR causing suffering for people in Berlin, for instance, we couldn't have ever looked like the good guy by dropping chocolate on them.

As for the idea of conquering vs. demolishing... very rarely has any massive war ever been fought for the sake of annihilation. There's really no reason to exhaust those resources to come away with nothing but a lot of graves. We're a violent race of psychotic apes but we act more out of greed than raw hatred. Even the Third Reich, despite the horrible things it did in terms of genocide, was fueled primarily by poor economic times that made it easy for a charismatic leader to convince everyone there was a scapegoat to blame all of their problems on. Had there been no great depression in Europe, there probably wouldn't have been a second World War (though the first war caused the European depression so it was kind of moot)

 

[Thaluikhain]

There actually were problems after WW2 for the occupying forces, but the US started to play good cop to Russia's bad cop and it panned out fairly well for us. If there hadn't been a USSR causing suffering for people in Berlin, for instance, we couldn't have ever looked like the good guy by dropping chocolate on them.

Fair enough, having the USSR involved makes it rather different from most occupations.

As for the idea of conquering vs. demolishing... very rarely has any massive war ever been fought for the sake of annihilation. There's really no reason to exhaust those resources to come away with nothing but a lot of graves. We're a violent race of psychotic apes but we act more out of greed than raw hatred. Even the Third Reich, despite the horrible things it did in terms of genocide, was fueled primarily by poor economic times that made it easy for a charismatic leader to convince everyone there was a scapegoat to blame all of their problems on. Had there been no great depression in Europe, there probably wouldn't have been a second World War (though the first war caused the European depression so it was kind of moot)

I didn't mean annihilating a nation for the sake of annihilating it, but removing a threat or a rival.

For example, the Japanese had no serious intention to invade Australia or mainland United States, however they did want to defeat those nations in order that they couldn't prevent Japan from fulfilling its other objectives.