Will there ever be another World War?

gdv358

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Nov 11, 2009
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thaluikhain said:
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

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Apr 3, 2010
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The real question is: will I, or anyone I care about, be around for the next World War?
 

Childe

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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

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FalloutJack said:
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

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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

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Nov 20, 2008
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Tom Roberts said:
FalloutJack said:
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

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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

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May 1, 2009
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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

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Oct 23, 2008
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ScorpionPrince said:
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

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gdv358 said:
thaluikhain said:
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

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thaluikhain said:
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

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gdv358 said:
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.

gdv358 said:
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.
 

Yopaz

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Nieroshai said:
Anyone who thinks it can't happen doesn't know the human race well enough. That being said, who knows what it would take to set it off?
Or maybe they know the human race well enough. We're opportunistic, we have tried to gain power and influence and we'll only remain at peace when the danger of loss seems too great. A world war would require fighting superpowers and thus we would probably have nations with nuclear weapons pitting against each other, something any sane leader would know is more or less suicide.

I think a lot of things would have to happen before we could reach another world war and I suspect some of the mighty nations of today would have to falter before we see it. With the state of the world, nearing global warming, insufficient oil supplies and lots of countries still struggling with their economy I see it as plausible, but who will start it and how it will start is anyone's guess. I can't be sure if it will happen or not, but I suspect it will. Maybe within my lifespan.

I also see a possibility of a civil war, but maybe in a different form than the ones that we know. With the oppressive governments even in the "free" world I suspect the common man will at some time snap and take action. I hope I won't be alive to see it though.
 

Thaluikhain

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Yopaz said:
I also see a possibility of a civil war, but maybe in a different form than the ones that we know. With the oppressive governments even in the "free" world I suspect the common man will at some time snap and take action. I hope I won't be alive to see it though.
Western government are significantly less oppressive than they have been, though you could argue that there's been a definite backwards trend recently.

Not excusing them, there is still a lot of progress to be made, but things have gotten a lot better in general.
 

Yopaz

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thaluikhain said:
Yopaz said:
I also see a possibility of a civil war, but maybe in a different form than the ones that we know. With the oppressive governments even in the "free" world I suspect the common man will at some time snap and take action. I hope I won't be alive to see it though.
Western government are significantly less oppressive than they have been, though you could argue that there's been a definite backwards trend recently.

Not excusing them, there is still a lot of progress to be made, but things have gotten a lot better in general.
They're better in many aspects, but I also see us moving towards oppression on a more subtle level. We're being held under surveillance with the excuse that they're preventing terrorism (hint: it's not working at all). Things aren't bad, but we're slowly getting there. Hopefully things won't so bad that a civil war will break out.
 

Thaluikhain

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Yopaz said:
They're better in many aspects, but I also see us moving towards oppression on a more subtle level. We're being held under surveillance with the excuse that they're preventing terrorism (hint: it's not working at all). Things aren't bad, but we're slowly getting there. Hopefully things won't so bad that a civil war will break out.
True, but we used to be held under surveillance to prevent communism. Before that, nazism (to an extent). Before that, Irish terrorism (to an extent).
 

saxxon.de

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Of course there will be. Only a couple of decades left before the resources of our planet start to dry out. And since the country which currently has the most advanced military in the world isn't shy of invading others for those precious resources, you better expect to be treated like the native americans once were.
 

Andy of Comix Inc

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Strazdas said:
There is already world war 3. It sis beign fought in the information space and not with atomic bombs though. we keep hearing about those government manufactured viruses spreading in coutrnies they dont like, from all sides of the world. others maknig defence systems against them. Its a war noone calls a war because it doesnt blow shit up.
You've um. Err. Uh.

Never heard of a "cold war," perchance, have you?