The formation of WWIII and how much your personal wish not to die in it won't matter

[matrixmann]

...Is there something meaningful to say during these days where the events of today also progress on their way tomorrow? Unimpressed and not impacted by personal opinions of anyone outside of circles of power and public influence?

There's a lot of words that you could voice and drop about the state the world it is in and what and who is responsible for it - but, will it matter? Will it matter anything? Outside of maybe getting into personal trouble? And having to fight that out alone?

Not only that it's war again in Europe - and one of the most devastating times after WWII; unlike in the war over Yugoslavia where NATO came to drop bombs and anytime they won with their orgy of violence -, meanwhile whole NATO discusses and fantasizes about sending weapons into a combat zone headlessly and without safety guarantees which hands these are gonna end up in, while at the same time every time it denies that WWIII has broken out and that its member countries play a very lively part in that. And that Ukraine, their investment proxy in this endeavor, is winning all the time for 11 months, although if it truly did, the war would already been over for a long time.
What kind of world has this become? - Or was it ever any different? Has it only been smart enough in covering its true nature with enough glitter and gold in order to make most of the population believe in its harmlessness and goodwill, being not worth a critical thought about it?

The Western world which calls itself "democractic" and still keeps on spreading its curses on a former president of the United States Trump, using acting and verbal expressions like #NotMyPresident, just because he didn't function according to the usual wishes of the economic and political establishment, seriously shows up and wants to make believe like its whole population supports these political decisions while the reality actually is that there would already be enough people out there to support a national #NotMyPresident campaign in every damn coutry against these so-called "democratic" current leaders. If it wouldn't entail the possibility of becoming subject to repressions or being publicly thrown into the camp of the political right (or whatever kind of zeitgeisty "public enemy"-image) and maybe losing your job and seeing your private life going down the drain through these unfounded mere accusations.

In which point do these policymakers pose anything different than this clown? Making decisions all the time that at least half of the country opposes over its ridiculousness and the danger they create?

The Western world keps reassuring itself over and over again that they're the good guys, the righteous ones - those with all the virtues and values worth fighting for.
But, seen from the prespective of the rest of the world, and seen from the viewpoint of a sober mind, it much more eventually turns into the Death Star from Star Wars. Destroying everything it disapproves of and enslaving everything it can for the profit of the Empire. While leaving behind the trash, the blood and the scattered body parts in the landscape to those who live in the ruins of its acting.

Long story short: Go the hell and make your war alone! Go and have a seat in your own tanks and go to the frontline!
The earlier the warmongering lobbyists and politicians are gone, including their obedient fanboys and fangirls, the better for everyone else who just want to live in peace and quiet.

Comments

[kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with this post. I remember writing about a previous Ukraine funding bill in the US Congress that I would've voted to abstain; so I'm definitely not supporting NATO involvement in the war, but I am sympathetic to the Ukrainian people for having to live through this escalation of violence, so I feel torn and sit on the virtual sidelines wishing both sides would hold discussions to halt the war. It appears I'm joined by 73 countries who voted to abstain on the latest (https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3994052?ln=en) UN resolution regarding the conflict.

Does this qualify as a "world war" or if not do I think it will escalate into one?

Has me thinking of my criteria for the term. What would count as WWIII? Many people have equated WWIII with a nuclear exchange, but there's no way of knowing whether a declared war between Russia and the US would involve any nukes, and a limited nuclear exchange need not involve the rest of the world.

Do we even bother to "declare" war anymore?

"A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers." Says Wikipedia.

OK, we definitely have an international conflict. The conflict "involves" the military (either directly or via military aid) of 5 of the top 10, or 6 of the top 12, or 7 of the top 14 world powers (but whether a country is a world power or where they rank may be subjective). So close to "most" but not quite! We're missing China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and India, for example. Although we see signs of escalation in Asia over the Taiwan Strait. And we could yet see Saudi Arabia get into a shooting match with Iran as both countries covertly develop nukes. I could see the fire spreading to Asia and the Middle East during the next few years.

I guess we need only one more world power's involvement to call it a "world" war under the standard definition. But this is more like the Poland stage of WW2, when only one country was the subject of the fighting and the rest were afraid to shoot at each other yet. Did we call the Vietnam and Korean wars "world" wars because both superpowers were "involved"? The fighting needs to spill into more than one country, I'd say.

As for your point regarding whether we can stop WWIII from happening ... we didn't stop the previous two from happening, of course. If one person could go back in time and do something, what would that person need to do to stop a world war from happening? Would it have been enough to strangle Putin, Hitler, or Gavrilo Princip in their cribs? Or are these wars more like earthquakes in that they represent gigantic opposing forces that must periodically shift violently? Can world powers move up and down in the ranks without fighting openly?

I'd say the most important problem in the world today is finding ways to allow China to become a superpower without fighting her over it. Depending on how you measure it, China has the #1 or #2 economy now, and instead of embracing China the US is viewing her with ever more suspicion and targeting various strategic goods and services to make sure China can't take away the lead from the US. But the struggle between the EU/NATO and Russia over Eastern Europe has exploded into the open, we may see Saudi/Iran do the same, we may see China/US-Japan-Australia do the same.

I don't know how to predict the outbreak of a shooting war. There's probably a constant stream of random low-level contacts between military powers and it only takes an accidental spark to blow up an international incident. Pelosi's visit to Taiwan didn't provide a spark. Blowing up the underwater pipelines didn't provide a spark ... who knows.

[matrixmann]

"A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers." Says Wikipedia.

What about these? :

Afghanistan - not settled
Irak - not completely settled
Libya - not settled
Syria - not settled
Mali/Central Africa Republic/some other African countries attached to former French colonial territory that now has to fight every now and then with the African branch of Al Quaida or the Islamic State - not settled
Armenia - Azerbaijan - not settled (only frozen at the moment)
Balkan states - nothing left behind from the destruction of Yugoslavia solved (conflict only rests because of the locally-present KFOR troops)

Growing or existing political tensions which every now and then are getting fueled:

Saudi Arabia - Israel - Iran
China - Taiwan
China - Japan - US
Grusiya (Georgia) - Russia
Greece - Türkiye
Türkiye - Kurdish people
Baltic States and Poland - Russia
DPRK (North Korea) - South Korea
The whole so-called "Western community" consisting of merely 24 countries in the world - Russia
Western community (some more openly, some less frankly) - China
US - China
US - Russia
Islamic State - rest of the world (especially the Western part of the world)

Wars already taking place openly:

Saudi Arabia - Yemen - open war with no end in sight yet
Syria - the radical Islamist groups haven't been erased completely from the territory yet (and from the whole Middle East region)
Ukraine - Russia - with strong background support from NATO countries (esp. the US, Poland & the Baltic states) for Ukraine; and limited assistance from Iran, Syria & the DPRK for Russia


If taking all that together, or just overseeing it on the world map - that's a whole lot of potential left for escalation, and if just parts of that should happen, there is no question anymore about if being a world war because is is one.
The point you might not see from your US-socialized view is: World Wars didn't only mean "war between world powers" but also "war over a large scale of territory of planet earth".

WWII set Europe from Lisbon to Moscow and the Bosporus in flames, Hitler even tried to get support for his "final solution of the Jewish question" at the Grand Mufti of Palestine, and then on the other side of the globe, it set Japan to China and the Korean peninsula and Japan all the way down almost until Australia and to the East to Pearl Harbor in flames.
Adding the various endeavors of The Third Reich and fascist Italy in Mostly (North-)Africa to "gain new living space". (e. g. Italy was in Libya).

The whole world was practically involved in any of the activities of the powers who were attempting for world domination and the way of life they deemed as "the right one".

And that's the picture that I see coming together here in the rpesent too.
Lots of tensions, some on a local base, but even more with the potential to expand to general conflicts that will safely involve bigger "players" too.
Why is that?
Because the US-dominated world has reached the point of overextension. There is no more space to grow into other than to steal another party's share of the cake in order to increase one's own overall share of it.
In a physical world with limits, this is the way things become sooner or later. All the terrotories have been defined, but the territories under one's own control don't offer enough material for growth anymore. So there is the need for expansion against someone else's will - in order to generate new growth.
And those areas still not harvested by the mighty and powerful of the US circles lie in Central and East Asia, which have raised up under the star of Communism in the last century and founded their own circles of mighty and powerful people.

[kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com]

I agree that the US has its fingers in a great many pies around the world, and that the US has plainly overextended itself, whereas China is rising and other regional powers are chomping at the bit. My number one statistic for our overextension is that our gigantic budget deficit is even larger than our gigantic military budget — we're putting our entire global dominance on the credit card!

As for whether/when this will break out into general global hostilities ... I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened during this decade. Up through 2016 the US had a bipartisan pro-China approach to our foreign and trade policies. We've reversed and now have a bipartisan anti-China approach. This increases the chances of conflict. The tighter we draw the noose around China, the more likely she will lash out in violence, as happened with Japan in 1941 after we imposed an oil embargo.

And we may yet see the Ukraine war spill into other countries who have zero love for Russian annexation, because they've experienced it directly themselves — especially Poland and the Baltic states. Ancient Eastern European animosities have not yet disappeared ...

[matrixmann]

By all of this coming together, I also don't expect the ignition to the big conflict to lie that much ahead in the future anymore.
You know, even those things that came together in the last couple of years weren't foreseeable and it appears like a "spinning up the tempo" of world events/history.
So... it becomes harder to tell, realistically, what might happen in the coming few foreseeable years and which drastric events may also kick in that come literally out of nowhere - events which weren't on anyone's tab, but prove to be very altering to the then current state of things.

I think what you Western folks need to come down from is this old myth of Russia being obsessed with devouring its neighboring countries just because they once were "part of it/part of its sphere of influence". This way of thinking is as primitive as it's emotional.
It's not about conquering foreign countries because "our collection is still missing something" or because of literal "joy" about this business.

It's about certain Eastern European countries practicing a radical anti-Russia policy for decades, and under that umbrella, they come to even be hostile against simple Russian citizens.
One could live with a such policy related to international relations - this would be something to accept in the mainframe of "every country in the world has a right to organize its issues itself" -, but it's unacceptable if just simple citizens become victim of such policies. For example: Being denied citizenship, getting displaced only because of a national/ethnic/biological heritage.
And, it's equally unacceptable - or better say: it's concerning -, if those hostilities against your country and who this other country declares to be "your citizens" are carried by political forces which in the past already sought total war - a war of annihilation - against you.

You overseas folks often show a bit unable to understand these things as you're used to think only in a black&white-problem in terms of "racism". It's completely off your radar that there is also such a thing as "racism of people of the same skin color against each other". That what is known here as "Rassenideologie" (in English: "raciology") in its most complex excess.

And that is a matter which Russians have been victim of, varying in stronger or weaker extents over time, since at least the last century.

Another thing I'd like to add from state matters: During the times when Stalin was in command, the viewpoint onto the territories which have left the Rus' and which are now independent states was much different as it hadn't been so long ago that outside forces achieved the independence of these territories on their endeavor to conquer the Russian territory.
Additionally, fascists all were to be found in them in the positions of power.
Today, those ambitions and the factual formal independence have far more history and their back and therefore its unrealistic to think of a "full return" of those territories into the Russian sphere like a returning piece of one's country.
Someone like Putin can be guessed to know that (as he acts pretty rational).

On top of that, and that's something that should be very well known to people like him too: These former territories of the Rus' are plagued with corruption, crime, ill development and non-development so much in the present day - it's literally like an iron ball and chain tied your foot if you suddenly had to care for these areas.
Every intelligent statesman would actively refuse and try to make its way around having to deal with this.