People always talk about a potential WW3 everytime there is even the slightest confrontation between powerful countries but it never happens. At this point I'm convinced there will never be a WW3.
People always talk about a potential WW3 everytime there is even the slightest confrontation between powerful countries but it never happens. At this point I'm convinced there will never be a WW3.
I have two alternative takes.
WW3 has been going on since the start of the cold war and to this day, it's the just means that have changed. There are local wars, coups, etc, but more or less controlled. The biggest battle is for the people's minds (which helps with the coups, local conflicts, etc) and that's only heating up now. You couldn't have such a battle for brains without the internet before.
What made the previous two WW's possible, why involve the entire word? Because they were imperialist wars where countries were either empires themselves or they were colonies of those empires. So everyone got involved. Those were distinctly capitalist imperialist wars. There are still many colonies under different names and euphemisms now (NATO is a way for the US to have colonies in Europe, for example, or Japan), but still there are fewer who are willing to play that game. And the more independent states there are, the less is the chance to have another worldwide conflict. I feel the world is moving in that, multi-polar, direction, where WW3 is hopefully postponed forever. But we're living in very fucking interesting times, so who knows.
I'm on the side that WW3 is currently happening, it's just different than previous international conflicts. It's still a hot war, involving intense violent conflicts over resources through proxies, mercenaries, organized crime, and coups. The two primary sides in the conflict are: loosely sympathetic anti-imperialist elements and nations, and more tightly organized Anglo-American imperialist nations and capitalists. The anti-imperialist side is incredibly loose, since it's more diversely and comprised of working classes, national bourgeoisie (Russia), theocracies, and semi-feudal societies. The imperialists are much more easily and tightly defined, since they decide what the formal rules are for international conflict.
My pessimistic outlook is that we could be living in the complete collapse of all civilization. Surviving future historians 1000 years from now might have a framework where World War 1 to the upcoming collapse are seen as a single running event instigated by the boundaries of empire hitting their limit.
Optimistic outlook says that the anglo-American imperial dominance is on the way out and we're living in the dying embers just before a wave of positive changes.
oh god, I wish