Will there ever be another World War?

[Psychobabble]

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.

I think we have a winner. It's not only a war being fought in cyber space but also in the sphere of diplomacy and public media.

 

[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.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

I think we have a winner. It's not only a war being fought in cyber space but also in the sphere of diplomacy and public media.

Well i would consider public media part of "information". but i do agree we should include the two, yes.

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.

dont undersestimate this parasite we call humans ability to survive.

 

[Saidan]

WW3 will happen, eventually. But who knows, maybe at that point we are smart enough to fix our differences in a soccer match, instead of sending millions to their deaths.

 

[Dirge Eterna]

The core of professional soldiers will be used up quickly since the US has such a small military compared to many other countries. The new troops will be forced to use the lower level weapons so that we can train them fast enough to push them out to the battlefield.

Sorry, but what? Looking at Wikipedia, the US is roughly in the middle of the list of countries by military personnel per 1000 people, at about 7.3 total and 4.5 active. Sure, when it comes to numbers, the US is hardly at the top, but neither is it at the bottom.
And when it comes down to what really matter, military expenditure per capita, the US is second only to the UAE.

Military expenditures numbers really don't tell the story with the vast amount of wasted money and inside fraud that goes on. We are depending way too much on technology and we do not have a large enough military to support the war we are in now never mind a global conflict. If we actually had to defend the US and attack somewhere else we would be up a creek. The US has a total military force of 2,291,000 while Russia has 3,524,000 and China has 4,585,000. Even taking away the reserve forces and national guard we are woefully undermanned. Our current legal population is 313 million with another few million that aren't counted. That puts our military at less than 1% of the population.

With the current war grinding our forces up and causing many people to leave the service with mental and physical disabilities the core of experienced soldiers will be small. If a war turns into a meat grinder or a really spread out battlefield we would be forced to use the draft and the troops that are conscripted usually are no where near the equal of professional soldiers. And training less than motivated troops to use high tech weapons will take much longer than we would probably have.

 

[Daverson]

The only way there won't be another world war, is that if humanity manages to kill itself some other way first.

Cyberwarfare's good and all, but it really depends heavily on your enemy being extremely stupid (Stuxnet only worked because Iranian scientists couldn't resist jamming USB drives they'd found lying around into the computers that controlled their centrifuges). Remember, just because Chamberlain might let you get away with something, doesn't mean Churchill will.

 

[Old Father Eternity]

no. there is literally nothing to gain. war is about getting stuff. always.

Materialism is not the only driving force behind conflict.

 

[HellbirdIV]

There have been quite a few "World Wars" aside from the two "official" ones, this being any war where imperial and globalist influences spread the conflict to virtually every continent through alliances.

In the modern world however, such a war is growing increasingly unlikely as military alliances are no longer kept to intimidate potential enemies when the United Nations is supposed to be the main deciding factor in world peace and mediation. With modern communication and weapons technology, the large-scale war is being rendered somewhat obsolete.

 

[spartan231490]

I think it's inevitable. Look at history, look at the US. What nation in history has ever spent more money on the military than it's next 5 competitors combined and not used it? Even ignoring that, I think it's human nature, and therefore inevitable, the only question is when. Personally, I would bet within the century.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Sooner or later, yeah. Maybe not for a while, but the human race looks like it'd be around for quite a while yet, plenty of time for a world war.

 

[Nadia Castle]

The second half of the 20th century was just as violent as the first half, but the advent of nuclear weapons meant the fighting all took place in poorer countries whilst America and Europe were relatively untouched. Even China and Russia were fighting in what were officially called 'border incidents' but was effectively undeclared war. Could there be another world war? Not within our lifetime unless the US completely vanishes (and contrary to popular speculative fiction, it won't, compared to the Soviet Union it's an absolute monolith of stability). Never say never though.

Continent wide wars are probably still possible mind. The stronger third world nations are now starting to rub each other the wrong way not unlike the European powers did. In all likely hood the next big war will be between the rising nations, not against the already powerful ones. India and China have a lot of hatred for each other and Iran and Saudi Arabia are already fighting proxy wars all over the Middle East.

 

[MetalDooley]

WW3 will happen, eventually. But who knows, maybe at that point we are smart enough to fix our differences in a soccer match, instead of sending millions to their deaths.

Soccer?Christ no people already take that shit seriously enough as a sport without having it as a means of ending international disputes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War

I think a system like they used in the movie "Robot Jox" would be a better idea.International disputes settled by gladiatorial combat between opposing giant mechs

 

[OneCatch]

The core of professional soldiers will be used up quickly since the US has such a small military compared to many other countries. The new troops will be forced to use the lower level weapons so that we can train them fast enough to push them out to the battlefield.

Sorry, but what? Looking at Wikipedia, the US is roughly in the middle of the list of countries by military personnel per 1000 people, at about 7.3 total and 4.5 active. Sure, when it comes to numbers, the US is hardly at the top, but neither is it at the bottom.
And when it comes down to what really matter, military expenditure per capita, the US is second only to the UAE.

Military expenditures numbers really don't tell the story with the vast amount of wasted money and inside fraud that goes on. We are depending way too much on technology and we do not have a large enough military to support the war we are in now never mind a global conflict. If we actually had to defend the US and attack somewhere else we would be up a creek. The US has a total military force of 2,291,000 while Russia has 3,524,000 and China has 4,585,000. Even taking away the reserve forces and national guard we are woefully undermanned. Our current legal population is 313 million with another few million that aren't counted. That puts our military at less than 1% of the population.

With the current war grinding our forces up and causing many people to leave the service with mental and physical disabilities the core of experienced soldiers will be small. If a war turns into a meat grinder or a really spread out battlefield we would be forced to use the draft and the troops that are conscripted usually are no where near the equal of professional soldiers. And training less than motivated troops to use high tech weapons will take much longer than we would probably have.

Yeah, but ignoring nukes for the sake of the argument, who can actually attack the US? China has no expeditionary capability, even Russia doesn't have ability to project power anything like the US. Even if both declared war on the US tomorrow, a COD scenario with the enemy parachuting into New York or LA is literally impossible. They'd have to cross the world's two largest oceans for a start, going through the US Navy - which is probably the most globally dominant navy in human history. For comparison, the US Navy has 19 aircraft carriers - more than the rest of the world combined. China has one... that they bought second hand and retrofitted.
Sure, both could attack US bases and allies in Europe and Asia, but then they declare war on everyone else too, and the US economy remains intact and starts churning out tanks by the thousand. The Russians could overrun significant parts of Europe but couldn't win against NATO, the Chinese could probably do some serious damage in mainland Asia but would be navally stalled and take horrific casualties elsewhere because the PLA is reliant on large quantities of outdated (albeit improved) equipment. And that's when the US isn't even on a war footing.

And current wars are a drop in the ocean compared to world wars (or even historical regional conflicts). There have been about 8,000 Western allied fatalities after a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is roughly comparable to, say, Iwo Jima, which took place over a single month. It's about a tenth of the US fatalities in Vietnam.
A significant portion of your military is essentially 'idle' in various strategic bases in the Middle East, Asia, Germany, and so on - in some cases by themselves outclassing the entire local militaries in those places.
Though smaller conflicts are horrible for those participating in them and cost a lot of money, on the grand scale of things nothing since Vietnam has even made the US break a sweat militarily.

I actually agree that the US military does have the ratio between quality and quantity a bit too far in favour of quality, and I'm not saying that another world war won't happen at some point in the future, but it's nowhere near as immediately perilous as you're suggesting, and it's difficult to overstate just how dominant the US is militarily at the moment.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

Except for the whole people not dying thing, yeah, it's almost exactly like a real war.

I don't see how anyone can say there won't ever be another war. For one thing, humans are notorious for forgetting their history. For another, our last world wars didn't actually involve the whole world- they just involved the industrialized parts of the world (and their colonies) that European powers cared about. All you need is a sufficient number of big players to get involved that people call it a world war, and then that's what it is.

People are not dieing, or are they. Would you not say that controlling information, which can lead to indirect death of people, would still be casualties of such war? To take a simpel example imagine there is a cure for cancer, however a opposite country steals it, deletes the information about the cure and hides it. would then not people who could be cured be casualties of the conflict?

 

[Auron225]

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.

I can see your point standing for the next century or two, but what about after that when even peoples great-great-grandparents never experienced it? War won't be memories for people anymore, they'll be myths, legends and stories. I imagine most people will still learn from them but all it takes is one moron in power to do one stupid thing, like actually using nuclear weapons.

I can't see one happening anytime soon but eventually, I'd be surprised if there wasn't.

 

[HardkorSB]

So what do you think? Is another world war inevitable? How soon? Will it definetly be fought with nuclear weapons? And why?

In my opinion, world wars these days are fought in the field of economics. You don't go and bomb countries, you buy out their banks and companies. You don't kill people, you make them work for you.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I thought it would fun to bring up this depressing topic. And I realise that most of us have heard that old saying:

?I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.? -Albert Einstein

So what do you think? Is another world war inevitable? How soon? Will it definetly be fought with nuclear weapons? And why?

And please be respectful of everyone's opinions.

In theory I don't see that happening given the rise of globalization, the IMF, IGO's and NGO's and the interdependence that results from having large scale international trade. Unlike the time during the League of Nations, there is a lot more in place to prevent the next "global war".

Now if your asking me if superpowers might but heads in the future if technology doesn't meet the demands for the ever increasing need for more natural resources and energy, well..... I rather not think about it.