do you think we are going into ww3?
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
It's possible none of those would technically be WW3 by itself, perhaps the start of heavier US commitment in the first of those conflicts might be perceived as the opportunity for the others to get started. Maybe even some less obvious conflicts are merely waiting for NATO to be preoccupied (e.g. random colonies being invaded or declaring independence). The US will be forced into taking at least one L, or switching back to a war economy.
- India vs Pakistan
- ISIS expansion
- Water Wars (multiple locations)
- USA invading Mexico
- Syrian Civil War
- Greenland War
- IDK if Denmark can defend Greenland, but NATO could article5/split
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
India vs Pakistan
not plausible, neither of them are that stupid
Afghanistan vs. Pakistan, or Iran, is infinitely more likely. Pashtun supremacists (yea the Taliban) are actually stupid af
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
Already there
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
I sure hope so
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
UK went through industrialization leading to its empire, and the US was the industrial power during its ascent. Same thing with Japan before WWII.
Many imoeralistic powers seem to go through big industrial growth before expansion.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
Sure, but that evidently doesn't seem to be the course the PRC is taking. Rather, as Marxist-Leninists, they appear to be more interested in building up the Global South through favorable trade deals as an investment in future customers for their exports. This is fundamentally a different strategy from focusing on exporting financial and industrial Capital to the Global South. Further, China is too populous to offload their productive forces to the Global South, even if we doubt them as dedicated Communists it doesn't appear to be an economically viable strategy to adopt an Imperialist stance to begin with.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
As the Axis, yes
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
Not saying any of these would cause WW3, but remeber that, depending on who you ask, WW2 started:
- when Germany and Russia invaded Poland in 1939
- when Germany invaded Checkoslovakia in 1938
- when Japan invaded China in 1937
there is no single point of start for a war, just many actions of variable intensity that escalate
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
In the long term, yes. The bourgeoisie are rich and comfortable with no desire for a war that could jeopardize their position. However, they have lots of financial incentives for military spending because it's rife with corruption. As such, they do a lot of saber-rattling to make WWIII seem like a genuine possibility, while also fighting in proxy wars around the globe.
But the problem is, they're playing with forces beyond their control. If you have a generation raised on constant propaganda to genuinely hate other countries, then all it takes is a couple people in the wrong positions at the wrong time who aren't in on the game. Right now, the rabid dog is on the leash of the bourgeoisie, but the gamble they've been making is that they can keep pumping steroids into it forever and never lose control.
Furthermore, wasting all this money on war and militarism has allowed China to emerge as a credible threat to their global hegemony. China is sitting back and focusing on domestic economic development, and they are winning the peace while the US burns itself out. What happens when the only area in which the US has an advantage is the military? Are people really going to accept becoming #2, or are they going to force a confrontation? Given that we're talking about Americans, who are 1) Riled up on propaganda, 2) Preoccupied with being "#1," and 3) Unused to experiencing the effects of fucking around firsthand, it seems almost inevitable. Ofc, it's true that we somehow maintained a Cold War with the USSR for decades, but it's different today because conditions are declining and the far-right is growing stronger every day.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
Belt and roads is China's attempt to do exactly what we've been doing with the global south, invest for influence and put them on a debt treadmill. Build infrastructure, pressure them to take on more debt with new projects, say it's time for austerity, open up more foreign investments, use pressure to buy up raw resources, etc
It's worth mentioning Coca-Cola... You can get American products everywhere, opening them up as a new market isn't a different strategy, it's part of the process
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
Is there actual evidence of these debt traps, or is that just an assumed motivation? Again, China's financial Capital is largely held by the State, not private entities. Big difference in motivation compared to, say, US finance Capital, which is largely Private.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
I think some would argue that class warfare is a cold war already happening.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
This war is about control, not by weapons but by controlling minds. It's fairly obvious. Social media forms opinions. It's also full of bubbles where people get reinforcement for their existing beliefs. What people believe doesn't matter so much, just that their beliefs are shaped by social media.
Social media platforms are controlled by big tech algorithms, so they in turn control what information should surface. On computers and phones, you have survellience apps running (called AI) that collects information about each users private life. This is all combined with other info to build an accurate profile of everyone having a device using social media or the web.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
This might be his exit strategy. This is how he can get a third term.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
I'm going to look at it more in terms of how long a European peace lasted.
The Napoleonic wars ended with the Concert of Europe, a peace that was able to last until World War I and depended on a balance of power that lasted for almost a century.
An equivalent system was set up after World War II with a peace anchored by the Allied Powers, decolonization, and the US-Soviet rivalry. That system has lasted for about 80 years and is showing significant strain.
I don't know how long this system will last, but it doesn't seem like it will last for much longer. Trump's election seems to be hastening that end.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
On average it takes ~21 years between world wars, so it's about the time since we're 60 years late on schedule
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
An equivalent system was set up after World War II with a peace anchored by the Allied Powers, decolonization, and the US-Soviet rivalry. That system has lasted for about 80 years and is showing significant strain.
What? No it hasn't. The cold war ended by 1992 at the latest. At that point the US achieved total, unipolar hegemony over the world and began exercising it. Clinton's "interventions" in Kosovo, Africa, etc. The Bush era Neo-Cons, those were all results of a new era of unchallenged American power and hegemony. That marked a new era.
Right now the world, led by China and Russia as well as other members of BRICS are trying to buck that total dominance and hegemony of the US and set up a multi-polar world but the US is not letting go, it is not ceding power, it has replaced international law as set out in agreement with the victorious powers of WW2 with "rules based order" which means its way or the high-way, the rule of their might and their wants and nothing else matters. Trump is flexing that built up power, the fact they control SWIFT, the fact the dollar is world reserve currency, their incredible ability to do sanctions to anyone anywhere and put a big hurt on them for defying US interests and wants. He's unleashing the full might, threatening sanctions, tariffs, straight up invasion to take Greenland or the Panama Canal, etc. All to do what? To maintain US primacy, to prevent the emergence of a multi-polar world where the US doesn't dominate everyone else and set the terms and rules for the entire world.
So there are movements to try and strive towards a Westphalian (multi-polar) order led by China, Russia, and followed in those steps by other BRICS nations but they are cautious, they don't want to anger the US and even China still backs down if the threats of sanctions gets too big. So right now we're in a struggle to determine what kind of world we have either a continuation, a hardening of US empire and unipolar hegemony, unchallenged dominance of the world and its peoples to their dictates and benefits or else a multi-polar world structured around Westphalian principles of sovereignty of individual nations and cooperation and peace born out of multiple strong powers checking each other's ambitions against other weaker nations.
The US ended an era of struggle and some independence for nations on its own after it won the cold war, it chose to build up its power, to break international law (Yugoslavia, Iraq, war on terror, sanctions regimes galore, etc), to replace it with "rules based order" which no one can solidly define the rules of because they're ever shifted based on the wants and needs of the US.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
It has still been a relatively peaceful time in human history post fall of the Soviet Union even when you include Iraqi and Afghani deaths as a proportion to the world's population. Wars still happened in that relative time of peace, but those conflicts were relatively contained to not create a new great power war.
Great powers haven't entered in open conflict on the scale of World War II, which was chosen as a bench mark.
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] last edited by
I mean, unless there is no major global war from now until the heat death of the universe or some other extinction level event, aren't we just perpetually going towards WW3?