Well there ain't no time to wonder why, Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
March 12, 2017 8:06 PM   Subscribe

Although there has been no major combat between the great powers since the Second World War, there are three key fronts emerging that make the prospect of a third global conflict alarmingly conceivable.

Maybe we are already there.
posted by adamvasco (57 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yeah, open up the Pearly Gates...
posted by jim in austin at 8:40 PM on March 12, 2017


We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
posted by parki at 8:41 PM on March 12, 2017


*holds up monkey's paw*

"I wish to not die from the effects of climate change."
posted by Behemoth at 8:44 PM on March 12, 2017 [86 favorites]


I also think about it in terms of how, in 1914, Western Europe had not experienced significant warfare since the Franco-Prussian war, a forty year gap.... which meant that most had lived their lives in peace, and knew only of war a tale from older generations or distant lands.

Similarly, there just isn't a deep horror of war in Western culture anymore (or in China, speaking from anecdotal experience). Nobody's been bombed out, very few even remember the times of rationing. I think that's just made everybody cavalier towards the realities of prolonged warfare.

History does repeat itself, but it charges more for the lesson every time.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 8:51 PM on March 12, 2017 [61 favorites]


"I wish to not die from the effects of climate change."

Also likely to be a major cause of conflict.
posted by Artw at 8:54 PM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Welp, nuclear winter would solve the global warming problem!

The election of orange overlord has kicked the switch to our accelerated demise, no doubt about that. We don't know the particulars yet but many of us know in our bones that things are fundamentally different now. It's chilling.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 9:20 PM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]




Well, it sounds less like three key fronts and just one really huge one: The United States
posted by FJT at 9:42 PM on March 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


Wasn't a lot of criticism of Huntington not that his prediction of a clash of civilizations was ridiculous, but that it seemed so strongly rooted in an imperialist (and more than slightly racist) desire for such a clash? I mean, Bannon clearly wants a clash of civilizations more than anything else. There's been a pretty concerted effort to make this happen for quite some time now, and it's aided and abetted by the fervent belief by many on both ends of the political spectrum (although I hate the phrase "the political spectrum"), that much of the foreign policy of the last 16 years has, in fact, made us safer. That scares me, because people want a big conflict to happen, and lots of people will think it really is for the best. Maybe less so now that Bannon and Trump are in office, but the seeds were planted a while ago just the same.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:10 PM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also, that military.com article cites thereligionofpeace.com as a source on terror statistics, which is really shitty considering they are an openly anti-Muslim site. I won't make a glib comparison for effect, but I'll just say I'd rather not see them be treated as, you know, just some helpful information aggregator.

Although upon closer reading of that article, I'll just say "yikes" and leave it at that. "It is a struggle that has waxed and waned across Europe and the Mediterranean world since the 8th century" -- I guess I shouldn't expect military.com to be advocates for peace, but still...
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:14 PM on March 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah, the second article is straight-up Islamophobia with a side order of thirsting for Moar War. (The last paragraph is pretty chilling.)

The first article is better, but it neglects something key: the US makes up 40% of military expenditures worldwide, and spends as much as the next ten competitors combined. This should be kept in mind in the face of attempts to make us fear Russia, China, or terrorists.

Of course, everything is less safe with Trump in charge. He's apparently already ramping up attacks on civilians in the Mideast.
posted by zompist at 10:38 PM on March 12, 2017 [14 favorites]


Well it's a good thing that massive military spending never started any world wars.

From that first article:
China will eventually overtake the US in economic terms but US supreme military dominance is unchallenged. This is a dangerous discrepancy as it means that the US will use this military power to guarantee its economic prerogative – particularly as a massive national security apparatus now seems to dictate US foreign policy. As Obama has put it, the US is exceptional because it acts.
posted by XMLicious at 10:46 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


What level of conflict would it take for it to directly affect the day-to-day lives of a majority of Americans who aren't connected to the military, in practical ways like rationing, blackouts, etc (much less the risk of actual physical harm)?
posted by gottabefunky at 10:50 PM on March 12, 2017


The last time America was "great" in the way a Trump voter wants was in the post WW2 boom while the rest of the world was destroyed. They're probably looking forward to another world war. (Of course, I am probably giving them too much credit for historical awareness and basic intelligence here, I'm sure none of them would even recognise that fact so they aren't actually hoping for another war for that reason).
posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:54 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


What level of conflict would it take for it to directly affect the day-to-day lives of a majority of Americans who aren't connected to the military, in practical ways like rationing, blackouts

Does USA still have the draft?
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 11:06 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


>the US makes up 40% of military expenditures worldwide, and spends as much as the next ten competitors combined. This should be kept in mind in the face of attempts to make us fear Russia, China, or terrorists.

There was an NYT Op-Ed piece a few weeks back that mentioned one horrifying prospect:

America must also be mindful of the danger that China and Russia could form a strategic alliance. For this reason, the United States must take care not to act toward China as though it were a subordinate: this would almost guarantee a closer tie between China and Russia.
posted by invisible ink at 11:07 PM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, that and China has lent USA bazillions of dollars. If China got pissed and called in their debt all at once, US would be bankrupted.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 11:11 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


From the first article: "One might even argue that capitalism often resolves systemic economic crises through war."

It attempts to, at least, at the cost of millions of lives. Next time around, it's likely to be billions of lives.

There is no way to peaceably resolve the crisis-ridden system. That's the lesson of the Twentieth Century. The only way to stop this drive to war is to expose the underlying reasons for it and to organize against it.

The current political system of nation states is fundamentally incompatible with our globalized economy. The capitalist system of privatized profit and private ownership inevitably leads to war.
posted by action man bow-tie at 11:15 PM on March 12, 2017 [6 favorites]




China has lent USA bazillions of dollars. If China got pissed and called in their debt all at once, US would be bankrupt

Isn't that debt denominated in US dollars?
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:21 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


people want a big conflict to happen, and lots of people will think it really is for the best.

Yep. This began in the Bush2 era but there are a significant percentage of American's that believe for religious reasons that a big conflict is coming, the whole zionist/ evangelical second coming thing. And while that belief is obviously nucking futz, it's been code-spoken so much that the larger population is coming to accept the basic tenets that we inevitably will have a big culture based war. And of course the other side is already prepped and ready to go by the past 20 years of instability and cultural genocides. Well the apparent
"other side", in reality there are many fronts as this article mentions.
posted by fshgrl at 11:30 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


What level of conflict would it take for it to directly affect the day-to-day lives of a majority of Americans who aren't connected to the military, in practical ways like rationing, blackouts, etc (much less the risk of actual physical harm)?

Not much. Modern life and those standards of living in the US are really quite tenuous and fragile. And the world knows it.

A huge part of the problem is that most of our collective food (and fuel) supply is a complicated web of just in time delivery. An alarming amount of that food supply is air freight from other parts of the world, which is why your local supermarket has strawberries in winter and other luxuries we take for granted today.

In fact, much of our modern life involves importing lots and lots of things, often also following just in time business methods, but I don't think people generally grasp how much, and how often this is the case.

It's a lot. This system of highly agile global commerce is an incredibly precisely timed and fragile machine. Basically everything you could name or see around you that isn't a hand made or bespoke item that was made in the last 20-odd years follows this globalized web of commerce.

Locally, our water systems require power. Our cities and lights still overwhelmingly require endless trainloads of coal and natural gas. Most of our personal transportation requires an equally complicated web of just in time delivery of gasoline via pipelines and trucking.

In normal, non-panicked operation your average large chain grocery store turns over a major portion of its stock in around 3-7 days, and would be quickly emptied without regular and precise restocking.

Think of all of the things that you use every day in your life that you might take for granted, things that involve someone showing up to work on time to do their job, or the timely transport and distribution of food and everything else.

Fresh water. Gas at the gas station. A drive-able system of roads and freeways. Bridges that can be crossed. Fragile pipelines full of gasoline. Farms, and the fuel to run them. Power to run cell phone towers and light up fragile fiber optic cables. Power for the servers that run the internet.

You only have to damage small parts of this network before it starts to go really wonky. Knock out the roads and people can't show up to work even if they wanted to. Unreliable power means less accurate infrastructure, communications and data for everything. Take out a major pipeline or refinery and it doesn't matter if the roads still work, no one has any gas and the maybe the electricity is also out as a direct result.

We are much more vulnerable than we were during, say, WW2, even assuming an entirely overseas hypothetical war. People generally don't have victory gardens or the space to plant them. People don't have cellars full of canned or local food - or local food networks or relationships at all.

Sorry for the doom and gloom, but war is utterly disastrous and terrible.

If war is the antonym of peace, the definition of peace is a full belly, a warm safe place to sleep and the certainty that the labors you've planted today will be there to fruit tomorrow.
posted by loquacious at 11:41 PM on March 12, 2017 [75 favorites]


Correction, Japan has edged out China as largest holder of US debt. Russia holds 12 bn.

As of late 2016, the yuan is now a reserve currency of the IMF.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 11:43 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I really wonder where all the "lol another war will never happen, the economies are interconnected too heavily" posters went.

Which incidentally was a very popular thesis right before World War I.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:54 PM on March 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


That WELL talk is some really great, or at least pithy, stuff hosted by two ol' cyberpunks. Bruce Sterling is always as blasé and wry and contrarian as ever.

They do discuss specifics about the current geopolitical situation- page 1 is a long discussion about the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, and page 2 is about the awfulness of the GOP also-rans of 2016, here's a few more int'l tinderboxes that might spark the fire, and page 4 is hot takes on climate change and how Trump and/or China affect it or don't.

Some good links from that discussion, and germane to the actual subject in the OP-

Stephen Hawking op-ed: "This is the most dangerous time for our planet"

The Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum. Sterling mocks an American counterpart report:
There's one thing you can always depend on in these intelligence reports: the American intelligence community itself is never a hazard to American national security. Obviously they've screwed up a whole lot lately, but they never put their own disastrous misjudgments front and center.
... -
I find [The Global Risks Report] a lot more credible than the similar patriotic effort from the United States "intelligence community."

*The spooks are not a "community." Too bad for them. The planet's Davos rich guys are much more a "community." Too bad for us.
Human Rights Watch report on populist demagogues

And finally, a little poisonsweet hope from Sterling:
https://thewalrus.ca/bring-on-the-flood/

*A critic really digging the dystopia here. He jabs his thumb deep in it when he declares that the true joy of the post-apocalypse is getting today over with.

*Okay, I get it why dystopia is popular now, but that is a genuinely problematic sensibility. Today really WILL be over with, it's crumbling, we're gonna be knee-deep in the ruins of the unsustainable. However, we don't have to get all ruin-porn about that. Even if that is our cultural sensibility, we could up our game and do it with better taste.

*Scary political disaster, Nazism, Fascism -- okay, a lot of people simply lived through that historic period. It didn't last all that long. In fact it was only melodramatic creeps like Hitler who really thought it was a Thousand Year Reich that deserved to end in a totalizing scorched-earth Gotterdammerung. If you tremble all over from a prospect like that, you're actually buying into the worldview of the problem.

*Germany, Italy and Japan were all smoldering ruins in the 1940s and quite lively, prosperous, inventive places in the 1960s. Strange, but true.
And from his co-host, Jon-Lebkowsky:
The wild swing from the solid stability of an Obama administration to the chaotic instability of a Trump administration is a dramatic change, but change is inevitable, and as Bruce suggests, the world keeps spinning. Somewhere in the world there is profound suffering and loss, elsewhere there is wonder and achievement. We may see large scale global catastrophes, nuclear disasters or wars, supervolcanoes blasting the atmosphere, unlivable climate, planetary death and destruction. But I recall that, when Pynchon published Gravity's Rainbow, one of my fellow students in an honors class called "The Question of Authority in Literature" referred to it as "another shaggy apocalypse story."

Shaggy apocalypse stories abound, from the bearded street-corner "end is near" cartoon trope to the religious myths of an end-time. Buddha would likely have chuckled at apocalyptic thinking and myth.

But there's only one time, and it's now... refrigerator humming, garbage cans banging, birds snacking birdseed in the backyard, and Jon L. tapping keys on his Mac.

I think we would all benefit by spending more time right here, right now... by getting to know ourselves, and the limitations and multiplicities of our 'self,' and by spending a little less time reading Facebook and Twitter posts, or real or fake news, or apocalyptic wranglings... and more time sitting quietly, doing nothing. counting our breaths.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:00 AM on March 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


China owns 8% of the US federal debt. They can't "call in the debt". They're not banks, they are bondholders.
posted by zompist at 12:03 AM on March 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


Bitcoin will save us all.
posted by Artw at 12:04 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


This began in the Bush2 era but there are a significant percentage of American's that believe for religious reasons that a big conflict is coming, the whole zionist/ evangelical second coming thing

Actually, what scares me even more than them is the memory of how many people I knew back in 2003 lectured me on how quick and easy the first Gulf War was, and how bad Hussein was, etc. etc. And then later, how many people lectured me on the precision of drones and how necessary they were to stop people who wanted to kill Americans, etc. etc.

They were blue voters, all of them, and yeah on balance violence is bad, they said, but this is for our safety, and our enemies don't leave us with much of a choice. I remember that and I worry the next big war will start with "yeah, in theory the world would be perfect, but we have to be realistic and pragmatic here."
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:06 AM on March 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


China just has to sell all the bonds they have, with will throw the yields so low that our interest rates will have to go into hyperinflation territory to get anyone to buy them.... and thus end the Dollar's reserve currency status.
Once that happens, figure the US standard of living gets cut by somewhere between 60 and 98%.

It's going to happen eventually, Trump is only likely to hasten it a bit.
posted by MikeWarot at 12:16 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Browser update downloads should come with a Nukemap bookmark.
posted by fredludd at 1:21 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


I really wonder where all the "lol another war will never happen, the economies are interconnected too heavily" posters went.

Which incidentally was a very popular thesis right before World War I.


I think there's two ideas related to this. One is the pre-WWI idea that you pointed out that it isn't in any country's economic self-interest to fight a war against another country that it is doing business with.

The second is the one championed by Cordell Hull and I think was his observation of what partly caused the rise of Nazi Germany: That tariffs created economic rivalries between nations and if you reduced these barriers then you would have less economic rivalries and thus "have a reasonable chance for lasting peace."

I think the latter is a sound idea, especially since it doesn't deal in absolutes. After going through two world wars, Hull probably didn't want to make any guarantees that couldn't be backed up.
posted by FJT at 1:50 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


> What level of conflict would it take for it to directly affect the day-to-day lives
> of a majority of Americans [..]
>> Not much. Modern life and those standards of living in the US are really quite tenuous and fragile.


Indeed. Not in the US but on one edge of the city (of about 100K) that I live near, there are a couple of large supermarkets quite close together. A few years ago one of them was expanding and had to close for a very few days for building works. This was advertised well in advance of course. On about day three I happened to go into the other one and it was already a seething mass of trolley warriors fighting over scraps in the grocery aisles. Well, something scarily like that anyway. It certainly scared me, exposing just how close to the edge we always are.

The recent temporary shortage of a few key vegetables here in the UK, caused by a spell of bad weather in Spain where they mostly come from, was similarly something of an object lesson. They outcry was pathetic really, especially given the likely overlap between outcriers and brexit voters - I can't imagine what they think is coming :(
posted by merlynkline at 2:12 AM on March 13, 2017 [10 favorites]


It certainly scared me, exposing just how close to the edge we always are.

And people think I'm crazy for having a couple of weeks emergency supplies. It is a funny attitude in the UK - complacency - maybe that is a downside to a welfare system, I dunno. I've given up even trying to bring climate change/war/being even a little prepared into conversations with friends and family.
posted by twistedonion at 2:41 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


> It is a funny attitude in the UK - complacency
Yeah. Sort of. I have a productive garden in my little isolated country spot and I have sometimes liked to feel a little smug about how helpful this would be in such times. But really I know that should something bad happen (like a supermarket shutting down for more than four days :/ ) then a ravening horde would appear over the hill from the city and that would be that. Much the same would apply to a couple of weeks of emergency supplies, I suspect :( And really, anything I need to be that concerned about would probably last more than a couple of weeks :(
posted by merlynkline at 2:55 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


> complacency - maybe that is a downside to a welfare system
If that's a downside, I'll take it in spades - not having to worry every day about an ordinary event like wanting to change jobs because my employer is insufferable or breaking a leg or whatever becoming a catastrophic life-changing disaster surely beats maybe not worrying enough about the impossibility of properly preparing for a very unlikely actual catastrophic event.
posted by merlynkline at 3:02 AM on March 13, 2017 [5 favorites]


Russia’s expanding military and the worrying noises from Donald Trump have Norway spending vast sums on defence.

Robert Kagan: Backing Into World War III.
posted by adamvasco at 4:52 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


Also likely to be a major cause of conflict.

I think it is the real cause: the fascists don't really think climate change isn't real, they just think they can come out ahead as it plays out by siding with the nation best poised to control the most legacy fossil fuel during the transition, as new oil fields open up. They want ambiguity over the question as a tactic to help obscure their real motives, which are getting the U.S. on a global war footing to fight for resources.

Managing the consequences of climate change and retooling is going to require some ongoing, transitional dependence on fossil fuels--whoever has control over the last big supplies of it on Earth, by their calculation, will be the most powerful, so they're doing what the type always does and forming cronying alliances with bullies.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:04 AM on March 13, 2017 [14 favorites]


Russia’s expanding military and the worrying noises from Donald Trump have Norway spending vast sums on defence.

Yeah but that's mostly on F-35s, so...
posted by wilful at 5:21 AM on March 13, 2017


Paying into my pension feels like an almost religious act of faith these days.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:30 AM on March 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Here's Erdogan being greeted by some young men cosplaying as Ottoman troops.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:50 AM on March 13, 2017


There is so much high-tech military hardware in the world today that it's hard to even imagine how bad it could be. That's why I turn to Commissar Binkov for a place to start.

USA vs China
Australia vs Indonesia
posted by sfenders at 6:06 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


there just isn't a deep horror of war in Western culture anymore

Bring back the draft, include women in combat roles, and watch that change. (US centric, here, of course.)

the solid stability of an Obama administration...

Yeah, about that....
posted by IndigoJones at 7:59 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


One of my great worries is that as Trump policies make things on the US domestic front gradually shittier and shittier, the consequent drop in approval numbers will make a big war very appealing to the Trump/GOP government.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:33 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


If Trump is our president, will a big war be against China, with Russia our ally?
posted by Postroad at 8:51 AM on March 13, 2017


They're undoubtedly hoping for some kind of war - Probably something nicely containable, but the problem there is they are horrifically incompetent even at evil.
posted by Artw at 8:51 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Then there's the prospect of US inaction making Russia overconfident, overstepping themselves in Europe and a hot war kicking off there.
posted by Artw at 8:52 AM on March 13, 2017


Yeah, I don't know what the whole Russian deal and it's implications are, but seeing Sweden reinstate their draft made me say "huh."
posted by mr. digits at 9:04 AM on March 13, 2017


If Trump is our president, will a big war be against China, with Russia our ally?

My speculation is that's exactly the calculation: under the past two administrations, we've had to help support China's efforts to secure access to oil, so the Realpolitik wonks probably figure it'd be a losing bet to ally with them when the conflicts really start heating up, which Trump seems to actively want so he can further consolidate power under the Republican's pet theory about the unitary executive wartime powers. All the reorganization he's doing points conspicuously that way, like they're expecting this within his first term.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:05 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Bring back the draft, include women in combat roles, and watch that change. (US centric, here, of course.)

All depends very much on how and who implements it. In the wrong hands, it could just be used as a way to indoctrinate people and to bully others to fall in line.
posted by FJT at 10:08 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


The current political system of nation states is fundamentally incompatible with our globalized economy. The capitalist system of privatized profit and private ownership inevitably leads to war.

The problem with this oft repeated claim is that it simply isn't supported by empirical evidence. States that trade with each other are less likely to fight wars or even have lower level disputes. When they states that trade a lot do have disputes, they are less likely to escalate. States that sign trade agreements with each other do the same thing. Similar patterns hold for financial interdependence. The notion that WWI was a failure of economic interdependence has been shown to be wrong (see Gartzke and Lupu in International Security, Gowa's paper in the BJPS).
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:29 AM on March 13, 2017


My previous assessment is that Trump is a businessman who ultimately doesn't want global thermonuclear war if only because it's bad for his business, or the legacy he intends to leave to his family. I don't see him doing much more than the Obama administration did in the Middle East, except more incompetently and with more blowback, but after Iraq the American public is clearly adverse to boots on the ground without sufficient provocation. In the South China Sea the U.S. might get into brinksmanship but unless the Chinese economy and/or government implodes- in which case the world has a lot more to worry about- cooler heads will prevail. This assessment is only reinforced by his cabinet being full of moneymen who likewise don't want world war blowing up their interests.

It is quite possible the administration will get the U.S. in quagmires through adventurism, though. Special forces mucking about in Latin America, perhaps. Venezuela is nearly a failed state- and has oil, several Central American nations are treading water- has gangs and sends refugees, Mexico has drugs, gangs, and sends refugees. Since this administration seems to desire disengagement from the Middle East (or they claim to- the Yemen raid would belie that), perhaps they'll pivot back to the Western hemisphere and throw American lives and treasure at meddling with our southern neighbors again. Especially if they can use the pretext of preventing refugees. My main point is that don't fret about the end of the world, when there are so many more localized- but still bloody and needless- conflicts we might end up waging.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:38 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump? Bannon is the one to worry about, and he's a very different animal than Trump. He's a true believer whereas Trump is an opportunist.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 11:02 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


When they remove the present incumbent you get Pence who has been a reliable stalwart throughout his public life in the cause of Christian jihad.. ( Long read with some frightening insights not least the tie in with Erik Prince's family)
posted by adamvasco at 12:25 PM on March 13, 2017


They're all the one to worry about, really.
posted by reprise the theme song and roll the credits at 12:32 PM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Trump administration is concerning all the way down to Barron and frankly we don;t know anything about him.
posted by Artw at 12:34 PM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


The sooner we all wipe one another out the better, as far as I'm concerned. I am totally prepared, I spent last night watching EDC videos on YouTube and know the best LED flashlight, tactical pen, and wallet-sized multitool. I will be fine but I pity you poor fools who do not have a paracord keychain.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:34 PM on March 13, 2017


Metafilter– the original Cold War mouthpiece of the American establishment.
posted by 4ster at 5:34 PM on March 13, 2017


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