[roarer]

Well AS..it seems that you are not assured that there would be a world war..let alone who would be the warring countries. And I am not surprised.
We are discussing this issue....whilst we overlooked a very important aspect of world occurance which may have a deterrent against the commencement of a world war....that of globalisation.
As far as I can understand....globalisation permits countries to INVEST in each other's financial infrastructure. I believe that every country on the planet is involved. Now as I see it.....say for example...the USA has millions of dollars of INVESTMENT in China and vice versa...I would be very much surprised that China and the USA would start a war between them....which would have the potential of destroying millions of dollars of investments in each of those countries. And so forth with other countries.
Now I am not a scientist. I am not a graduate of any University....I am just a Secondary School graduate...and a Clerk by trade..if you can call it a trade.....but that is the way I see it.

[VAlibrarian]

Clearly I do not share the convictions of many on this page regarding the nature of future disasters. WW3 seems less likely than other scenarios for serious human tough times. I do not see an obvious motive for a major power such as USA, Europe, or China to initiate a nuclear exchange. The logic of MAD still holds as far as I can tell. Possible for a second rate power such as Pakistan, Iran, or North Korea to bring it on by using a nuke and miscalculating the obvious result? Possible, but it seems that many of these nations do crave to join the nuclear club for defensive reasons- to eliminate the possibility that USA will deal with them as it dealt with Iraq.

To me, however, the chance of economic turmoil, famine, mass migrations, etc., as a result of resource depletion or environmental disaster or feverish competition for decreasing resources is a possible recipe for a very tough time. The fact is that we are on course for this to happen, UNLESS we can avoid it through scientific discovery, international cooperation, etc. It is not an unlikely event- it is a certainty unless we figure out how to avoid it. Nuclear war is something that would only happen if someone makes a conscious decision to make it happen.
Okay, what if you put the two together and say, WW3 will happen when competition for scarce resources on a degraded planet combines with a miscalculation and someone hits the red button. But if that's your theory, you are saying that scarce resources and environmental factors will cause WW3.

chris wiegard

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by roarer
Well AS..it seems that you are not assured that there would be a world war..let alone who would be the warring countries. And I am not surprised.

The future is not something we can determine with certainty; we can merely assign probabilities to different scenarios.

quote:
We are discussing this issue....whilst we overlooked a very important aspect of world occurance which may have a deterrent against the commencement of a world war....that of globalisation.
As far as I can understand....globalisation permits countries to INVEST in each other's financial infrastructure. I believe that every country on the planet is involved. Now as I see it.....say for example...the USA has millions of dollars of INVESTMENT in China and vice versa...I would be very much surprised that China and the USA would start a war between them....which would have the potential of destroying millions of dollars of investments in each of those countries. And so forth with other countries.
Now I am not a scientist. I am not a graduate of any University....I am just a Secondary School graduate...and a Clerk by trade..if you can call it a trade.....but that is the way I see it.

Firstly, what I suggested was  the most likely cause of a war between the USA and China is not a case of a deliberate action with a carefully judged cost, but rather a game of brinkmanship that goes too far.  In this scenario, one can easily create a scenario where the country initiating the war would find itself severely damaged by the war (bear in mind that both the first and second world wars bankrupted all of the European powers, yet it did not prevent the European powers from commencing the wars).

You earlier referred to the first Gulf War in defence of Kuwait, but that is a classic case of brinkmanship that went wrong.  Saddam Hussain had judged that if he were to invade Kuwait he would not face any American objections, and that the Americans would see it as a piece of local difficulty that they do not need to get themselves involved in (there are many rumours that certain American officials actually said as much to Saddam Hussain).  This was a misjudgement on the part of Saddam Hussain, and the Americans (with major British support, possibly even originally encouraged by the British) did not regard it as merely a local difficulty that they did not need to involve themselves in.  I have no doubt that if Saddam Hussain had been aware of the US and British reaction before the invasion, that he would never have instigated the invasion.  This is exactly the kind of misunderstanding, or misjudgement, that could start World War Three.

One of the innovations that came into play after the Cuban missile crises was the installation of the hotline between Moscow and Washington precisely to reduce the probability of such misunderstandings happening between the two powers.  Maybe such a hotline between Baghdad and Washington could have averted the first Gulf War.

Secondly, it must not be considered inevitable that the present trend towards ever more open trade will continue.  There are constant accusations of unfair trading between the USA and China, and there continue to be vested interests in both countries that want a more protectionist trade policy.

George

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by VAlibrarian
Clearly I do not share the convictions of many on this page regarding the nature of future disasters. WW3 seems less likely than other scenarios for serious human tough times. I do not see an obvious motive for a major power such as USA, Europe, or China to initiate a nuclear exchange. The logic of MAD still holds as far as I can tell. Possible for a second rate power such as Pakistan, Iran, or North Korea to bring it on by using a nuke and miscalculating the obvious result? Possible, but it seems that many of these nations do crave to join the nuclear club for defensive reasons- to eliminate the possibility that USA will deal with them as it dealt with Iraq.

There are separate issues as to whether WW3 will happen, and whether it will go nuclear.

If one looks at WW2, all the major players had massive stocks of chemical agents, and were fearful that they would be used against civilian populations (leading to a scenario not unlike the nuclear option we have today); but in the end, with a few small exceptions, chemical agents were never used by any of the combatant powers, even in the final hours.

quote:
To me, however, the chance of economic turmoil, famine, mass migrations, etc., as a result of resource depletion or environmental disaster or feverish competition for decreasing resources is a possible recipe for a very tough time.

Absolutely nothing that has not happened in the past (e.g. Irish mass migration during the potato famine).

quote:
The fact is that we are on course for this to happen, UNLESS we can avoid it through scientific discovery, international cooperation, etc.

Science provides no answers to this because the issue is political.

Nor is 'co-operation' the answer – the USA still has poor within its own borders, despite a single government being responsible for all the citizens of the USA.  Even if we had a single world government, it would not alter anything excepting that it would create greater distance between the top layers of government and the people being governed (the UN and the WTO are even more undemocratic and unaccountable than most world governments).

quote:
Okay, what if you put the two together and say, WW3 will happen when competition for scarce resources on a degraded planet combines with a miscalculation and someone hits the red button. But if that's your theory, you are saying that scarce resources and environmental factors will cause WW3.

No, I don't believe that genuine scarcity will cause WW3.  Clearly, competition for resources will play a part, but the resources desired will not be particularly scarce, merely that there will be an insatiable appetite for them.

Real scarcity may cause local wars, but if resources are that scarce then it cannot sustain a major war.  There is the old maxim that an army fights on it stomach, and if you cannot feed and resource your army, then you cannot fight a significant war.  This does not prevent the small scale feudal wars that one sees in parts of Africa and poorer parts of Asia, but not the expensive kind of wars that we are talking about here.

George

[roarer]

It is perhaps precisely why there is no future prospect of a ANY substantial war..let alone a world war..that the "war on terrorism" was instigated. I do BELIEVE that the "war  on terror" is a myth.....put in place in lieu of the "cold war". By a myth I mean in the best case scenario....it is a beat up....and worst....non-existant and only so....in a limited way in third world countries.Additionally....the term is  contradicatory...as war IS terror. ANY war terrorises people. But of course it depends on who is carrying out the atrocities. For example.....in the Palestinian/Israeli case.....the Palestinians are carrying  quote "terrorist acts"...whilst of course the Isralies are not....in their case they are carrying out a quote "war on terror". However in BOTH cases....the outcome is SIMILIAR...PEOPLE ARE TERRORISED...AND ARE KILLED.