War versus War: The dilemma of World War III

 

    It's easy to imagine peace.

   Who doesn't love peace?

   You'd have to be some kind of serial killer if someone walked up to you on the street with a camera and microphone and recorded you and you said, no...
  "Sometimes I like war."

   Humans supposedly love a thing called peace. They cry for it a lot. There are violent demonstrations in support of it. The people want 'peace' but what are people prepared to do to make peace happen? Can peace be enforced? If peace can be enforced then it must be done through some unfortunate violence. 

   The opening move.

   Always the most difficult choice.

    

    I have a contention. And it's up for debate. But if I write World War III in the title then I better back it up. A lot of people and Internet commentators have been throwing the term around because it get clicks and headlines. (Go ahead and accuse me of the same thing.) But if you are going to say WWIII then show me.

"It makes no difference what men think of war. War endures. You might as well ask what men think of stone. War was always here, before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way, no other way."

   I believe as you read this you are in World War III.

   You just don't know it.

   Why?

   Because this period in human history hasn't been called anything yet.

  1) The use of the term World War III is not something I use lightly. I think it should be pictured in the following way. Let’s suppose we could ask an ordinary person living in rural France, Poland, the UK, Germany or Russia in the spring of 1940 if they were living in WWII, they would laugh at you and say of course not.
Yes, they would admit that wars had been declared, bombs were dropping beyond their horizons and they had read in the newspapers that one country had attacked another country. Paris had yet to fall. The Blitz had not happened yet. It was all mostly far away talk. If you told such people that they were living during the greatest human catastrophe of all time, they would be totally confused and dismissive.

    My contention is that we are now living in a similar conundrum and disaster.
Wars are ultimately defined by historians after the fact. Future chroniclers have the benefit of hindsight and the luxury of picking dates and saying, yes, this is when the war started! Did WWII start on September 1st 1939?

   It did not!

   Far more escalation events were occurring during the 1930s to declare a date an event. In exactly this way, I say we are living in WWIII as I write. Bombs are falling far away. But there is no global war yet as we might know it. The forces at work, the disposition of the nations involved, the economic circumstances in effect are all extremely dangerous and portents of a far larger conflagration.

   World War III will not be like World War II.

   If will not be a kinetic war immediately.

   It will be a slow burn of isolated conflicts at the beginning, all seemingly disparate but all coalescing around some very similar ideas. WWIII has begun as a gradual erosion of personal freedom, the beginnings of a 24/7 surveillance state on all citizens (China has already perfected this) and it will spread with technology and A.I. into something nobody will recognize as a World War. It will just become what “life is like” for younger people and for those old enough to remember, off putting, strange and ‘not like it used to be.’

   When the shooting starts it will be slow at first.
  
   It will be a necessary intervention on the behalf of nation states or countries to defend whatever buzzword has been tested on social media to carry the greatest emotional weight amongst the youth. That is how recruitment will go in the Western hemisphere. And, I’m sad to say, it will work like it always has.

   

(The method will be different, the motive will be the same.)

  I'm not a person who dwells in gloom. But I'm not stupidly happy either. You'd have to be a fool to not see what's coming down the pipe. The ongoing wars we can write about and what means I could throw my take into the ring? Big deal. So what? But take a look at the amount of it and the contagion events.

  The planet is shaky.

  We're in 1940 under a different name.

   NATO v Russia (currently a draw)
   
   Israel v Iran, Lebanon, Syria (and tacitly the rest of the world)

   India v Pakistan (a dangerous conflict; like cab drivers arguing with nukes)

   South Korea v North Korea (an erectile disfunction conflict)

   USA/Japan/Taiwan v China (the best move is not to play)

   All the above is simmering and I haven't even mentioned the economics of it.

   Sure, it's a scary planet out there.

   So scary and drawn out and occurring creepily over the next decade, that by the time WWIII hits, it'll be boring.

   Humanity will not die with a bang.

   Humanity will die with a confused face wondering why the brick in their hand has gone black.