What If World War III Has Already Started? | Hacker News Reader

What If World War III Has Already Started?

theatlantic.com

39 pointsgamechangr41 comments

> People in these countries are scared of World War III. I understand the fear—but don’t you understand that World War III may have already arrived?

WW3 hasn't arrived and won't arrive unless colossally stupid decisions are made, decisions that this superficial opinion piece tries to advocate for?!

> Ukraine’s Defense Secretary Olexiy Danilov has said it might be Lithuania, a NATO member. Will NATO act only after Lithuania is invaded?

Ukraine's defense secretary can say whatever he wants. There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member.

I feel very bad for the people of Ukraine, but these appeal-to-emotions zero-substance-full-of-idiocy opinion pieces make me double down in my isolationist attitude. Having NATO confront Russia over Ukraine is a line that simply can not be crossed.

A million times this. In conflicts that involve nuclear capable countries, especially Russia and the US, “normal” rules or responses do not apply. For example, if this might be WW3, then that’s exactly a good reason NOT to do more now, because it won’t matter. If there is a 1% chance that it’s NOT going to become WW3, then we should act as though it is not, and continue trying to avoid that. Once the nukes fly, we’ve all already lost.

NATO (including US) must tiptoe around Russia, and they must tiptoe around NATO, both trying to get a bit more of what they want over years and decades, while not tripping any wires that could escalate to nuclear.

The Ukrainian invasion is horrible, and we should (and are) do what what we can to help without triggering forcing Russia/Putin to respond directly. Russia will be doing whatever they can to pick up Ukraine while also not forcing a direct response from NATO.

Here’s a great post on the subject that I hope will clarify peoples thinking on the issue, and encourage them to think hard about the necessary constraints that NATO is under: https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...

There's another perspective on this, though, which is that it almost doesn't matter if Putin will realistically invade Lithuania. It's that we don't have a good explanation for what we would do or why, and many of the canned responses don't really logically make sense.

For instance, if Putin did invade Lithuania -- and I agree this seems implausible, but it's not unrealistic to speculate about this in the long term -- is it any more rational to defend Lithuania in that case, if the threat of nuclear weapons is real? It seems to rely on an assumption that Putin would just somehow voluntarily withhold nuclear weapons because of a legal agreement in that case, where he would not with Ukraine. Does this make rational sense given the current situation in Ukraine and the war crimes being committed?

To me this isn't theoreticals, and it's not academic. It reflects a real weakness in thinking about military policy and strategy around these points. If you believe that Russia would really use nuclear weapons in response to NATO intervention in Ukraine, there is no logical reason to assume that Russia would necessarily abstain from threatening nuclear response over intervention over Lithuania, and if the reason for abstaining in Ukraine is MAD, why would a NATO legal treaty supercede that consideration? Is it rational to uphold NATO treaties over obliteration of humankind?

My guess is Putin (or a Putin equivalent) sees use of nuclear weapons as a rational decision to the extent that he feels there's nothing left to lose. That is, if he feels he can invade Ukraine and emerge alive with Ukraine as a prize, he will threaten nuclear weapons. If he feels he can invade Lithuania and emerge alive with Lithuania as a prize, he will threaten nuclear weapons if it serves his goals. In fact, he doesn't have to have any rational justification for using nuclear weapons. He and his circle could believe that we're being invaded by space aliens and launch nuclear weapons in consequence.

Some of this becomes more absurd when you consider the tiptoeing that goes on, and the legal and logical absurdities that result. Turkey is supplying a key munition, drones, and has not been threatened by Russia at all. Why should supply of manned aircraft be different? Because they're manned? Why is all the ammo and javelins being supplied by NATO countries ok but not NATO intervention? They're clearly not the same, but some of these boundaries seem kind of imaginary or something. Is the fact that Putin is not threatening nuclear war over sanctions mean that he doesn't really feel threatened by them?

My point -- and I think Kasparov's point is along these lines -- is that a lot of the rationale NATO is giving along the lines of "we must do everything possible to avoid nuclear war" is disingenuous and fallacious. It doesn't mean we should be intervening yet necessarily, but there's something illogical about it, and it seems important to work that out in a broad sense or we're at risk for things escalating when we don't want them to.

To me, if taken seriously, the current rationale implies that any time Putin threatens nuclear weapons, we should avoid conflict. Because there's basically nothing that would be worth serious risk of worldwide annihilation. But then this leads to the position of unlimited military appeasement of dictators with nuclear weapons. Maybe that's a rational position, but it seems like we need to be clearer about where the boundaries are. My guess is if you worked it all out, you'd come to the conclusion that any nuclear military is only rational in using nuclear weapons when they are faced with existential threat themselves (that is, when they have nothing left to lose).

I think NATO's position has been pretty clear: they will hold to Article 5, and an attack on a NATO country is an attack on NATO, nuclear weapons threat be damned. The reason we have not committed ground troops to defending Ukraine is because they are not a NATO member. And the reason there's that line in the sand is because NATO policy members are acutely aware of the dilemma that you pose, that if they perpetually back off of treaty obligations because of the threat of nuclear war, there is no treaty and no defense against a nuclear-armed power.

I think there's a more uncomfortable "rational" conclusion lurking in your post: nuclear war is inevitable. At some point Putin is going to attack a NATO country (probably one of the Baltics, or Poland) that he believes is rightly part of the sphere of Russian influence, where he believes its NATO membership is illegitimate, and probably also that NATO won't come to its aid. And then NATO will be forced to respond or lose all credibility, and then we've got WW3 and probably nuclear annihilation.

This is the problem with MAD in general: humans are fallible, they have inaccurate perceptions of how events will play out, and eventually errors will be made. And when errors destroy humanity, well, that's a problem.

There are fewer of these damned if you do, damned if you don’t dilemmas today than there were during the Cold War. Russia does not have massive conventional forces parked permanently across the border from the Baltic states, Poland, etc., threatening invasion. It can’t afford that.

There is time for these countries and their NATO allies to put in place a conventional deterrent force (tanks, planes, troops) when it appears that Russia is placing a conventional threat across the border.

(That is all happening today)

> [The whole thing.]

You're comment is excellent, and articulates a lot of thoughts I've had around the Western response to the war in Ukraine.

The sneaking sense I have is that NATO is just a paper tiger. There's little to no political will on its part to actually collectively take the risk to militarily defend allies against naked Russian aggression. If Putin actually invades Lithuania, he might just end up exposing the whole thing as a sham. The other countries focus on saving their own skin in the short term, so will hem and haw and send some guns and rockets to the resistance, but ultimately decline to get involved, which over the long term allows Russia to pick them off one-by-one until (at least) the Warsaw Pact becomes a thing again.

The Russians will likely also learn from their mistakes, and conduct the next invasion more competently than this one.

Eventually, smaller countries will realize, if they don't want to get invaded and absorbed by the Russian empire, they need their own nukes, and the whole project of nonproliferation gets flushed down the toilet.

May be most rational long term response is to answer Putin's threats with a very stark warning: do not use nukes unless you want the capital of your empire to be a smoking pit.

>There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member.

To add to that, NATO already said they don't want part on this issue and they wish things could be de-escalated. US said a similar thing, pretty much "best of luck Ukraine, hope you can solve it on your own".

I don't think WWIII is going to come out of this, honestly.

I think it smells like WW3, although not for the emotional reasons the article cites. This terrible situation kind of rhymes with the Axis powers practising on less well defended countries before going for their actual targets.

The major problem I see with the sober analysis that "Russia won't attack NATO" is that the actors might not be rational. The whole philosophy of MAD, which kept the use of nuclear weapons in check, falls to pieces if one of the players stops acting rationally.

That's not to say I buy the ruminations that Putin has gone crazy, but in an era where you can nestle yourself in any truth you please, it's quite possible that Putin isn't using the truth that we think he is. His acts will be rational, just not rational within the framework that we are using.

One thing that might change the equation of NATO not involving itself directly is a massive humanitarian crisis. I personally think it's inevitable that a no-fly zone will be imposed once the Russians decide to use their air force properly and wipe out massive amounts of civilians while razing a major population centre. Guernica is going to be reflected in Kyiv.

Once that no-fly zone is imposed, all bets are off and escalation is inevitable. The real wildcard is what China ends up doing. They have their own expansionist plans and might use the chaos of war in Europe to accelerate them.

Exactly. Don’t for a second buy into any notion that Putin has gone crazy - within the framework where human life has no value and the population is so placated that risk of popular revolution is small, everything he’s done sofar is completely rational.

I also share this, but I find it increasingly concerning. If Putin has reached the point where a very risky war has to be waged against Ukraine, it means that he had worse options than the war. What options would be that?

A coup in process in Russia? Some military / oligarchic faction which already has reached the upper echelons of powers in Russia and they are forcing Putin's hand?

What internal restrains could Putin still retain, for how much time?

Is an escalation of hostilities in the cards? Has this already started and the whole Ukraine operations are just a maskirovka? (this last one is commonly mentioned everywhere these days, it seems everyone suspect the russians are not actually that weak and powerless to win a war, and they are just waiting for to deploy the full war machine against the actual targets).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception

Kind of tense wait till this ends ..or it actually start to unfold.

I'm not sure they are "weak and powerless" but it's almost certain they won't deploy their full capabilities until they work out what NATO is going to do. From NATO's point of view it's probably better to let the Russians become weaker through attrition before doing anything anyway, which truly sucks if you are Ukrainian.

If the news about things like the F35 being only half operational are true, NATO might not be the overwhelming force we assume it is either. Australia is having a lot of trouble making them operational: https://theconversation.com/australia-spent-billions-on-jet-...

> best of luck Ukraine, hope you can solve it on your own

Except, that's patently false considering the hundreds of millions of dollars in arms & training the US has been shipping to Ukraine in the past year. [0][1][2]

[0]https://news.antiwar.com/2021/04/07/us-delivers-military-car...

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics/us-ukraine-security-...

[2]https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-ne...

Our media has to appeal to emotions with zero substance because no one will read anything of substance.

IMO the way for Putin to get what he wants is exactly what this stupid article is advocating for. He is either in for a long drawn out insurgency that can't really be won or an escalation to the doorstep of WW3 that he will enter negotiations with all the leverage.

We are basically anti-Machiavellians. Instead of the end justifying the means we believe that as long as we have good intentions we don't care about the outcome.

> as long as we have good intentions we don't care about the outcome.

Well put. This sums up my feelings on another topic just as succinctly too.

Putin could attack a nato country, and that would be WW3. Nothing we can do about it. I’d bet 3 weeks ago you weren’t expecting an outright invasion, when people were saying it wouldn’t happen and we all needed to calm down…

> There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member.

It would be more honest to write “I do not know why Eastern European countries have considered themselves under threat from Russia and Belarus for a considerable amount of time,” or perhaps you could just read up on it.

> isolationist

Ah.

There are no good decisions. The nuclear threat could be used to force the whole world in to a totalitarian nightmare. The only outcome of this war is every state who doesn't have nuclear weapons should acquire them as quickly as possibly or risk being subsumed by a nuclear power.

> There is zero evidence that Russia plans or wants to invade a NATO member.

Apart from Putin and his defence staff's public statements to the contrary? We practically have a Mein kampf equivalent of Putin's ambitions.

Isolationism is cowardly and dishonourable and the West's responses to Putin have allowed and encouraged him to escalate time and time again. It completely naïve to think he is done escalating.

I mean arguably WWII started in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War (or even 1935 with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and took a few years to spin up into a global inferno. Alternatively you could possibly compare the current Russian invasion to the Winter War prior to Operation Barbarossa and the Continuation war.

All of that's to say this could very well could very well be the prelude to wider hostilities, even if things simmer down in Ukraine in the short to medium term. I hope this isn't the case but we'd be fools to not consider the contingencies.

Think about a hypothetical strategy to use ground forces - fully avoiding to escalate to a nuclear war - to actually assault baltic NATO countries. You just can't deploy massive russian forces to the NATO's frontier without triggering countermeasures.

But, if you massively deploy troops into Ukraine, simulating it is the target, then you start to pump troops, hardware, infrastructure for the actual invasion, NATO has to operate necessarily under the premise Russia isn't there to attack NATO, then it cannot massively deploy reinforcements to baltic members. They are by any military measure - except nuclear deterrence - undefendant.

Russian generals just have to sustain the maskirovka enough time to build up a sufficiently capable strike force to attack, basically a replay of the first movement against Ukraine. Then they could be in position to attack Poland, unbalancing NATO, triggering a defensive position in this country, then russians could invade the baltic states ("recovering" the whole old Eastern Europe of URSS age),

Then they could just abandon Poland, fastly signing an armistice but retaining the baltic states.

Europe as a whole probably will just sign the accords, in order to prevent a full nuclear escalation.

Game over. NATO has lost.

It’s scary that this is quite a possibility at this point.

A military with that logistics, capabilities and equipment would have wrapped up the invasion by now.

Nope, this isn't in the cards. Russia has effectively mustered all they want to spend on war into Ukraine. To redeploy or muster more soldiers would take a year and likely that would be detected by intelligence operatives. Hell, just watching from space you would see the training camps. It's not like you can hide them in the equivalent of a Planet Fitness or big box store for an entire year to train and outfit them. And that's just infantry. You'd likely need trucks and the Russia armed forces are focused on trains which as we've seen with Ukraine is their biggest weakness. Just blow up the switches and fall back to more defensible positions and let the Russians wear themselves out.

Actually, most if not all the support for Ukraine looks awful a lot like they are trying to gain time to build up back some military strenght into EU.

I suspect if you start to peek behind the curtain, you'll find Reforger alike - or even the step-by-step actual Reforger - actions ongoing right now. At full speed.

Some other red flags would be the quick replacement of key - rather old, unfit for combat duty - officers across NATO forces, fleets of planes constantly being flown out of usual airbases (to prevent massive loses in a surprise attack), big bases in NATO countries emptied of troops (deploying troops in a very wide geographically distributed fashion, to protect them from being mass destroyed - soldiers + hardware - in a surprise attack), many trains and planes traveling / flying with closed windows at very unsual times, to fastly move troops across Europe to be ready for the probably coming war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger

Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption.

The only real surprise here is that Russia/Putin has decided to light some sparks on the kerosene laden mess to drive it hot. Nobody wants a hot war in an industrialized nation, our weapons and our defenses are too effective to "take" anywhere without destroying all the infrastructure that makes it valuable. Armed conflict in industrial nations will yield only pyrrhic victories.

> Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption.

Can we avoid the "We have always been at war with Eurasia" style rhetoric?

There have been explicit conflicts and wars over the years (US/Middle East, Israel/Palestine, etc) but we aren't at a constant state of global war or global Cold War.

China too.

Just because we haven't been shooting the entire time and because we are polite on the world stage doesn't change that those in power have made choices and policy with the understanding that we are in a cold war. I don't know what criteria you require to call it a "Cold War" or "War with Eurasia" or some other state of affairs, but it seems a reasonable description of reality to me.

The fact that one side of 'The Cold War' collapsed and no longer exists seems relevant.

Putin clearly disagrees. Literally. All of this is based on the narrative that he and his government are successors to the legacy of the USSR and the "fall" was a mild inconvenience.

He roots Russia's claim to Ukraine in the Russian Empire, not the USSR.

There's very little distinction there. Stalin made the same claims:

> An anecdote attributed to Molotov showed Stalin perusing a map of the Soviet Union saying: “Everything is all right to the north. Finland has offended us, so we moved the border to Leningrad. Baltic States ‑ that’s age-old Russian land! ‑ and they are ours again. All the Belorussians live together now, Ukrainians together, Moldovans together. It’s ok to the west.”

https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/

The territorial claims have continued unabated. This is why Russia was so peeved (and remains peeved) about NATO intervention in Bosnia; why Russia supports the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria; why it props up the Belarusian dictatorship, and has tried to do the same in Ukraine, ultimately resorting to a full-scale invasion.

There's continuity because there's alot of truth in Putin's claims regarding historical cultural affinity. The problem is, it's not the whole truth, and becomes less so every day, only accelerating since the breakup of the USSR.

FYI He has been recorded numerous times saying, something along te lines that it was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” not “mild inconvenience”.

Though, I can think of another leader in the 20th century who’s country collapsed and made a comeback a few decades later under a different flag.

There is an excellent podcast series * that explains that we have in fact been in conflict with Russia for all these years. Grey Zone warfare is when you indirectly fight your opponent, of fight then in such a way that they don't even realise it. Everyone does this as hot wars between nuclear armed powers makes no sense.

* https://news.sky.com/story/into-the-grey-zone-podcast-episod...

Yes and:

Moving from bipolar to unipolar, Cold War morphed into Forever War.

Multipolar will be the likely next arrangement. I can't even guess how warfare will adapt. Free for all? Move from meatspace into cyberspace? First to weaponize space wins? All of the above?

Who knows.

Oh, it has, it has.

And, the West is not going to win this one.

The country most like the US of 1942 in today's world is China. The US of today is pretty much most like the Britain of 1940: a has-been empire on its last legs.

When a country's 'time in the sun' is over, it's best for them to walk away quietly, like the British did.

After fighting for years for the safety of Europe against and imperialist dictator.

Everything until months before pandemic had been tremendously saturated and overpriced. Many relationships turned down by pandemic have no interest to reinitiate now. We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war?

>We are surely about to witness massive purges, diarrheas of various kinds, unrests, but a world war?

What areas would these happen in?

In my life I have tried to purge all this fat but it won't go away. :)

WW1 7/28/1914

WW2 9/1/1939

Ukraine invasion 2/24/2022

7+28+19+14=68

9+1+19+39=68

2+24+20+22=68

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