How World War III became possible

[cosmicalstorm]

Here is a lengthy piece dealing with the very dangerous situation that is growing on the Eurasian contient right now. Is this plain alarmism? I'm sorry but I don't think so, for one thing, I found this reposted in some corners of the internet that rarely has this kind of debate on other days. I'm definetly worried.

Europe today looks disturbingly similar to the Europe of just over 100 years ago, on the eve of World War I. It is a tangle of military commitments and defense pledges, some of them unclear and thus easier to trigger. Its leaders have given vague signals for what would and would not lead to war. Its political tensions have become military buildups. Its nations are teetering on an unstable balance of power, barely held together by a Cold War–era alliance that no longer quite applies.

If you take a walk around Washington or a Western European capital today, there is no feeling of looming catastrophe. The threats are too complex, with many moving pieces and overlapping layers of risk adding up to a larger danger that is less obvious. People can be forgiven for not seeing the cloud hanging over them, for feeling that all is well — even as in Eastern Europe they are digging in for war. But this complacency is itself part of the problem, making the threat more difficult to foresee, to manage, or, potentially, to avert.

To solve the problem of Russia's conventional military weakness, he has dramatically lowered the threshold for when he would use nuclear weapons, hoping to terrify the West such that it will bend to avoid conflict. In public speeches, over and over, he references those weapons and his willingness to use them. He has enshrined, in Russia's official nuclear doctrine, a dangerous idea no Soviet leader ever adopted: that a nuclear war could be winnable.

Putin, having recast himself at home as a national hero standing up to foreign enemies, is more popular than ever. Russia has once more become a shadow hanging over Eastern Europe, feared and only rarely bowed to, but always taken seriously. Many Western Europeans, asked in a poll whether they would defend their own Eastern European allies from a Russian invasion, said no.

Russia's aggression, born of both a desire to reengineer a European order that it views as hostile and a sense of existential weakness that justifies drastic measures, makes it far more willing to accept the dangers of war.

As RAND's F. Stephen Larrabee wrote in one of the increasingly urgent warnings that some analysts are issuing, "The Russia that the United States faces today is more assertive and more unpredictable — and thus, in many ways, more dangerous — than the Russia that the United States confronted during the latter part of the Cold War."

Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard University's school of government and one of America's most respected international relations scholars, pointed out that Russia's weakness-masking aggression was yet another disturbing parallel to the buildup to World War I.

"Russia seems doomed to continue its decline — an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West," Nye wrote in a recent column. "States in decline — think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 — tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous."

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war

[Darth Tanner]

Pretty much nonsense/hyperbole... Europe today is incomparable to 100 years ago, most of Europe is in a very low state of military readiness and would lack offensive military capabilities even if given a long lead time whilst Russia lacks any sort of capability for protracted campaigns outside of its territory or immediate neighbours.

How is NATO an unclear defence agreement?

If you want to wank yourself off over a new European war you should likely concentrate on Russia's fascists under the bed paranoia and its actual territorial ambitions on non NATO members.

[cosmicalstorm]

How is NATO unclear? You didn't even read it.

Here is another gem

At the conference, Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow spoke so openly about NATO's efforts to prepare for the possibility of Russia launching a limited nuclear strike in Europe that, according to the journalist Ahmed Rashid, who was in attendance, he had to be repeatedly reminded he was speaking on the record.

One of the scenarios Vershbow said NATO was outlining, according to Rashid's paraphrase, was that Russia could "choose to use a tactical weapon with a small blast range on a European city or a Western tank division."

>A few weeks later, the Guardian reported that NATO is considering plans to "upgrade" its nuclear posture in Europe in response to Russia's own nuclear saber-rattling. One proposal: for NATO's military exercises to include more nuclear weapons use, something Russia already does frequently.

[Purple]

Here is another gem

What about it? The use of tactical atomic weapons to perform such battlefield tasks is a given since like the 50's. Hell the planed invasion of Japan in 45 had plans to use them to soften Japanese beach defenses. There is nothing new or shocking about this. Atomic weapons aren't magical doom beams. They are just big bombs. And there is nothing strange about using a big bomb to blow stuff up.

[cosmicalstorm]

Yeah man, nothing to see here, move along!

Moscow is Having Second Thoughts About Giving Up the Baltic States
By John Dyer
July 1, 2015 | 11:21 pm


Russia's prosecutor-general is reviewing whether the ex-Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are legally independent countries, the Russian state-controlled Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

The move comes after Russian lawmakers requested the review, saying the Soviet Union illegally granted independence to the three tiny countries on the Baltic Sea in northern Europe when the communist superpower was collapsing in the early 1990s.

"The decision to recognize the Baltic States' independence is defective, as it was adopted by an unconstitutional body," an unnamed source in the prosecutor-general's office told Interfax.

The lawmakers believe that relinquishing the Baltic countries "brought great harm" to Russia and was tantamount to "state treason," Agence-France Presse reported.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite didn't welcome the news.

"No one has the right to threaten us," she said in a statement, according to Radio Free Europe. "Our independence was gained through the blood and sacrifice of the Lithuanian people."

The Baltics are particularly wary of questions about their sovereignty.

In the late 1930s, before Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union became enemies in World War II, they signed the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which contained plans to secretly divide up the Baltics between the two powers. Germany wound up occupying the three countries. When the Soviet Union pushed the Nazis out in 1944, the Russians stayed.

The United States and Western Europe didn't recognize the Soviet annexations, but Cold War tensions prevented them from doing anything about them. The Baltics reluctantly became part of the Soviet Union and rushed to declare their independence in 1990 when it became clear the Soviet Union was breaking up.

Related: Russia Is Making Tanks Stylish Again

The Baltics were also eager to join NATO in 2004 to secure their independence. Under the alliance's rules, anyone who attacks them would risk war with the United States, Germany, Britain and a host of other North Atlantic countries.

The official in the prosecutor-general's office recognized that Russia simply couldn't nullify the Baltics' independence. The decision, he told Interfax, "should take into account not only the legal but also the political aspect of the issues raised."

But Moscow's move is still disconcerting because the same the prosecutor-general ruled last year that Soviet leaders erred when they transferred ownership of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. The opinion provided a legal rationale for Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexation of the peninsula.

Russia has been increasingly bellicose in the Baltic Region, flying warplanes close to Swedish jets, snatching Estonian border guards and raising tensions in other ways as Moscow also stokes the separatist war in eastern Ukraine.

In response, the US recently deployed tanks to the Baltics to beef up NATO forces.

Putin's endgame isn't clear, which is probably exactly how the Russian president likes it, said Michael O'Hanlon, co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he is just sort of playing with us and enjoying the fact that he himself doesn't know what he would do next," O'Hanlon told VICE News. "He's an opportunist. He presumably doesn't want World Ward III over liberating the Baltics. But he knows we probably don't want World War III for defending them. He's probing."

Related: Canada is Helping Fund Pro-Ukrainian TV to Combat Kremlin Propaganda

A crisis in the Baltics could force American generals to confront whether they want to risk the destruction of New York or Washington in a nuclear war with Putin over the Baltic capitals of Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius, said O'Hanlon.

More likely, however, is that Putin wants to distract NATO in the north while he undermines Ukraine thousands of miles away in the south.

"I wouldn't necessarily rule out that he would try some shenanigans or at least make us worried enough about this prospect so that we might back off from some of the other robust things we would do over Ukraine," said O'Hanlon.

[Purple]

Yeah man, nothing to see here, move along!

Quite. This sort of saber rattling has been a thing since like forever. Right now, no one is stupid enough to go into another world war because they'd lose. Any world war would turn atomic within the first 24h and after that everyone looses. However the populist oligarchs of the east and west both rely on public support to remain in power. So they need to look proud and just and all those other adjectives that make stupid people vote for them.

Stuff like that is just the same as when German newspapers start writing about how Greece is committing suicide. It's just political propaganda meant for the gullible (like you apparently).

[Iroscato]

In an extraordinary turn of events, I agree with Purple
The powerful at the top wish to stay powerful and at the top - that applies to both "sides". A nuclear war would somewhat scupper that comfortable arrangement as nuclear war is wont to do. As much as I'm sure the thought of World War III makes you moist cosmical, I'm afraid we most likely will not see it in our lifetimes.

[madd0ct0r]

In an extraordinary turn of events, I agree with Purple

words

[Lord Revan]

cosmicalstorm you really need to start use some source critism, when you post these "the sky is falling!" threads with questionble source, it makes taking you serious very hard.

While we should judge the post and not the man, lets be honest here few of us have the time or energy to read every single post posted per day so we apply certain filters to maximize our time usage and if a posters is know to make posts that are not worth our time we tend to ignore those.

The thruth of the matter is atm this point the Russian Federation cannot start a conventional war against the Republic of Finland without their economy going bye bye and no-one in the current Russian goverment wants to die if it can be avoid so nukes are probably not realistically on the table.

[Simon_Jester]

Here is a lengthy piece dealing with the very dangerous situation that is growing on the Eurasian contient right now. Is this plain alarmism? I'm sorry but I don't think so, for one thing, I found this reposted in some corners of the internet that rarely has this kind of debate on other days. I'm definetly worried.

You've repeated essentially the same thesis ("Russian villainy will trigger World War III RIGHT THE FUCK NOW")... at least twice now, possibly three or four times.

When you keep doing it in the absence of any actual change that would motivate increased alarm, it becomes alarmism.

It's like, if the Russians actually went and marched a big army into the Ukraine and declared Kiev to be Russian territory, that would justify suddenly being more worried. If the Russians started sending threatening telegrams to Poland on a regular basis, that would justify suddenly being more worried.

But you seem to be getting more and more worried in the complete absence of outside stimuli. That sounds less like you recognizing a worsening world situation, and more like you falling steadily into the orbit of a big pile of nonsense.
_____________________________

I will also note that you are violating a basic principle honored by most people who post articles on this site: In quite a few cases, you're not posting links to the sources.

This is important, because it makes a huge difference which "corner of the Internet" you're getting this stuff from. A news article in the London Times is different than an editorial in the Times, which is in turn different from an editorial in the Daily Mail (does it even have editorials on foreign policy?). And anything in a newspaper is different from a blog post written by a sketchy lunatic who's spent the last twenty years ranting about government mind control satellites on a poorly maintained website where all the text is red on black background.

By not providing sources, you make it much harder to judge the relevance and accuracy of what is being quoted. And you also make it harder to place what is being quoted in context. For example, it makes a difference if this being written by someone who's been screaming that Russia is about to invade Lithuania continuously for the past twenty years... because in that case they have a proven track record of being wrong on that issue.

"Russia seems doomed to continue its decline — an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West," Nye wrote in a recent column. "States in decline — think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 — tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous."

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war

Except that the Austro-Hungarian Empire's "less risk averse" character would have been irrelevant if it hadn't been for other, brashly expansionistic, powers willing to trigger a large war with them over small issues, even when the Austro-Hungarians had been provoked.

A little bit of basic common sense and good faith negotiation goes a long way in preventing a "Guns of August" scenario

[K. A. Pital]

I also agree that such rants are a negative contribution. Rants and fearmongering cannot substitute news in the absence of news.

[Metahive]

I would go even further and say that these sort of fearmongering rants are contributing to an atmosphere that makes wars more likely. WW1 is brought up and just reading stuff about it shows how much paranoid delusions contributed to it breaking out, everyone was afraid that the other would attack if they didn't rattle their saber louder and louder which of course increased the fears of attack on the other side who responded in kind until it finally happened.

[Irbis]

2015 Global Peace Index - Europe, the world’s most peaceful region, has reached historically highest levels of peace. Translation for you: the war is least likely in last 50 years. Some more reading for you:

http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#/page/our-gpi-findings

Poland, Czechy, Slovakia and Hungary all are within 22 top countries least likely to be in a war. Countries next to them, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, are all in Top 5. Can we now bury that dead horse, please?



If anything brings destabilization and conflict to the region, it's that idiotic decision to move some US military bases to Central Europe, with complimentary dosage of PRISM spying. No thank you, one Kiejkuty case was enough.

[cosmicalstorm]

I also used to believe that nuclear weapons would be a moderating thing but maybe that situation is changing now. Or maybe I'm a war-mongering loon.

[K. A. Pital]

How is the situation changing? If you'd be talking about non-state actors getting nukes, like with what could happen if Pakistan or other barely-breathing nuclear nation collapsed, sure, that'd be worth the talk. Otherwise...

[Lord Revan]

I also used to believe that nuclear weapons would be a moderating thing but maybe that situation is changing now. Or maybe I'm a war-mongering loon.

then show us credible proof of that change or at the very least credible evidence that suggests it even if it doesn't outright state it.

no one is gonna take you seriously if you keep pulling crap like this, you can absolve your responsibility here with a simple sentence.

Or maybe I'm a war-mongering loon

this sentence is both cowardly and not gonna work, "maybe I'm just 'x'" is never gonna make us take you seriously, in fact it's one of the reasons people are having hard time taking you seriously, you're not even standing behind what you stated, but rather you try (poorly and ineffectivly) back-pebal out of what you stated the moment we won't join your fear mongering.

cosmicalstorm are you familiar with the story of the "Boy who cried Wolf!"? You've metaphorically cried several times "Wolf!" only to go "maybe that's was a wolf or maybe I'm just nuts" when challenged. I am sure we both know how that story ended.

I'm no moderator, but I'm trying to help you be a better poster.

[Edi]

Lord Revan has a very good point, cosmicalstorm.

You now have such a history of fear-mongering and posting conspiracy theory looney-tunes articles without even cursory checking of sources or any effort at critical thinking that you have, in effect, become a scroll-over poster for me. If and when you post threads, my immediate reaction is "Let's see what conspiracy bullshit it is this time..." followed by a brief skim and then ignoring you for the most part. I suspect the reactions of a number of other posters are the same, since time spent trying to engage you in discussion is usually wasted because you never own up to mistakes and you don't try to improve.