So I've got some info/a take that could add to the convo, if anyone is interested, but apologies in advance for the wall of text.
So simply put, I highly doubt this will degrade into a ww3 scenario. To back this up, lets confine ourselves simply to Europe and leave China & Taiwan to the side for now. There's two ways a ww3 (Russia v NATO) scenario could start:
1) NATO sends in troops
2) Russia attacks NATO
With regards to #1, the time for this is long past. If NATO wanted to send in troops, they would've done so already, when Ukraine wasn't being attacked and NATO could fortify and settle into the Ukraine without bloodshed. Why would NATO sit back, allow Russia to invade, and then suddenly send in troops to a occupied Ukraine when NATO could've sent in troops into a friendly Ukraine a month ago?
If NATO wanted to go to war over Ukraine right now, NATO would be in a war over Ukraine right now.
So #1 is off the table.
#2 however, is possible, but incredibly unlikely. Putin could not go toe to toe with NATO. That's just a fact. And Putin knows this. Why else would he have sat at the border for so long waiting to see if NATO would do anything? And, even more to the point, why attack a NATO country and face certain defeat and the liberation of Ukraine, when you can simply take Ukraine for free and wait another couple years when NATO is lazy again and grab another country?
The likelihood of Russia invading a NATO country is inversely related to Putin's intelligence: Putin is incredibly clever, and so the chances of him pulling off an obviously stupid move of attacking NATO are incredibly slim.
So #2 is off the table.
Simply put, unless you can come up with another way ww3 could occur in Europe than these two scenarios (like, idk, Finland suddenly decides to unilaterally attack Russia for some reason?) there's rly no chance of ww3 starting in Europe.
In Asia, there's really no evidence of an attack on Taiwan. As one of my old Professors (Who specialized in international relations, who is also colonel in the US military, served in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, various other locations in Europe, Africa, and South America, as well as helping to lead NATO exercised in Romania, among other things) told me when I asked him about this, he said "The idea that China would attack Taiwan borders on conspiracy, military planners don't think like that. They look at the facts, and the fact is there is no military buildup and nothing about the U.S. situation on Taiwan has changed." (please note I'm paraphrasing his quote^)
To add to this, if China was thinking about invading Taiwan, why would they? Let's pretend that the U.S. doesn't have the military capacity to wage a war on both Russia and China for now. The U.S. isn't getting involved in Ukraine, so the whole force of the U.S. military could be wrought down upon the Chinese. Also, Taiwan would primarily be a sea and air battlespace, whilst the Ukraine is primarily air and land. Different regions, and different parts of the military would be used. So even if the U.S. had gone and attacked Ukraine, they'd likely still have the firepower to combat China.
So unless China thinks that the U.S. isn't going to defend Taiwan, and Biden has made it very clear that they will, why would they attack Taiwan?
So, I find the likelihood of a ww3 scenario incredibly slim, unless China or Russia decide to take action that's equivalent to nuking themselves.
However, this is still a big deal, but for a bigger, broader reason: in International Relations Theory, there's this idea of a 'ram from behind' effect.
Essentially, there are two types of global powers: Status quo powers, and revisionist powers.
The status quo powers like the global order, as they constructed it and it benefits them. Examples of modern day status quo powers are the U.S. and Europe, as they built the current global system and it benefits them. (Rly basic example, the U.N. headquarters is in New York city. That wasn't an accident)
Revisionist powers, however, dislike the current world order and seek to change it. If the rules were different, China would have Taiwan and the south china sea. If the rules were different, invading the Ukraine would not be breaking any international law. Hence China and Russia are clearly revisionist powers.
Where this becomes problematic is the previously mentioned 'ram from behind' effect. Both groups of powers want the opposite, and so war is likely. The book that hypothesized this identified something like 10 'ram from behind' effects in history, 7 of them resulting in war.
So is this annexation of the Ukraine is definitely related to this, however its a very small move in a very big game. The optics of this is that the status quo powers are weakening, and are unable or unwilling to defend the current world order. Will China and Russia be more cocky after this? Absolutely. But will China be invading Taiwan tomorrow? No.
Another important thing to consider is why is Putin attacking Ukraine now? NATO is still incredibly strong and could've stopped this, just as they were 2, 4 year ago. The likely fact of the matter is that President Biden does not have the political capital to go to war over Ukraine. Ya'll probably saw the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and that caused Biden's approval rating to plummet. Not to mention that, as the U.S. is currently rly rly politically divided, many members of the political party opposing President Biden were already posting weeks ago on their social media about how 'Biden is trapping us down in another forever war.' If Biden had sent troops in, especially with elections coming up soon in the U.S., it could've been political suicide. And Putin recognized this.
Hence, Putin decided to invade when he was certain that the U.S. would be unwilling to commit itself to another war.
But lets go further back, if only for the humor of academic entertainment, why didn't Putin invade under President Trump? President Trump was fairly cozy to Russia (as far as U.S. presidents go), at times stating that he trusted Putin more than the U.S.'s own intelligence agency, and even now stating that the invasion of Ukraine was "brilliant" and called Putin "savvy."
Another possible fact is that President Trump was doing Putin's job for him. Trump floated the idea of
LEAVING NATO several times, and, as anyone living in Europe or the U.S. could tell, was not exactly friendly with the Europeans. So, why should Putin risk a war and uniting NATO when he could just sit back and relax under Trump?
Now one might say, 'well why didn't Putin invade Ukraine under Obama then?' And to that I say, 'my good sir, look up the annexation of Crimea.'
So hopefully that all adds some perspective to what's going on, its definitely freaky to see everything that's happening, but we mustn't let fear control our otherwise logical thoughts. No one has ever served their fiercest passion and their best interest at the same time. I'd also like to say that NATO and the Russians have probably already calculated and predicted all of this, it's not like NATO doesn't know what war looks like, and its not like Putin doesn't know what sanctions they could enact. NATO knew this was coming and decided it was in its best interests not to engage. And Putin saw this coming and decided it was in his best interests to engage. Simple, if unethical, utilitarian calculus, and so while we're seeing this and maybe freaking out a little, NATO and Putin saw this weeks ago and have made decisions based off of that. Just something to keep in mind, that our leaders are quite a few steps ahead of us, especially when it comes to warfare, and, in my opinion, we should always be trying to catch up.
But yee hopefully this is all helpful^, I've been hearing a lot about ww3 but as of yet I've yet to see any realistic scenario besides the one's I've pointed out and discredited, so I figured I'd share. Also if there are any holes in my reasoning or things I've left out, do let me know, the purpose of an argument is to reach the truth, not to win. I could be wrong, you could be wrong, but as long as we reach the truth, the argument has truly been won.
Yeah, 100 years ago we got the war first, then the pandemic. I'm starting to suspect Russia's objective all along was to seize Ukraine's best abandonment. Their next move will be to attack Kazakhstan to secure then Baikonur Cosmodrome. After that, watch out Japan because they're coming for Battleship Island. |
Also this is hilarious^; what the NATO joint commanders failed to consider is that Putin is a HardCore UrbXer, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was just a ploy to have more old abandoned soviet era constructs for Putin to explore in his free time lol.