Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I have a lot of great hobbies. Get a new tux.
As for the OP, I think Cap'n Crunch basically summed it up. Given current levels of tech, a world war would be like a massive heavyweight punch-out at 500x the speed. Even without the nuclear options, the major powers have so much punching power that a lot of people would die very quickly. I was reading the other day about computer-guided rapid-fire guns that knock down mortars, rockets, drones, but oh yeah, also guarantee a 100% kill-shot on human beings.
That said, the world is far from stable, especially given the massive global inequalities, China's possible demographic and economic collapse, and the fact that some pretty heavily armed players (see Russia, ISIL etc...) don't seem to want to buy into the new humanity of the West.
We have seen as Western Europe gets more and more post-political, and the European nation states dissolve increasingly that they have shifted almost all of their defense capacity to the Americans, that worked for the first 5 years of the 21st century, but now as America hits its own debt crunch, and starts rolling back into isolation, you see the same old belligerents taking more and more chances on a global level.
World war would not be an optimal outcome, but something close to it may flare up. The thing is, it would not solve any problems.
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I disagree. I think conventional warfare between states is obsolete because states know it would inevitably lead to nuclear warfare. In fact, it would probably start out as nuclear war, and they'd skip conventional methods altogether if it ever came down to that.
I just don't think people nowadays are as nationalistic or patriotic as they were in the 20th century, and if it came down to submitting to a foreign ruler or die defending your country, folks would at least give the foreign ruler a try.