World War 3
Third World War are names given to a hypothetical third worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and II. The term has been in use since at least as early as 1941. Some have applied it loosely to refer to limited or smaller conflicts such as the Cold War or the War of terror, while others assumed that such a conflict would surpass prior world wars both in its scope and in its destructive impact.
Due to the development and use of nuclear weapons near the end of World War II and their subsequent acquisition and deployment by many countries, the potential risk of a nuclear devastation of Earth’s civilization and life is a common theme in speculations about a Third World War. Another major concern is that biological warfare could cause a very large number of casualties, either intentionally or inadvertently by an accidental release of a biological agent, the unexpected mutation of an agent, or its adaptation to other species after use. High-scale apocalyptic events like these, caused by advanced technology used for destruction, could potentially make the Earth’s surface uninhabitable.
Prior to the beginning of the Second World War, the First World War (1914–1918) was believed to have been “the war to end all wars,” as it was popularly believed that never again could there possibly be a global conflict of such magnitude. During the interwar period, WWI was typically referred to simply as “The Great War.” The outbreak of World War II in 1939 disproved the hope that mankind might have already “outgrown” the need for such widespread global wars.
With the advent of the Cold War in 1945 and with the spread of nuclear weapons technology to the Soviet Union, the possibility of a third global conflict became more plausible. During the Cold War years, the possibility of a Third World War was anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities in many countries. Scenarios ranged from conventional warfare to limited or total nuclear warfare. At the height of the Cold War, a scenario referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction (“MAD”) had been calculated which determined that an all-out nuclear confrontation would most certainly destroy all or nearly all human life on the planet. The potential absolute destruction of the human race may have contributed to the ability of both American and Soviet leaders to avoid such a scenario.
Will China be the reason of world war III?
Don’t be surprised if in the coming years; the world sees world war III because of China. To support the argument, China has given the world enough of proofs of what is going to happen in the future. Everyone is aware of China’s ambitious attempts to expand its territories. In doing so, they simply reject the rules that have been set by the UN for nations and their neighbours for the disputed areas. The issue has been raised recently when there was a face-off between patrolling troops from India and China’s side at Naku La area in Sikkim. This is not the first instance when China has tried to enter the Indian territory. Even before this, their troops were seen patrolling near the Indian border and caused transgression. Along with this several other countries have reported that China has been trying to invade the islands which are claimed by these countries. China has been adamant to establish its dominance in the north china sea from many years now. The reason behind this is very simple, An estimated US$3.37 trillion worth of global trade passes through the South China Sea annually, which accounts for a third of the global maritime trade. 80 per cent of China’s energy imports and 39.5 per cent of China’s total trade passes through the South China Sea. Because of this China has been the primary reason for the scuffle between countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam. As China has been aggressively developing the islands with their military presence on it, that has been claimed by these countries; China has been criticised heavily by these countries and from the countries around the world as well. And not to mention many countries around the world are not so happy with China because of the Coronavirus and find them accountable for this. The US which is the economic superpower of the world is already a trade war with China and is very upset with the number of deaths because of Coronavirus in the country. If China continues to make new enemies every now and then because of some new issue it won’t be wrong to say that China might be the reason for World war III.
This Is What World War III Will Look Like
U.S. and Chinese warships battle at sea, firing everything from cannons to cruise missiles to lasers. Stealthy Russian and American fighter jets dogfight in the air, with robotic drones flying as their wingmen. Hackers in Shanghai and Silicon Valley duel in digital playgrounds. And fights in outer space decide who wins below on Earth. Are theses scenes from a novel or what could actually take place in the real world the day after tomorrow? The answer is both.
Great power conflicts defined the 20th century: Two world wars claimed tens of millions of lives, and the Cold War that followed shaped everything from geopolitics to sports. But at the start of the 21st century, the ever-present fear of World War III seemed to be in our historic rearview mirror.
Yet that risk of the past has made a dark comeback. Russian land grabs in Ukraine and constant flights of bombers decorated with red stars probing Europe’s borders have put NATO at its highest levels of alert since the mid 1980s. In the Pacific, the U.S. and a newly powerful and assertive China are engaged in a massive arms race. China built more warships and warplanes than any other nation during the last several years, while the Pentagon just announced a strategy to “offset” it with a new generation of high-tech weapons. Indeed, it’s likely China’s alleged recent hack of federal records at the Office of Personnel Management was not about cyber crime, but a classic case of what is known as “preparing the battlefield,” gaining access to government databases and personal records just in case.
The worry is that the brewing 21st century Cold War with China and its junior partner Russia could at some point turn hot. “A U.S.-China war is inevitable” recently warned the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper after recent military face-offs over rights of passage and artificial islands built in disputed territory. This may be a bit of posturing both for U.S. policymakers and a highly nationalist domestic audience: A 2014 poll by the Perth U.S.-Asia center found that 74% of Chinese think their military would win in a war with the U.S. But it points to how the global context is changing. Many Chinese officers have begun to lament out loud what they call “peace disease,” their term for never having served in combat.
Wars start through any number of pathways: One world war happened through deliberate action, the other was a crisis that spun out of control. In the coming decades, a war might ignite accidentally, such as by two opposing warships trading paint near a reef not even marked on a nautical chart. Or it could slow burn and erupt as a reordering of the global system in the late 2020s, the period at which China’s military build up is on pace to match the U.S.
Making either scenario more of a risk is that military planners and political leaders on all sides assume their side would be the one to win in a “short” and “sharp” fight, to use common phrases. It would be anything but.
A great power conflict would be quite different from the small wars of today that the U.S. has grow accustomed to and, in turn, others think reveal a new American weakness. Unlike the Taliban or even Saddam’s Iraq, great powers can fight across all the domains; the last time the U.S. fought a peer in the air or at sea was in 1945. But a 21st century fight would also see battles for control of two new domains.
The lifeblood of military communications and control now runs through space, meaning we’d see humankind’s first battles for the heavens. Similarly, we’d learn “cyber war” is far more than stealing Social Security Numbers or e-mail from gossipy Hollywood executives, but the takedown of the modern military nervous system and Stuxnet-style digital weapons. Worrisome for the U.S. is that last year, the Pentagon’s weapons tester found nearly every single major weapons program had “significant vulnerabilities” to cyber attack.
A total mindshift is required for this new reality. In every fight since 1945, U.S. forces have been a generation ahead in technology, having uniquely capable weapons like nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. It has not always translated to decisive victories, but it has been an edge every other nation wants. Yet U.S. forces can’t count on that “overmatch” in the future. These platforms are not just vulnerable to new classes of weapons like long-range missiles, but China, for example, overtook the EU in R&D spending last year and is on pace to match the U.S. within five years, with new projects ranging from the world’s fastest supercomputers to three different long-range drone-strike programs. And now off-the-shelf technologies can be bought to rival even the most advanced tools in the U.S. arsenal. The winner of a recent robotics test, for instance, was not a U.S. defense contractor but a group of South Korea student engineers.
An array of science-fiction-like technologies would likely make their debut in such a war, from AI battle management systems to autonomous robotics. But unlike the ISIS’s of the world, great powers can also go after high-tech’s new vulnerabilities, such as by hacking systems and knocking down GPS. The recent steps taken by the U.S. Naval Academy illustrate where things might be headed. It added a cybersecurity major to develop a new corps of digital warriors, and also requires all midshipmen learn celestial navigation, for when the high tech inevitably runs into the age old fog and friction of war.
While many leaders on both sides think any clash might be geographically contained to the straights of Taiwan or the edge of the Baltic, these technological and tactical shifts mean such a conflict is more likely to reach into each side’s homelands in new ways. Just as the Internet reshaped our notions of borders, so too would a war waged partly online.
The civilian players would also be different than those in 1941. The hub of any war economy wouldn’t be Detroit. Instead, tech geeks in Silicon Valley and shareholders in Bentonville, Ark., would wrestle with everything from microchip shortages to how to retool the logistics and allegiance of a multinational company. The new forms of civilian conflict actors like Blackwater private military firms or Anonymous hacktivist groups are unlikely to just sit out the fight.
A Chinese officer argued in a regime paper, “We must bear a third world war in mind when developing military forces.” But there is a far different attitude in Washington’s defense circles. As the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations worried last year, “If you talk about it openly, you cross the line and unnecessarily antagonize. You probably have a sense about how much we trade with that country, it’s astounding.”
This is true, but both the historic trading patterns between great powers before each of the last world wars and the risky actions and heated rhetoric out of Moscow and Beijing over the last year demonstrate it is no longer useful to avoid talking about the great power rivalries of the 21st century and the dangers of them getting out of control. We need to acknowledge the real trends in motion and the real risks that loom, so that we can take mutual steps to avoid the mistakes that could create such an epic fail of deterrence and diplomacy. That way we can keep the next world war where it belongs, in the realm of fiction.