How would WW111 manifest itself?

[vorlon13]

For starters;

The Pope and the King of Jordan agreeing WWIII had begun . . .

[The Valkyrie]

Working on it.

I'll let you know....

[ignoramus]

Come to Au Vorlon.
We're so paranoid these days with security checks at big events, you'll get a full cavity search at this year's boxing day bash! Byo lube though, unless you like the baton as is.

[Anomalocaris]

Going by what percentage of the world's GDP is involved in the war effort, crusades and seven years war are small time compared to WWI and WWII.

So try the 30 years war on for size.

Even 30 years war was still small time. All Europe combined was comparatively small time until after 1750s.

[Anomalocaris]

If you suddenly find a cannon ball up your ass, you'll notice.

The belligerents of the crusades would hardly able to fire projectiles of any sort anywhere  near where the majority of the world's GDP were produced or expended  at their time.   That tge minions of belligerents of the seven year war can occasionally fire at each other at the outskirts of the distant centers of economic productions also does make that a world war, or firing any sort of canon ball up economically significant asses.


The total GDP of regions involved in either conflict probably represented less than 1/4 of the world's GDP. Compare that to WWI and WWII, when something on the order of magnitude of 1/4 of the world's entire GDP was actually committed to the war effort.

[Iroscato]

The fight against ISIS cannot be defined as a World War by any stretch of the imagination. There is precious little political will on the side of the US for a full-blown campaign, mainly due to the fallout from the Iraq/Afghanistan omnishambles. Russia is pretty much indiscriminately wiping its dick all over the region, and China is as far as I'm aware watching with mild, detached interest.

Then there's the fact that trying to actually fight ISIS is something akin to trying to strangle smoke with your bare hands. This is not a war that will be won with bombs, but with ideas. I only hope the Old Guard wakes up to that fact before a large portion of the ME is irradiated.

[Anomalocaris]

Like I said,  when peer powers with real industrial and technological depth are not forming globe spanning blocks and actually shooting at each other, it ain't a world war.

The "war" against ISIS is pacification writ large, not even a real war, much less world war.

[dyresand]

The fight against ISIS cannot be defined as a World War by any stretch of the imagination. There is precious little political will on the side of the US for a full-blown campaign, mainly due to the fallout from the Iraq/Afghanistan omnishambles. Russia is pretty much indiscriminately wiping its dick all over the region, and China is as far as I'm aware watching with mild, detached interest.

Then there's the fact that trying to actually fight ISIS is something akin to trying to strangle smoke with your bare hands. This is not a war that will be won with bombs, but with ideas. I only hope the Old Guard wakes up to that fact before a large portion of the ME is irradiated.

We really can't afford to nuke the ME for reasons. The reasons being political and environmental. Especially that last one 
we would piss off Russia unless you know they are on board with it and even then think about the rest of isis
that are probably hiding out somewhere in other countries.

[Excited Penguin]

People are behaving like Isis is the only problem. Well, there's such a thing called Islam, and last time I checked there's not many Maajid Nawaz's among the 1.5 billion of them.

Don't get me wrong. To reform that death cult of a religion is pretty much our number one priority right now, as a global society. I would love nothing more. But what do we do when we are faced with a much meaner, stronger and bigger dog than Isis?

Theocracy of this sort may in some ways be far more dangerous than even the Nazi's for our way of life and all of our accomplishes so far as a society. We need to come to grips with that and renew our secularizing efforts right at home, wherever we are, in order to fight this fight the right way. Failing that, we'll definitely have a modern day version of the Crusades. I'm not exactly doubting that Christians would be able to eventually supress the problem, but then we would have a whole other problem on our hands. So, either way, we kind of lose.

[Anomalocaris]

The fight against ISIS cannot be defined as a World War by any stretch of the imagination. There is precious little political will on the side of the US for a full-blown campaign, mainly due to the fallout from the Iraq/Afghanistan omnishambles. Russia is pretty much indiscriminately wiping its dick all over the region, and China is as far as I'm aware watching with mild, detached interest.

Then there's the fact that trying to actually fight ISIS is something akin to trying to strangle smoke with your bare hands. This is not a war that will be won with bombs, but with ideas. I only hope the Old Guard wakes up to that fact before a large portion of the ME is irradiated.

We really can't afford to nuke the ME for reasons. The reasons being political and environmental. Especially that last one 
we would piss off Russia unless you know they are on board with it and even then think about the rest of isis
that are probably hiding out somewhere in other countries.

And also it is not in the interest of the strong to have precedent set by either itself or others for lowering the threshold of nuclear release.

Nuclear weapon is the last resort of a refime that can't compete, and has no friends.