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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| World War Next. War is coming. Maybe not this month, maybe not this year, but it's coming. Let's explore what the next world war might look like, if the US, China, and Russia come to blows. |
| 2022-08-27 |
| [TreeOfWoe] A game designer's look at the relative strength of America, China, and Russia War is coming. Maybe not this month, maybe not this year, but it’s coming. The Pax American has ended. The men and women who remember the horror of World War II are long gone. The taboo on violence has been lifted. War is coming. You can disagree, but I have a ham radio set up at my desk, and when the missiles start to fly, I will radio you to say "I told you so." (Leave your callsign in the comments.) If war comes, will the US prevail? Our national mythology holds that we’re always the good guys and the good guys always win. But war is the province of blood, steel, risk, and grit, not myth. The United States has not faced a hot war against a peer adversary in 77 years. It has not faced a hot war against a peer adversary capable of attacking its home soil in 157 years. Since that time, we have grown in population and gross domestic product, but we have also deindustrialized and offshored much of the capability that once made us "the Arsenal of Democracy." In that same time, a new adversary has arisen, the first we have ever faced that has a larger population and economy than us. Let’s explore what the next world war might look like, if the US, China, and Russia come to blows. This is a complex topic, so it might end up a multi-part series. A BRIEF STATEMENT OF CREDENTIALS War is a serious mater, and an armchair strategist who wishes to be taken seriously should state his credentials. Here are mine, for good or ill. (You can skip this paragraph if you don’t care.) I planned on a career in the military and attended the US Military Academy at West Point from 1993 to 1995, where I was in the top 5% of my class academically and was adjutant of the Wargames Club. Sadly, I was at the bottom 1% of my class physically, which rather dampened my prospects for a career. After my hopes and dreams were crushed at West Point, I became a military history major at Binghamton University, where my final project was a simulation of hypothetical Middle Eastern conflict in 2001. From there I co-wrote the modern warfare game Modern Spearhead, which was the first microarmor rules set to simulate the differences, not just in NATO and Warsaw Pact equipment, but in their maneuver, fire control, and doctrine. MSH has been played for many years at the USMA Wargames Club and around the world. I have since also written Domains at War, a simulation of ancient and medieval warfare. I have also consulted on a number of defense-related projects, most recently in 2019 when I served as a panelist at the US Army War College workshop Wargaming A.I.: Exploring First Principles to Simulate an Advanced, Artificially Intelligent Military Command and Control System. My analysis is thus going to be that of a wargame designer, perhaps a very good wargame designer, but not that of a scholar or veteran. WORLD WAR NEXT WILL NOT BE SHORT Virtually every public discussion of World War III scenarios, and the vast majority of WWIII fiction, assumes that WWIII will be very short. The assumption seems to be that one side or the other will quickly gain the upper hand, the other side will then threaten to use nuclear weapons to end the conflict, and the hot war will end with some sort of negotiated armistice to avoid global annihilation. I believe this notion is terribly mistaken. Prior to the outbreak of every major war, the strategists on both sides are virtually always confident that the next war will be short. "You’ll be home for Christmas, boys!" Whether we look at the American Civil War, First World War, Korean War, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, or the most recent Russo-Ukraine War, we see that wars always last much longer than the pre-war planners expected. In a short war, the winner will tend to be whichever side has better-trained and better-led troops with better equipment. The Americans excel at this. So did the Germans. Unfortunately, wars don’t tend to be a short. It goes on, with lots of graphs. Makes its points very well. |
| Posted by:Tiny Jeater6933 |
| #6 Given what Biden and Milly (or what ever it's name is) are doing to the US Military, the major battles will be Upper Midwest farmers against Cantonese speakers who can't believe how friggin' cold it is. |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2022-08-27 18:49 |
| #5 Skunky Ebbaique3, that is all part for the cold war. Soviets fired a fire and forget propaganda missile that may take down the US decades after the Soviets collapsed. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2022-08-27 12:55 |
| #4 |
| Posted by: Slenter Panda4300 2022-08-27 07:35 |
| #3 The next war between the nuclear powers is likely to be hacker war with power systems shut down and trains and subways and traffic lights turned off to bing countries to a screeching economic halt. Or just adopt European & American "Green Policies'" Globally for the same effect - follow Merkel, Macron, Biden, Trudeau, and Gore... It's all the same thing. |
| Posted by: Skunky Ebbaique3137 2022-08-27 07:24 |
| #2 Didn't we have this scenario when Reagan got elected? You should have been around during the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2022-08-27 07:06 |
| #1 The next war between the nuclear powers is likely to be hacker war with power systems shut down and trains and subways and traffic lights turned off to bing countries to a screeching economic halt. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2022-08-27 00:27 |