Thread: World War III.

Hey!

If there's going to be a third world war, which side would have a chance of winning?
Axis or Allied?

Axis headed by Russia and China.
Allied headed by the United States and European Union.

You obviously haven’t watched the movie WarGames
"The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

The best quote from that film is where McKittrick tells the general: "I don't have to take that, you pig-eyed sack of shit". A quote I've used myself on occasion

Total destruction of earth.
So, It does not matter which side wins!

There are no winners in any war because mothers on both sides lose their children.

Well, cool replies, though.

Short of the nuclear option, it seems a matter of who could successfully attack and who could successfully defend. China's "million man" army sounds powerful, but they probably can't mobilize it for offensive purposes (ie, send it far from China). Besides, infantry works best at defending. Also, as far as I know, China does not have a big naval fleet, but instead, mostly defending forces. So, along with the idea that "Axis" means offending and "Allies" means defending, China isn't as big an offender as it might seem, despite its size and numbers.

Further along the lines of a realistic conventional war, significant countries such as India who would need to choose sides, and there's already some palpable unease between India and China due to border disputes, so India might side with the Allies. So even without using nuclear weapons, the threat is still there, and India is nuclear as well as its neighbor Pakistan. They might side with the Allies, or maintain their own belligerence against the Axis.

Without much help from China, Russia wouldn't gain much. They would literally "have each other's back", ie not worry about hostilities along their common border. But still, they aren't exactly in love with one another just because they're both communist nations.

Overall, I would say that WWIII would end in a stalemate. Russia and China would not make any significant offensive gains, but neither would they capitulate and be defeated. Just a bloody mess that didn't prove anything.

But still, they aren't exactly in love with one another just because they're both communist nations.

Pardon? I thought the Soviet Union had gone. Russia isn't a communist country.

Historically the winner of every major conflict has been the last man standing, and usually it is not one of the countries anybody expected to win at the start of the conflict.
If you think about WWI and WWII Germany was the world's economic powerhouse with the best manufacturing and the most treasure to waste making war. Nobody expected WWI to bankrupt Britain or for Russia to collapse in revolution.
At the start of WWII nobody expected USA and USSR to end up as the two major world powers. In other words the winners were the ones who stayed out of the war the longest and then, after the big boys were done killing each other off, salvaged from what everybody else had lost.

As a result I would bet the winners of WWIII would be either India or Brazil.

Originally Posted by adelady

But still, they aren't exactly in love with one another just because they're both communist nations.

Pardon? I thought the Soviet Union had gone. Russia isn't a communist country.

Sorry, old thoughts die hard.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”


― Albert Einstein

Originally Posted by jrmonroe

Originally Posted by adelady

But still, they aren't exactly in love with one another just because they're both communist nations.

Pardon? I thought the Soviet Union had gone. Russia isn't a communist country.

Sorry, old thoughts die hard.

It war replaced by organized crime government with the same folks in charge...really not much of a difference.

--
As for the OP, I'm not sure what sides there would even be. There's really only one major military power left and we are all so connected economically that any really global war would be devastating on all sides.

Originally Posted by dan hunter

Historically the winner of every major conflict has been the last man standing, and usually it is not one of the countries anybody expected to win at the start of the conflict.
If you think about WWI and WWII Germany was the world's economic powerhouse with the best manufacturing and the most treasure to waste making war. Nobody expected WWI to bankrupt Britain or for Russia to collapse in revolution.
At the start of WWII nobody expected USA and USSR to end up as the two major world powers. In other words the winners were the ones who stayed out of the war the longest and then, after the big boys were done killing each other off, salvaged from what everybody else had lost.

As a result I would bet the winners of WWIII would be either India or Brazil.

An explanation that has some merit where the United States is concerned, but I can't buy it regarding the Soviet Union. Soviet "military" war dead in WW2 are estimated at somewhere between 9 and 13 million, easily higher than the death tolls of Germany, the United States, and the British Commonwealth combined. And that isn't counting the horrific soviet "non-military" casualties, which were considerably higher.

The Soviet Union and Japan were fighting in 1938. The USSR hardly stayed out of the war till the last minute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan.

Originally Posted by Alec Bing

The Soviet Union and Japan were fighting in 1938. The USSR hardly stayed out of the war till the last minute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan.

That was little more than a minor border skirmish. If you had chosen the Germany/Soviet proxy war in Spain as your example it would have been better.
Your comment illustrates what I said quite well though. In spite of the taking over Eastern Europe at the end of WWII USSR had lost enough during the war that they were only the second world power while USA gained control of the Middle East oil resources and control over almost all of Southeast Asia (except China).

Edit: oops, accidental double posting.

the video game players will win -the obese ones

after the gov let people kill the indians wall st got rich?

Wall Street's first victims | SocialistWorker.org

Wall Street's first victims | SocialistWorker.org

i bethey got richoff genocide

then on youtube there is "wall st and the bolsheviks" and "wall st and hilter" a sutton

the world still loves our mcdonlds though

AP Interview: Tymoshenko calls for NATO membership

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said that Ukraine "must be a member of NATO" in order to protect itself from Russian aggression.

what are her crimes?i heard shes a criminal-she looks mean

she wants to kill Russians i heard maybe like a mere 8 million

Originally Posted by Half Immune Wizard

Hey!

If there's going to be a third world war, which side would have a chance of winning?
Axis or Allied?

Axis headed by Russia and China.
Allied headed by the United States and European Union.

Essentially there has been one concept which has prevented a direct military conflict between the world's major powers, even if we talk about the Korean war that still under the auspices of a UN army fighting the Chinese, so not direct conflict between the US and China, and even then General Macarthur was sacked to prevent expansion of the war.

But the concept that prevents world war 3, has been and still is, that it would be MAD to fight. Nuclear weapons are so destructive that Mutually Assured Destruction would result from such a conflict between the world powers. This is one reason the cold war was cold and that conflicts between the powers are ideological by nature and are usually only ever fought as third party small scale proxy wars.

So yes a third world war is still very unlikely if not totally inconceivable, and there would be no side with a chance of winning a war of no winners.

Allied (only because of the European Union )

Although I am also tempted to say Axis. Anyone ever wonder why they were called Axis and Allied to begin with?

Looks like the term Axis was advanced by someone who didn't live to see what happened.

Axis powers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Allies" was a carryover term from WWI, but with slightly different participants.