05-15-2020, 03:06 AM
(05-13-2020, 06:25 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-13-2020, 02:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: As Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek (or one of his writers) put into the mouth of a Klingon:
Only fools fight in a burning building.
COVID-19 is a burning building, and if plagues can happen with wars or be consequences of wars, they seem to make the waging of war, especially Crisis war, difficult. So if we Americans end up with a leader (Trump) who could never wage an effective war -- Obama was in contrast the mailed-fist-in-a-velvet-glove sort of leader who could be the worst sort of leader that any foreign leader could provoke.
Yep. Part of why I don't expect a crisis war among nuclear powers in the remaining prophet-nomad-hero configuration among the nations brought into sync by World War II.
There have been plenty of wars, but mostly proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan) or conflicts between old-fashioned despots (Iran-Iraq war). A Crisis War this time would be a proxy war going out of control. Such seems not to have happened this time. The war that I most expected to break out is a restarting of the Korean War -- and if that were to happen the DPRK would find itself without allies.
Nukes themselves seem to ensure that if one wins one wins nothing. The industrial plants will be gone. The victor will have no conquered people to press-gang. Even agriculture will be unreliable (it recovered quickly after World War II) because crops will be tainted with radioactivity and elements toxic even if not radioactive. .
I always thought that a nuclear war would begin as a conventional war with the nuclear exchange beginning when one side sees itself losing with its leaders having nothing to lose because they would be tried and convicted (fairly or otherwise) for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
