by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of my favorite novels growing up was Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising. The biggest problem I had with it — even as a young man — was the scenario totally glossed over what the domestic reaction to WW3 would be. With that in mind, let’s imagine that the wars going on at the moment fused together and became WW3.
The nation that connects Ukraine and Israel is Russia. If what’s going on between Israel and Hamas escalates, it would be Russia that could potentially link the two wars.
It would go something like this. Hezbollah strikes Israel from the north at the direction of Iran. Things grow so bad that Israel feels an existential threat and the nuke the capital of Hezbollah’s patron, Iran. Once Teheran is rubble, the 75-year old taboo against using nukes would end and Russia might feel emboldened to nuke Ukraine.
Once this happens, it is easy to imagine China going after Taiwan and the DPRK going after the ROK. Throw in India and Pakistan nuking each other while central Africa goes at it and you have WW3.
It makes you wonder if WW3 would be enough to unite the extremely divided United States. I have my doubts. The problems with the United States at the moment are macro and existential. I don’t even think a world war could unite America at this point.
We are very, very fucked.
It’s really just a matter of what bad thing happens.
Anyway, I don’t know if the American press would be able to handle an actual WW3. It would be a very interesting situation, however. Once the initial freak out faded, I think America would probably go back to the same old Blue-Vs-Red political war that we’ve been experiencing for some time now.
One issue would be if the Draft came back or not. That would be something that would catch the attention of the average person to the point that WW3 wouldn’t just be “over there.”
