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Media goons predicting WWIII are all ignoring the same thing – and it’s ‘mad’

Anyone reading the news this week will have been confronted by the most ridiculous story since ‘nationalised sausages‘: conscription for WWIII:

That’s right, we’re heading towards WWIII with Russia. While that may be true, there’s one thing everyone used to understand – namely that such a conflict would be incredibly short and spectacularly radioactive.

The well-practiced stupidity of the British media means 99% of journalists have forgotten this fact. this in turn means there are now talks of a land war with Mr Putin:

Who do they think they are kidding?

What now? WWIII apparently…

A British general named Patrick Sanders has been going around suggesting we need to bring back the draft in preparation for WWIII. As reported by the Guardian:

Speaking at a military conference, Sanders starkly described the British people as part of a “prewar generation” who may have to prepare themselves to fight in a war against an increasingly aggressive Russia. The chief of general staff highlighted the example of Sweden, which has just reintroduced a form of national service as it closes in on joining Nato.

During the speech in London, the army chief said the UK needed to broadly follow Stockholm’s example and take “preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing”. Such action was “not merely desirable, but essential”, he added.

The foundations for “national mobilisation” could not be confined to countries neighbouring or close to Russia, and as a result ordinary people in the UK would be forced to join the UK’s 74,110 full-time regular army to see off an active threat to mainland Europe.

He said: “We will not be immune and as the prewar generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking. Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.”

The problem isn’t that he’s saying these things; the problem is that the media is reporting on them without the most obvious context in the world.

Unclear nuclear

One of the key arguments for maintaining our nuclear arsenal is the concept of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD). As Atomic Archive noted:

By the mid-1960s, unilateral deterrence gave way to “mutual deterrence,” a situation of strategic stalemate. The superpowers would refrain from attacking each other because of the certainty of mutual assured destruction, better known as MAD. This theory is still a major part of the defense policies of the United States and Russia.

While MAD may sound like – well – an absolutely mad state of affairs, it is possible to argue it prevented WWIII.

Powers like the US and Russia have been at war with select portions of the world pretty much constantly, of course. However, citizens within the bosom of imperialism have been spared from the violence themselves (barring the odd act of retaliation, or ‘terrorism’ as we’re supposed to call it).

Now, it seems, mutually assured destruction is no longer a thing. But how, exactly? Did every nuclear power around the world forget to update their arsenal, and now we’re all unexpectedly unprotected? Maybe nuclear bombs never existed in the first place, and the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were staged by the people who filmed Godzilla?

Regardless of what happened, you’d expect journalists covering the story to be asking ‘so what the fuck happened to our nuclear deterrent’? By and large, this isn’t happening. The Guardian article we quoted above doesn’t mention nukes. This article from the Telegraph doesn’t either, and neither do these from the Independent, LBC, Metro, Sky News,  BBC News, or the Sun.

Special mention to this article from GB News, though, which does at least half-address the issue:

Professor Glees stated that although the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine fleet deters Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from using their nukes against us, the idea of a conventional war should not be ruled out.

Ah, okay, so why can’t we rule it out exactly?

Would you be surprised to learn that the good professor doesn’t explain this, and that GB News doesn’t ask any follow up questions?

Another special mention to this article from the Daily Mail. It doesn’t itself mention our nuclear capacity, but it does link to another article about Putin being “unafraid to use nuclear weapons in war with NATO”.

Unafraid, is he? Don’t worry – that will soon change when he sees our army of confused teenagers and beer-bellied, red-faced 40-somethings. Putin will be shitting it so hard he wouldn’t dare press a button in the safety of his well-guarded palace some several thousand miles away from the front line.

Jokes aside, we do have a secret weapon that may just swing the war in our favour:

Divorced Dad’s Army

Britain’s commentariat may be the dumbest people in the world, but action heroes from the 80s and 90s weren’t particularly bright either, and they got things done.

Using this logic, we think we can all agree that boisterous opinion writers like former PM Boris Johnson have got this one covered:

There’s an inclination to think this story is particularly stupid in 2024, given that we’ve spent the past three years watching Putin fail to win what was supposed to be a very brief invasion. Obviously the combined forces of NATO could give Mr Putin a black eye? Possibly, but let’s not forget that the US has spent much of this century losing wars against dudes on horseback.

It’s actually incredibly difficult to conclusively end a war without decimating the civilian population, which is just one of many reasons why it should always be avoided – especially as we and Russia literally have the capacity to mutually assure one another’s destruction.

Mo’ nukes, mo’ problems

Ironically, this is all happening at the same time that the US is sending more nukes to Britain:

Presumably this means we still plan on nuking Russia in the event of WWIII?

So to summarise, what some people would like to see is the following chain of events:

  1. We conscript a bunch of teenagers, gammon, and opinion columnists.
  2. We mould them into an elite killing machine.
  3. We send them to Russia.
  4. As soon as the conflict starts, we immediately nuke the country we just sent them to.

We feel like there’s something we’re not following here. Thankfully there are still some outlets out there who are questioning the MADness:

Featured image via Number 10 – Flickr

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.