{"id":1575705,"date":"2024-03-27T05:59:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T05:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=317213"},"modified":"2024-03-27T05:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T05:59:15","slug":"a-slow-motion-world-war-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/27\/a-slow-motion-world-war-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Slow-Motion World War III?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image by UX Gun.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em>. I\u2019ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies \u2014 god save us, it could be four in November! I\u2019ve\u00a0viewed<\/a>\u00a0from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America\u2019s endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I\u2019ve watched the latest military budget hit\u00a0almost $900 billion<\/a>, undoubtedly on its way\u00a0toward a cool trillion<\/a>\u00a0in the years to come, while years ago the whole \u201cnational security\u201d budget (though \u201cinsecurity\u201d would be a better word) soared to\u00a0well over<\/a>\u00a0the trillion-dollar mark.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived my whole life in an imperial power. Once, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was even \u201cthe lone superpower,\u201d the last great power on planet Earth, or so its leaders believed. I then watched how, in a world without great-power dangers, it continued to invest ever more of our tax dollars in our military. A \u201cpeace dividend<\/a>\u201c? Who needed that? And yet, in the decades that followed, by far the\u00a0most expensive<\/a>\u00a0military on planet Earth couldn\u2019t manage to win a single war, no less its Global War on Terror. In fact, in this century, while fighting vain or losing conflicts across significant parts of the planet, it slowly but all too obviously began to go down the tubes, or perhaps I mean (if you don\u2019t mind a few mixed metaphors) come apart at the seams?<\/p>\n

And it never seems to end, does it? Imagine that 32 years after the U.S. became the last superpower on Planet Earth, in a devastating kind of political chaos, this country might indeed reelect a man who imagines himself running a future American \u201cdictatorship\u201d \u2014 his very word for it! \u2014 even if, publicly at least, just\u00a0for a single day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yes, in 2024, as chaos blooms on the American political scene, the world itself continues to be remarkably at war \u2014 think of \u201cwar,\u201d in fact, as humanity\u2019s middle name \u2014 in both Ukraine and Gaza (with offshoots in\u00a0Lebanon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Yemen<\/a>). Meanwhile, this country\u2019s now 22-year-old war on terror\u00a0straggles<\/a>\u00a0on in its own devastating fashion, with threats of worse to come in plain sight.<\/p>\n

After all, 88 years after two atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, nukes seem to be making a comeback (not that they were ever truly gone, of course). Thank you, Kim and Vlad! I\u2019m thinking of how North Korean leader Kim Jong-un implicitly\u00a0threatened<\/a>\u00a0to nuke his nonnuclear southern neighbor recently. But also, far more significantly how, in his own version of a State of the Union address to his people, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u00a0very publicly threatened<\/a>\u00a0to employ nukes from his country\u2019s vast arsenal (assumedly \u201ctactical\u201d ones, some of which are more powerful than the atomic bombs that ended World War II), should any European countries \u2014\u00a0think France<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 send their troops into Ukraine.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t forget that, amid all of this, my own country\u2019s military,\u00a0eternally hiking<\/a>\u00a0its \u201cdefense\u201d budget, continues to prepare in a big-time fashion for a future war with \u2014 yes \u2014 China! Of course, that country is, in turn,\u00a0rushing to upgrade<\/a>\u00a0its own nuclear arsenal and the rest of its military machine as well. Only recently, for instance, the U.S. and Japan held joint military maneuvers that, as they openly\u00a0indicated for the first time<\/a>, were aimed at preparing for just such a future conflict with China and you can\u2019t get much more obvious than that.<\/p>\n

Another World War?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, and when it comes to war, I haven\u2019t even mentioned, for instance, the\u00a0devastating civil war<\/a>\u00a0in Sudan that has nothing to do with any of the major powers. Yes, we humans just can\u2019t seem to stop making war while, to the tune of untold trillions of dollars globally, preparing for ever more of it. And the truly strange thing is this: it seems to matter not at all that the very world on which humanity has done so forever and a day is now itself being unsettled in a devastating way that no military of any sort, armed in any fashion, will ever be able to deal with.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s admit it: we humans have always had a deep urge to make war. Of course, logically speaking, we shouldn\u2019t continue to do so, and not just for all the obvious reasons but because we\u2019re on a planet that can\u2019t take it anymore. (Yes,\u00a0making war<\/a>\u00a0or simply\u00a0preparing for it<\/a>\u00a0means putting staggering amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and so, quite literally, making war on the planet itself.) But \u2014 as both history and the present moment seem to indicate all too decisively \u2014 we just can\u2019t stop ourselves.<\/p>\n

In the process, while hardly noticing, it seems as if we\u2019ve become ever more intent on conducting a global war on this planet itself. Our weapons in that war \u2014 and in their own long-term fashion, they\u2019re likely to prove no less devastating than nuclear arms \u2014 have been fossil fuels. I\u2019m thinking, of course, of coal, oil, and natural gas and the greenhouse gases that drilling for them and the use of them emit in staggering quantities even in what passes for peacetime.<\/p>\n

In the previous century, of course, there were two devastating \u201cworld\u201d wars, World War I and World War II. They were global events that, in total, killed\u00a0more than<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0hundred million<\/a>\u00a0of us and devastated parts of the planet. But here\u2019s the truly strange thing: while local and regional wars continue in this century in a striking fashion, few consider the way we\u2019re loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and methane while, in the process, heating this planet disastrously as a new kind of world war. Think of climate change, in fact, as a kind of slow-motion World War III. After all, it couldn\u2019t be more global or, in the end, more destructive than a world war of the worst sort.<\/p>\n

And unlike the present wars in Gaza and Ukraine, which, even thousands of miles away, continue to be headline-making events, the war on this planet normally gets surprisingly little attention in much of the media. In fact, in 2023, a year that set\u00a0striking global heat records<\/a>\u00a0month by month from June to December and was also the hottest year ever recorded, the major TV news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox actually cut their coverage of global warming significantly,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0Media Matters for America.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong><\/em>If I Don\u2019t Get Elected, It\u2019s Going to Be a Blood Bath\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I live in New York City which, like much of the rest of the planet, set a\u00a0heat record<\/a>\u00a0for 2023. In addition, the winter we just passed through was a\u00a0record one<\/a>\u00a0for warmth. And I began writing this piece on a set of days in early March when the temperature in my city also\u00a0hit records<\/a>\u00a0in the mid-60s, and when, on March 14th (not April 14th, May 14th, or even June 14th), it clocked\u00a070-plus degrees<\/a>. I was walking outside that afternoon with my shirtsleeves rolled up, my sweater in my backpack, and my spring jacket tied around my waist, feeling uncomfortably hot in my blue jeans even on the shadier side of the street.<\/p>\n

And yes, if, as my wife and I did recently, you were to walk down to the park near where we live, you\u2019d see that the daffodils are already blooming wildly as are other flowers, while the first trees are budding, including a fantastic all-purple one that\u2019s burst out fully, all of this in a fashion that might once have seemed normal sometime in April. And yes, some of what I\u2019m describing is certainly quite beautiful in the short run, but under it lies an increasingly grim reality when it comes to extreme (and extremely hot) weather.<\/p>\n

While I was working on this piece, the largest Texas fires ever (yes, ever!), continued to burn, evidently\u00a0barely contained<\/a>, with far more than a million acres of that state\u2019s panhandle already fried to a crisp. Oh, and those record-setting Canadian forest fires that scorched tens of millions of acres of that country, while turning distant U.S. cities like New York into smoke hells\u00a0last June<\/a>\u00a0have, it turns out,\u00a0festered<\/a>\u00a0underground all winter as \u201czombie fires.\u201d And they may burst out again in an even more devastating fashion this spring or summer. In fact, in 2023, from\u00a0Hawaii<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Chile<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Europe<\/a>, there were\u00a0record wildfires<\/a>\u00a0of all sorts on our increasingly over-heated planet. And far worse is yet to come, something you could undoubtedly say as well about more intense flooding, more violent storms, and so on.<\/p>\n

We are, in other words, increasingly on a different planet, though you would hardly know it amid the madness of our moment. I mean, imagine this: Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, clearly doesn\u2019t consider climate change a significant issue, is on pace to achieve an\u00a0oil-drilling record<\/a>\u00a0for the second year in a row. China, despite installing far more green power than any other country, has also been using\u00a0more coal<\/a>\u00a0than all other nations combined, and set\u00a0global records<\/a>\u00a0for building new coal-fired power plants.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the third \u201cgreat\u201d power on this planet, despite having a president\u00a0dedicated to<\/a>\u00a0doing something about climate change, is still the\u00a0largest exporter<\/a>\u00a0of natural gas around and continues to produce oil at a\u00a0distinctly record pace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t forget the five giant fossil-fuel companies, BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies, which in 2023 produced oil, made profits, and rewarded shareholders at \u2014 yes, you guessed it! \u2014 a\u00a0record pace<\/a>, while the major petrostates of our world are still,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>, \u201cplanning expansions that would blow the planet\u2019s carbon budget twice over.\u201d<\/p>\n

In sum, then, this world of ours only grows more dangerous by the year. And I haven\u2019t even mentioned artificial intelligence, have I? As Michael Klare has written in an\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0for the Arms Control Association, the dangers of AI and other emerging military technologies are likely to \u201cexpand into the nuclear realm by running up the escalation ladder or by blurring the distinction between a conventional and nuclear attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, human war-making could become both more inhuman and worse at the same time. Now, add just one more factor into the global equation. America\u2019s European and Asian allies see U.S. leadership, dominant since 1945, experiencing a potentially epoch-ending, terminal failure, as the global\u00a0Pax Americana<\/em>\u00a0(that had all too little to do with \u201cpeace\u201d) is crumbling \u2014 or do I mean overheating?<\/p>\n

What they see, in fact, is two elderly men locked in an ever more destructive, inward-looking electoral knife fight, with one of them\u00a0warning ominously<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cif I don\u2019t get elected, it\u2019s going to be a blood bath\u2026 for the country.\u201d And if he isn\u2019t victorious, here\u2019s his further prediction: \u201cI don\u2019t think<\/a>\u00a0you\u2019re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that\u2019s meaningful.\u201d Of course, were he to be victorious the same could be true, especially since he\u2019s promised from his first day in office to \u201cdrill, drill, drill<\/a>,\u201d which, at this point in our history, is, by definition, to declare war on this planet!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Donald Trump isn\u2019t alone. All too sadly, we humans clearly have trouble focusing on the world we actually inhabit. We\u2019d prefer to fight wars instead. Consider that the definition not just of imperial decline, but of decline period in the age of climate change.<\/p>\n

And yet, it\u2019s barely news.<\/p>\n

This piece first appeared at TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post A Slow-Motion World War III?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at\u00a0TomDispatch. I\u2019ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies \u2014 god save us, it could be four in November! I\u2019ve\u00a0viewed\u00a0from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America\u2019s endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I\u2019ve watched the latest military budget More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post A Slow-Motion World War III?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586286,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575705\/revisions\/1586286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}