Doly wrote:In both WWI and WWII, the USA ended up getting involved because of a deliberate British propaganda campaign. This time it's different, not because the Brits wouldn't try it again, but because they don't have to. The current American military-industrial complex demands for their chance to wage war at every opportunity by now. So I agree with you that it's pretty much inevitable that USA enters WWIII, should it come to that, and that it probably will.
This said, I disagree with the idea that a big country should get involved in a major war as soon as possible, if they have a choice in the matter. Small wars are less bad than big wars, every time. The notion that joining sooner will make for a faster victory than joining later implies that the sides are known and won't shift during the war. Both WWI and WWII show how many changes can happen during a major war: the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires disintegrated during the war, Russia and China had major civil wars at the same time as fighting a world war, Germany initially allied with Russia, broke the alliance, and then shifted to attempting peace and an alliance with Britain... and that's only the major, fate-of-war-shifting developments. As I see it, if a country is able to predict the outcome of a war, there are good chances it's also able to prevent it with the right diplomatic moves, especially if we are talking about a big country with a lot of weight in world affairs. So the very fact that there is a major war is a pretty good sign that the leadership of the fighting countries don't know how it's going to develop. Therefore, any claims that joining sooner is better than joining later are likely propaganda or ill-informed.
You make many excellent points in that post. The USA greatly benefitted from entering WW2 late, after the Germans and the USSR and other Europeans and the Chinese and Japanese had been fighting each other for years. I believe they did that on purpose and it was a very smart move. When the time was right, they provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor to change Americans' opinions about joining the war and provide the USA with a casus belli. That fact, combined with the fact that the war was fought mostly in Eurasia, left the USA as the only large industrial nation in the world that hadn't suffer any significant damage in the war. This allowed the USA to prosper and dominate much of the world for decades, displacing the British Empire. It was the Americans who played the Brits, and not the other way round.
I believe that the US military and government are very aware of this. This is why Americans are fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine today. The USA would prefer Ukraine to win, but they will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian and let the Europeans destroy their economies by sanctioning Russia. Whether Ukrainians win or lose, Americans believe that both Europe and Russia will be weakened leaving it in a relatively stronger position.
Also, blocking land trade between Europe and Asia and creating a new wall there is part of the goal, too, IMO. The USA would obviously benefit from disrupting rail traffic from China to Europe through Russia. Since 100% of that trade now runs through Poland and Belarus, I would be very concerned if I were Polish or Belarussian or lived in those countries. If the USA doesn't manage to end this trade through sanctions, then provoking a war in Poland or Belarus would be the next logical step for the Americans. The US government would probably be willing to fight that proxy war to the last continental European, IMO.
May we live in interesting times! This conversation probably belongs in a different thread. We make Tanada's job very hard!
![[smilie=eusa_dance.gif]](https://peakoil.com/forums/images/smilies/eusa_dance.gif "eusa_dance")
