I'm afraid of nuclear war. “Armageddon and paranoia”: should the world be afraid of nuclear war? interview with ex-ambassador to the USSR How to stop being afraid of war
Increasingly, the world media, experts, historians, analysts and politicians are raising the topic of a possible world war in which the USA, Russia and China will participate. There is an opinion that war between great powers using conventional weapons is inevitable. And you shouldn’t be particularly afraid of her. Moreover, there are also advantages: war accelerates progress. Some people are also sure that there is no need to fear even a nuclear war.
Rick Searle, associate professor of political science and Delaware Valley College writer, analyst, and Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) fellow, asked the question: “What makes war between the United States and China or Russia inevitable?” The scientist tried to give the answer in an article on the website.
The scientist reminds us that there is a dangerous and not new idea that is still being talked about today: they say that a conventional war between great powers is inevitable, and it poses a much smaller threat to the existence of humanity than someone thinks. Moreover, it is even necessary for the progress of humanity.
The emergence of this argument in favor of war replaces previous claims that the concept of war is becoming obsolete, since history is characterized by trends towards prosperity and peace. However, they said exactly the same thing in the 19th century. There were many who argued that war was becoming unnecessary because peaceful global trade made it possible to make profits where war had previously been necessary. Opponents of these “peaceful” ideologists, in turn, stated that war was the main vector of human progress and that without it people would degrade.
An argument with clearly racist overtones, isn't it? It is precisely because of racism that such statements about the degradation of humanity without war are not accepted in intellectual circles. But instead, the war was associated with technological development: supposedly without war in general and the great war for power in particular, people are doomed to a technological dead end. For example, Ian Morris wrote about this in his book “War What is it Good For?”
For some reason, supporters of such technological “progress” do not take into account one simple thing: a conflict between great powers could lead to the tragic prospect of an exchange of nuclear strikes. Perhaps war is spurring progress, but it is better to move forward at a snail’s pace than to return to the Stone Age through such conflicts.
However, some people also make the argument that a nuclear war will not completely destroy the civilization of earthlings. But it is unlikely that the broad masses will believe in this idea. Another thing is the spread of the idea that great powers could collide with each other and yet somehow miraculously avoid using the full power of their conventional and nuclear forces, even with terrible losses.
This is written, for example, by Peter W. Singer and August Cole's recent novel Ghost Fleet: A novel of the Third World War, in which tells a fictional story about the Third World War using exclusively traditional weapons. The war is fought primarily at sea and is between the United States, China and Russia.
This book has been the subject of many studies. Perhaps it actually shows quite well what war will look like in the next ten to fifteen years. If only its authors are right, in the wars of the future, unmanned vehicles will operate underground, on land, in the air and at sea - in short, everywhere. Military operations will be conducted with the help of artificial intelligence.
Cyber attacks will become a natural theater of war in the future. And outer space too.
In World War III, advances in neuroscience and bioelectronics will be used, at least where “enhanced and brutal” interrogations will be required.
The war would begin with a Chinese or Russian attack on US satellites, and this attack would “effectively blind” the US military. Some American equipment is vulnerable because elements of its devices are manufactured in Chinese factories.
As for the war at sea, everything in the book is “standard”: a surprise attack by the Chinese and Russians on US forces in the Pacific Ocean. Most of the American fleet is destroyed and Hawaii is captured.
The problem with the authors is that they are not aware of something. Are people able to control such conflicts? Without thinking about this, the authors do not remind that everything possible should be done to avoid conflicts. The book depicts a conflict bottled up in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Neither the possibility of an exchange of nuclear strikes nor strategic bombings are taken into account. But can this really happen? Rick Searle strongly doubts it.
The uniqueness of Herodotus's historical works is that at that time, for the first time, one people tried to actually understand their enemies. “The Greeks, as far as I know, were the first and only ones here,” the analyst notes.
In the book “Ghost Fleet” the Chinese are reduced to the level of some kind of cardboard villains that someone like D. Bond must fight. American control of the Pacific Ocean is fully justified, Washington's "heroes" are declared paragons of virtue.
The weakness of such book “prophecies” is that their authors lack genuine imagination. The motives, background, and “deep historical grievances” that would likely lead the Chinese or Russians to any such conflict are not even outlined in the book.
And this is where Rick Searle sees the main problem - “lack of understanding.”
It is this misunderstanding that makes great wars of mankind, if not inevitable, then at least more probable.
Many foreign experts, we would add, are now hinting that the leading powers are heading towards war right now. However, it is still possible to avoid it.
Recently, one expert examined a way to bypass the military situation in relation to the PRC and the United States.
On the path of coexistence of two states - China and the USA - in the international arena there are many “Thucydides traps,” says political scientist S.N., an employee of the Thucydides Center at the Free University of Berlin and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Jaffe. He shared his opinion with The National Interest magazine (translation source - website.
The “trap” discussed in the article is described by Thucydides in “History of the Peloponnesian War”. The two sides of the conflict, the Delian League (Athens) and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta), found themselves hostage to an inevitable war caused by Sparta's fear of the growing power of Athens. Nowadays, theorists use the concept of “trap” to describe the relationship between the United States (“governing power”) and the PRC (“rising power”), notes RIA “”.
Falling into the “Thucydides Trap” for the United States and China does not mean that war is inevitable, but it does mean that tension in Chinese-American relations will heat up due to the emergence of attractive and dangerous interpretations of “national interest.”
“The Peloponnesian War became inevitable (or, in other words, necessary) when Athens and Sparta no longer saw an alternative to it,” Jaffe points out. In his opinion, the United States and China should try to avoid just such a scenario given the special interconnectedness of their development paths.
According to the scientist, Mr. Obama and Comrade Xi may fall into the “Thucydides trap” if they refuse to recognize the deep contradictions that cannot be avoided (and this is not already possible) due to a change in the balance in relations between the two states.
The same thing, we would add, may also be characteristic of the deteriorated relations between the United States and the Russian Federation. If Washington refuses to recognize the changed geopolitical situation and continues to call Russia a “regional power,” then people from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as from NATO, where Washington plays the first fiddle, will not be able to avoid the “Thucydides trap.” Russia will also fall into it if it keeps in mind “deep historical grievances” and does not insist on diplomacy.
Oh, the “trap” would have disappeared if the White House had tried, following the model not of Thucydides, but of Herodotus, to “understand its enemies”! But American strategists are accustomed to planning not understanding, but denial of everything that does not fit into their hegemonic doctrine. In addition, understanding the enemy is too difficult and fraught with concessions; It’s another thing to kill and become the winner, thereby confirming the status of a “great power.”
This is why Professor Searle writes that miscommunication makes the big wars of the future more likely.
A crisis situation does not give rise to mental problems - it aggravates those problems that have been with us since birth. But if before they could be somehow tolerated, with the outbreak of war they take away from us too much strength that we need for something else. Therefore, fear and anxiety must be overcome. You need to defeat them right now, because a truly dangerous situation is the most convenient moment to defeat these internal enemies.
War seems to be a situation where we cannot escape from worrying about our loved ones. This is not entirely true. And when you worry about your loved ones, you need moderation, and you need to direct your concern for loved ones in a creative direction, without allowing it to destroy us.
Many of these materials were prepared in peacetime and do not talk about war. After all, fear, as we have already said, is our property, and not a property of war. War is just one of many frightening situations.
It is in the Church that a person finds peace, tranquility, and confidence. It’s different for everyone, but for myself I know for sure that before I came to the Church, before I became a conscious believer, by my nature I was inclined to worry, to worry, and the state of anxiety, expectation of change for the worse was very characteristic of me. I remember that I often could not escape this anxious state. But with my joining the church, when I first became simply a believer, received baptism, began to read prayers, go to church, and confess, this state went away. To say that now that I am already a priest, anxiety is completely unusual for me would be untrue. It happens that I worry and worry about things that I shouldn’t worry about, but this is completely different, incommensurate with how it was before. Read more
I decided to contact you for the following reason. The year 2012 has arrived. On the Internet, as well as in literature (magazines, books, newspapers) it is written that he is the last. My fears and phobias are: I am afraid of the 3rd World War and nuclear war and conflicts. I used to be afraid of supervolcanoes, but now they have faded into the background.
The reason is that a lot of predictions are written on this terrible topic.
Information is also being spread on the Internet and in books that there will be a Third World War. Or it has already begun. I still don’t understand if it started at all. The years of its beginning are named: 2009, 2010, 2011 (that is, the Third World War has already begun). There are other dates for the start of World War 3: 2014 (according to Vanga), 2016, 2018.
Let's get straight to the point.
1. There are a lot of predictions on this topic in the media (especially on the Internet!!!), as well as in books and magazines. There is especially a lot about this in modern literature. The fact is that I take everything (both predictions and prophecies) very close to my heart.
For example, a very scary thing is being written, and I don’t even know what to think:
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Maybe we are living in vain?
But the answer is here:
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“I believe that the author’s concerns about a possible nuclear war are irrelevant. Nuclear parity does not allow starting a nuclear war, and besides, EVERYONE already understands that there will be NO WINNERS in a nuclear war!
In the event of a massive nuclear conflict, the so-called “Nuclear Night” (“Nuclear Winter”) may occur and the entire biosphere of the Earth will perish and humanity will not survive, the scenario for this has been “calculated” by meteorologists and geophysicists.
During massive and close in time explosions of several thousand nuclear warheads (nuclear conflict), in addition to shock waves from explosions near each explosion and radiation damage to significant areas of the planet's surface, another process later comes into play - heavy-duty dust-steam - smoke pollution by microaerosols of the planet's atmosphere.
Both “Nuclear Night” and “Nuclear Winter” are not a myth, but a reliable scenario of what will happen to the Earth if humanity commits nuclear suicide of life, and this is a GUARANTEE that this WILL NOT HAPPEN.”
I don’t even know how to feel about the diary (that is, the predictions) of this young man (17 years old) and about the French girl who predicted that there would be a nuclear explosion. The parents “laugh” (they were especially “surprised” by the boy’s age of 17).
If you type “Third World War”, “Nuclear War” in Yandex, you will find a lot of sites on this topic. If you don't type anything, you won't find anything.
I liked the conference, but these materials are outdated, and the prediction is fresh.
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Conference "NUCLEAR WEAPONS: IS THE WORLD THREATENED BY A NEW WAR?"
As you can see, it is written in Scientific language with a capital S. My dad and I really liked it.
Other information is very outdated, but the predictions are fresh.
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This information is not entirely up to date because it was written 10 years ago.
Now the most important thing. As you can see, there is a war going on in Syria. And many different prophets and predictors write (and have written before) that the 3rd World War has begun or will begin.
Also, in “live journals” blogs, some different people wrote Operation “Big Thunderstorm” will begin:
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Dear psychologists!
Let's throw out all the predictions. Do you think, based on the current political situation, is it possible to use nuclear weapons in the near future and are nuclear wars possible and will the situations described here come true (we “turn a blind eye” to any predictions)?
Who do you think are the predictors Michel Nostradamus, Vanga, Casey and other “foretellers” (modern and who lived before)? And was Nostradamus right?
After all, Vanga predicted the Second World War and the death of the Kursk (submarine).
And one person I met on the Internet wrote to me that THERE WILL BE NO NUCLEAR WAR!!!
I don’t even know who to believe (the parents laugh at the young man’s “diary”, but I take everything at face value).
Thank you in advance for your answer!
Sincerely, Alexey Vladimirovich.
Madeleine Sprenneter: I grew up in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war
American writer Madeleine Sprenneter writes that an entire generation of Americans is forced to live in fear of the nuclear threat.
I wouldn't fear nuclear war, but I grew up in St. Louis during the height of the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union. The nuns at school showed children how to duck and hide in the event of a nuclear attack. We were taught to hate the USSR. In my area there was talk about building bomb shelters in our backyards. But they were too expensive to build and only a few people could fit there. So I was very worried.
We had a basement, or rather a tiny cellar for storing fruit. Maybe it can be used as a shelter? But how will we live there without food and water? And is it possible to wash there? And if we dare to leave our shelter, what will happen to us? Will we all be destroyed by radiation? That's what the sensitive eight-year-old girl was thinking.
When the Cuban nuclear crisis began in the early 1960s, I was a sophomore in college. At that time we narrowly avoided nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. In the mid-1960s and 1970s, during the Vietnam War, the United States seriously considered the use of nuclear weapons. Then, in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as Star Wars.
Born in 1942, before the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I grew up in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war. But I dealt with my worries, especially after Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. But I have never been completely free from this fear.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of the “nuclear deal” between the United States and Iran, my fear seemed to completely disappear. But his ghost is still with me.
Does President Trump really think that what's happening right now doesn't concern him?The United States is now unafraid of Russian President Putin's growing power and influence. Our president is cozying up to Russia while the risk of escalating war with Kim Jong-un increases. Although Trump once said that a meeting with the North Korean leader would be an “honor” for him.
Now Trump insults Kim Jong-un, who, in return, insults Trump. The US President's security advisers are trying to use diplomatic opportunities and also resort to economic sanctions against North Korea. But these measures do not bother Kim Jong-un. Its people starved for national identity and “sovereignty,” and Pyongyang is willing to make that sacrifice again.
Now, every time Trump insults North Korea, Kim Jong-un conducts another military missile test. Stupid and childish words are one thing, but concrete actions are a completely different matter.
This summer I was visiting friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was so scared by this crazy and unnecessary escalation of tensions between the US and North Korea that I turned on CNN first thing in the morning to see if we were already in a nuclear war.
I live in Minnesota and I doubt Kim Jong Un would send his missiles here. Most likely, his first target will be the densely populated West Coast: Seattle, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Some of my best friends and colleagues, as well as my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, live in this “nuclear risk” zone.
We are now seeing natural disasters the likes of which the world has never seen before: Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the earthquake in Mexico. Have we not had enough of these upheavals? Do we really need nuclear war? Does President Trump really think that what's going on right now doesn't concern him?
I wish Trump's advisers would convince him to stop tweeting alarmist messages. And ordinary US citizens must begin to act to prevent a catastrophe.