war question
Feb. 14th, 2003 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioA possibly-morbid thought experiment for a Friday afternoon:
Ok, suppose for the sake of argument that we were headed toward what historians will later label World War III -- US at war with Iraq and North Korea, much of the Arab world at war with Israel, Pakistan/India heating up even more, NATO divided, China perhaps taking the opportunity to go after Taiwan, terrorism abounding, serious consideration of nukes, etc etc. (Yes, I realize that not all events in this list are linked, but enough of them are that some subset of this could set off the rest, I would think.) So the question: at what point in time would the general consensus be that this is the case? When, for example, during the 1930s/1940s did the public (in the affected locations) generally realize that the events they were seeing were much, much bigger than a conventional war of limited scope? And how long before then did people who expressed such ideas get dismissed as paranoid?
(It's a thought experiment; do not read into this presumptions of my opinions of current affairs.)
Ok, suppose for the sake of argument that we were headed toward what historians will later label World War III -- US at war with Iraq and North Korea, much of the Arab world at war with Israel, Pakistan/India heating up even more, NATO divided, China perhaps taking the opportunity to go after Taiwan, terrorism abounding, serious consideration of nukes, etc etc. (Yes, I realize that not all events in this list are linked, but enough of them are that some subset of this could set off the rest, I would think.) So the question: at what point in time would the general consensus be that this is the case? When, for example, during the 1930s/1940s did the public (in the affected locations) generally realize that the events they were seeing were much, much bigger than a conventional war of limited scope? And how long before then did people who expressed such ideas get dismissed as paranoid?
(It's a thought experiment; do not read into this presumptions of my opinions of current affairs.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-14 04:21 pm (UTC)