#When will world war 3 start tv

We are too influenced by low-grade game theory, and keep dismissing the possibility of another world war as “unthinkable”.

Our pseudo-rational West continues to misunderstand how despotic leaders calculate what is in their best interests, why high-stakes gambles might make sense to them and how the West itself is being misread by others. Does such thinking persist in Moscow today, or in any other nuclear power? How would we respond to an “accidental” conventional bombardment of a target in Poland? Or the tactical use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine? The USSR was planning to use nukes tactically early on in any conflict with Nato. Bioterrorism is a growing worry: why are “gain of function” studies still tolerated? A major cyber-attack or assault on transatlantic cables could be so devastating to an internet-based economy as to be seen as a declaration of war.ĭuring the Cold War, the US believed it had successfully deterred the Soviet use of nuclear weaponry thanks to its Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, but historians who have read declassified Moscow documents realise that this was delusional. The world is becoming more, rather than less, dangerous: there are plenty of other wannabe Putins, and they are better equipped to sow death and destruction. India and Pakistan are armed to the teeth and at odds on much. Imperialism is back, as is the civilisation state. The post-1945 consensus has withered, as have most of the institutions that allowed rival states to semi-manage their disputes, not least the decrepit UN. Plenty of emerging powers would like to retain the option to invade one of their neighbours – Taiwan being the obvious flashpoint – and are no longer prepared to defer to the West. With the exception of Germany, the West has performed well, backing Ukraine in a forceful yet judicious manner, but other nations such as India, Pakistan and China have snubbed these efforts. The fact that Russia has performed so poorly on the Ukrainian battlefield is good news, but should not lull us into a false sense of security.

In today’s far more complex world, and with paranoid tinpot dictatorships such as North Korea now able to inflict immense carnage, it will be even easier for countries to blunder into total war.

#When will world war 3 start tv

There were other such near-misses, including when the Russians confused Able Archer, a Nato exercise, with a genuine plan, as dramatised in the Deutschland 83 TV series. In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, another Russian officer, disregarded an early warning system that indicated the US had just launched a nuclear attack on the USSR. The real hero was Vasili Arkhipov, second-in-command of a Russian submarine, who, in October 1962, defied the order from his captain, confused by an absence of contact with Moscow, to launch a nuclear torpedo on America. The Kennedys didn’t save the world during the Cuban missile crisis. The Cold War was a simple conflict, and yet we only survived it by luck. Why on earth can’t the Biden administration see that allowing Iran to go nuclear will almost guarantee at least a regional war? The spread of advanced technologies, including the idiotic blunder that was nuclear proliferation, implies that more countries have the ability to inflict immense harm and geopolitics is becoming ever-more complex with the end of American hegemony, increasing the chance of a fatal misunderstanding or that a local conflict in Africa, Latin America or Asia spirals out of control. Why such pessimism? It is in part a numbers game. Nobody knows the exact probability, but even a 10 per cent chance of a global catastrophe this century would be terrifying, and ought to justify an urgent, renewed focus in every Western country on making sure Armageddon can be avoided through robust deterrence, new alliances, vast investments in defensive weaponry and urgent diplomatic engagement. With good fortune comes hubris and complacency: the chances of another major global conflict – and, at worst, another world war – are much higher than we realise, and are continuing to increase. We are playing with genetic engineering, space travel, AI, and even enhancing the virulence of some pathogens, but have yet to deliberately use any of these technologies for mass warfare. We created long-range rockets, as Vladimir Putin reminded us again last week when he unveiled his Satan II Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, but have avoided using them to annihilate our rivals’ cities.

Human beings invented nuclear weapons 77 years ago, but haven’t used them to slaughter each other since Nagasaki.