{"id":141511,"date":"2024-04-22T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=141511"},"modified":"2024-04-22T14:24:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T21:24:34","slug":"a-slow-motion-world-war-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/04\/22\/a-slow-motion-world-war-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"A Slow-Motion World War III?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Tom Engelhardt courtesy counterpunch.com<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch<\/em>. I\u2019ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies \u2014 god save us, it could be four in November! I\u2019ve viewed<\/a> from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America\u2019s endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I\u2019ve watched the latest military budget hit almost $900 billion<\/a>, undoubtedly on its way toward a cool trillion<\/a> in the years to come, while years ago the whole national security\u201d budget (though insecurity\u201d would be a better word) soared to well over<\/a> the trillion-dollar mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\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 the 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 peace dividend<\/a>? Who needed that? And yet, in the decades that followed, by far the most expensive<\/a> military 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\n\n\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 dictatorship\u201d \u2014 his very word for it! \u2014 even if, publicly at least, just for a single day<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\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 war,\u201d in fact, as humanity\u2019s middle name \u2014 in both Ukraine and Gaza (with offshoots in Lebanon<\/a> and Yemen<\/a>). Meanwhile, this country\u2019s now 22-year-old war on terror straggles<\/a> on in its own devastating fashion, with threats of worse to come in plain sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\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 threatened<\/a> to 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 very publicly threatened<\/a> to employ nukes from his country\u2019s vast arsenal (assumedly tactical\u201d ones, some of which are more powerful than the atomic bombs that ended World War II), should any European countries \u2014 think France<\/a> \u2014 send their troops into Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And don\u2019t forget that, amid all of this, my own country\u2019s military, eternally hiking<\/a> its defense\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, rushing to upgrade<\/a> its 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 indicated 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\n\n\n

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

Oh, and when it comes to war, I haven\u2019t even mentioned, for instance, the devastating civil war<\/a> in 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\n\n\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, making war<\/a> or simply preparing for it<\/a> means 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\n\n\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\n\n\n

In the previous century, of course, there were two devastating world\u201d wars, World War I and World War II. They were global events that, in total, killed more than<\/a> a hundred million<\/a> of 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\n\n\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 striking global heat records<\/a> month 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, according to<\/a> Media Matters for America.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I live in New York City which, like much of the rest of the planet, set a heat record<\/a> for 2023. In addition, the winter we just passed through was a record one<\/a> for warmth. And I began writing this piece on a set of days in early March when the temperature in my city also hit records<\/a> in the mid-60s, and when, on March 14th (not April 14th, May 14th, or even June 14th), it clocked 70-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\n\n\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\n\n\n

While I was working on this piece, the largest Texas fires ever (yes, ever!), continued to burn, evidently barely 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 last June<\/a> have, it turns out, festered<\/a> underground all winter as zombie fires.\u201d And they may burst out again in an even more devastating fashion this spring or summer. In fact, in 2023, from Hawaii<\/a> to Chile<\/a> to Europe<\/a>, there were record wildfires<\/a> of 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\n\n\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 oil-drilling record<\/a> for the second year in a row. China, despite installing far more green power than any other country, has also been using more coal<\/a> than all other nations combined, and set global records<\/a> for building new coal-fired power plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the third great\u201d power on this planet, despite having a president dedicated to<\/a> doing something about climate change, is still the largest exporter<\/a> of natural gas around and continues to produce oil at a distinctly record pace<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\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 record pace<\/a>, while the major petrostates of our world are still, according to<\/a> the Guardian<\/em>, planning expansions that would blow the planet\u2019s carbon budget twice over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\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 analysis<\/a> for the Arms Control Association, the dangers of AI and other emerging military technologies are likely to expand into the nuclear realm by running up the escalation ladder or by blurring the distinction between a conventional and nuclear attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\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 Pax Americana<\/em> (that had all too little to do with peace\u201d) is crumbling \u2014 or do I mean overheating?<\/p>\n\n\n\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 warning ominously<\/a> that if 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: I don\u2019t think<\/a> you\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 drill, drill, drill<\/a>,\u201d which, at this point in our history, is, by definition, to declare war on this planet!<\/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n

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

This piece first appeared at <\/em>TomDispatch<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Tom Engelhardt courtesy counterpunch.com I\u2019ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. I\u2019ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies \u2014 god save us, it could be four in November! I\u2019ve viewed from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America\u2019s endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}