Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
But they don't have to succeed, invasion of Baltic countries could potentially be enough to start WW3, even if russia does not have capacity to win it.
This situation does not resemble the beginning of WW1. wW1 was caused more or less by an inept leader (the Herman Kaiser Wilhelm) with way too much power.
Putin cannot play the part Wilhelm played in 1914 because Russia has very little power.
Xi Ping cannot play the part Wilhelm played because he is too smart (he is one of the shrewdest and smartest leaders rn). If Xi Ping starts to lose it, then yeah, we may have WW1. Until then this is a very different situation.
There are a lot of similarities between Trump and Wilhelm but even so the situation is not like pre WW1 really. Then you had a number of warlike alliances rearing for a fight. Now you have basically Russia attacking it's neighbour and NATO not wanting to fight much at all really. I mean they will if they have to but they are not going to bomb Russia because of the odd stray drone.
> Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East?
Iran has a strong stance to significantly increase influence in the Middle East if not restrained: they have many way (not just Hormuz) to project power on oil countries, and essentially force them to switch sides.
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
>"Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side."
500+ million people and corresponding economy needs Ukraine to protect themselves? this is just plain pathetic or what's worse proof that the EU would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
People keep bringing WW3 up but I disagree. There's such a huge aversion in EU countries against any kind of war against Russia and the governments know it. They will let a LOT slide on Russia's side before any kind of retaliation (and I mean by force) is coming. Russia could probably kill several service members with a drone, claim it was an accident and the only thing coming from Europe would be a stern letter, some more sanctions and telling off the ambassador (and the Kremlin knows this too).
I mostly agree but there has been a lot more coming from Europe than stern letters. They've sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine, funded more, and intercepted Russia's fleet. That could and likely will get stepped up.
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
All major (and some minor) world powers are invested in this war in some way. China, Iran, India, the US, Russia of course, Europe. By population that's a lot. By power or influence that's also a lot. I think the main difference is the overt-ness. War has changed a lot since WWII, was have a lot "safer" and longer distance tools, including financing. Financing is way different now, it's instant for starters.
British, American, and French deaths made up only a small fraction of the 60M-75M killed in WWII, which speaks to the global ("World") nature of a World War.
I believe it's also the case that more Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War than the UK/US/France combined during WWII as well.
No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.