Does it feel like war is coming?

[AllieDeCorbeau]

I have been very fortunate to never have had to experience war firsthand. I've seen it from the safety of my home, but I've never had it in my backyard.
i've been thinking a lot lately about World War I and World War II. I wonder if they, specifically the women and men in Britain, could feel it coming? If the air somehow changed. If the whispers gathered and floated through the air, not heard, but felt. i'm sure they would've known that. It was headed their way because of the buildup and all the talk in the newspapers. but was there a little something extra that let them know their lives were about to change?
I ask this because I find myself wanting to move farther out of central London. It's not just the housing prices. It's something else. The whole country feels like we're waiting for some gust of wind to knock over our straw houses. And once it happens, once the houses are knocked over, the rest will be quick. It seems our opponent has been moving their pieces across the chessboard before we've even move our first pawn.
perhaps I'm being paranoid. Perhaps my willingness to watch the news these past few years is making me pay attention.

See I think the lesson from Russia and Ukraine is that nuclear weapons don’t stop wars. The rest of the world was so scared of nuclear war they were weak and ineffective in their response.

I used to think nuclear weapons stopped war but they seem to have helped enable this one. I can completely imagine conventional wars again ( which are happening g all over the world anyway btw) because everyone is too scared of using their nukes.

Yea but the problem with that idea of supposed "limited conventional war" js that it would only get so far before the nuclear option was used (ie once one side faced existential defeat)

Hmmmm, I don’t know.The way things are going, I can definitely envisage a conventional war where there is almost a ‘gentleman’s agreement’, for want of a better term, that nobody uses nukes.

Maybe they will - but once civilians start being drafted into this "gentleman's agreement" despite the taxes spent on these weapon systems there might be a problem (or at least I hope there would)

Yep, there are so many unknowns. I just want this all to stop as it’s so futile.,

You think, the yanks are now sending troops....UK to follow they believe.

This is just the start, we've allowed ourselves to be dragged into an argument that we can't actually win.

Israel actually can't lose this conflict and it's action are mindless considering the power they yield. More could have been achieved without conflict but this could also be political as well as about the resources under Gaza.

The problem is like all wars is the damage that results. A regional war which looks like is coming will almost certainly mean troops on the ground. That will mean bodies coming back in bags in great numbers for many many years It will increase the likelihood of terrorism and increase the risk of travel for westerners.

If you're talking about Europe, a Russia-NATO war wouldn't be a regional war

@Ilovemyshed You say that about the French but they stopped the Germans before they got very far. And the French army was massive unlike the British army. I am not convinced about preparations for war by the professionals, too many things change as soon as actual fighting begins.
The US intelligence services, run by professionals, were convinced Ukraine would fall in days. President Zelinsky carefully publicised his response to this when he said he wanted weapons not a lift out of his own country. The US had offered him safe passage. As we know he is still ruling his democratic country and still successfully defying the dictatorship of the Russia despot Putin.

True but had we not supplied all those weapons the Ukraine would not exist. It's a war by proxy and we've supplied the best intelligence and weapons at great cost to the tax payer.

The conflict we were told would last no more than 3 months and Putin was terminally ill....all this turned out to be western propaganda. Had the Ukraine fallen this would all be over and we wouldn't be under the threat of nuclear war.

This is all thanks to America, every war now has roots in American foreign policy

My grandparents stayed in London during ww2. He was in the teams that dug people out of the rubble after each bombing, granny was a nurse so tended the survivors at a hospital. They said at the beginning it didn't feel like a world war, of course that changed.

You can’t state with any authority that if Ukraine had fallen this “would all be over”, as that discounts the possibility that a success would have encouraged Putin even further. In addition, your nuclear war comments are misplaced.

Putin can't attack a country inside the NATO alliance without triggering all out war. I don't think Putin would have done that but what we have now is a situation where we are pushing Russia into the possibility it could use nuclear weapons. Just as you say but you also can't say Putin won't categorically request nuclear strikes.

Six nuclear weapons used on the UK would be enough to wipe out over 80% of the population...me personally I'd be looking at calving up the Ukraine and settling this peacefully

Well, let’s all be grateful you aren’t in any sort of power position then. It’s outrageous to suggest we “carve up” Ukraine (not The Ukraine) and I can’t believe that anyone thinks that’s a reasonable solution. It’s the ultimate rewarding of authoritarian violence and a complete encouragement to other questionable regimes.

Why are some posters telling other posters what they can and can’t quote? It’s not like we’ll run out of space!

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about Sudan because it's being kept from the news

I think it's a reasonable suggestion of what will happen if Donald Trump wins the election. Personally I think realistically it's the only option other than Nato and Russia agreeing to stay right clear of Ukraine, which they won't

Whether or not Trump goes down this path, it’s still not reasonable.

Sentences that are likely AI generated.

Yeah it’s AI - there’s an app detector for it

I've been thinking about Ukraine and Gaza lately, I'm not sure why because I avoid news on it all. It's like a nightmare. Those poor people

War could be on two fronts - from a country like Russia, Iran or North Korea (highly possible) or from within - Jihadi factions and terrorism (als possible). It could be conventional, nuclear, chemical or cyber,

Who will be our allies?

Our (UK) allied forces will be NATO countries of course. Wars tend to be triggered by events, eg an expansionist country like Russia, wanting to take territory it believes is rightfully theirs, breaking international law, push the envelope, or Hitler' early taking of Czechoslovakia in the lead up to WWII, (which was then followed by invading Poland), or Putin in 2014 annexing Crimea.

Initially countries don't respond, hoping it won't escalate, wanting to appease the aggressor in the vain hope of it not triggering adverse reaction. Democracies want to avoid war at all costs, because it leads to degradation of quality of life, economic ruin and death of a country's citizens. Hence The League of Nations, United Nations and now NATO, their stated aim is diplomacy and preservation of peace (no comment about trying diplomacy with Mr Putin!)

Who do you think we'll be at war with?

If Putin were to push it to the point of invading Poland, for example, being a NATO country, the next steps would be that NATO allies would come to the aid of Poland, as the pledge is that all allied countries are there to protect each other as a collective. Putin knows what would happen in that situation hence why he hasn't taken that action,

Will we be in the right?

It depends who you ask! a question like this always has to be seen in the context of what is happening, the sequence of events which lead to consequences - its never black-and-white.

UK Defence (note the word is Defence, the act of defending against an adversary, who commits an internationally illegal crime of invading a NATO country) is there to protect, being "in the right" is based on the motivation for our action. We wouldn't be waging war against Russia, we would be protecting Poland in that hypothetical situation. Then again if you were to ask Putin for his opinion, he would be in denial and justify his actions as being his ahem Special Military Operation, and as he doesn't recognise NATO, he blame it all on "The West". No point trying to reason or create logic with a madman.

I think we will most likely see a lot of chaos caused by hacking and damaging critical infrastructure before the nukes start flying. Expect prolonged power outages or telecoms failures, flight systems hacked causing huge disruptions, railway systems hacked, banking systems compromised etc. The BBC or Netflix hacked, Instagram or Facebook shut down. These have huge potential to be disastrous.