Quote:
Originally Posted by irpq11
They were just speaking of status quoe type scenario.
Blur. What do YOU think is the most likely?
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If I had to pick the most likely scenario, I'd say that war will not break out. Iran will not fight Israel, especially with the strategic disadvantage of having US troops in neighboring Iraq. OPEC will not stop the US oil shipments because OPEC economies enjoy actually making money from big oil buyers, like the US. Israel might blow up the facility because it did it to Iraq and Syria in the past, but neither Iran nor Syria will go to war because neither of them could hate Israel any more than they do right now, and they aren't at war today. If they were, they'd lose tomorrow. If war actually did break out, Israel is so disproportionately powerful a military force that both countries will lose within 1 day. The US will caution Israel to use restraint, and will act as a mediator.
If NATO became involved in this conflict, NATO would defeat almost any other force. NATO is pretty much an unstoppable force. Russia, however, is an immovable object, creating a brilliant showdown between classically aggressive Russia and a powerful West. Since NATO gains nothing from bringing down Russia and since Russia has no intention of seizing all of Europe, this conflict will end diplomatically before it becomes a slugfest.
North Korea really might invade South Korea, but this would be totally separate from the whole discussion of Israel and Iran. If a war broke out between Israel and any other country, North Korea would have an opportunity to strike South Korea with more surprise and force. North Korea will almost certainly use chemical weapons and will inflict massive casualties, but South Korea and the US will eventually turn back the aggressors. China will probably provide some lackluster support for a Korean conflict, but it will try to poise itself as a mediator because China's economy is dependent on US imports, as well as the imports of so many other democratic powers.
In all of this fighting, the only likely users of nuclear technology are North Korea and Iran. Everyone else will use chemical or conventional weapons, except for Russia. Russia might also use biological weapons.
In all of this discussion, the most important factor is technology. The West is simply more advanced than any other force, leading to the strong likelihood that the US and allies would win swiftly. Most weapons from these nations can fire at incomprehensibly distant targets and penetrate defenses like an ax can penetrate a marshmallow. The closest technology is available in Russia, and those of us reading the recent international news know that Russia's missile shield-penetrating weapons fail 60% of the time. People at Russian launch pads are so much more likely to get blown up that the US might not even bother bombing them, instead leaving Russia to attempt launching its own malfunctioning missiles.
A lot of people like to play up certain relationships as leading to the sides of a world conflict. While it might be fun to theorize over the strategic battles of one side versus the other or discussing how one side can righteously stand against the tyranny of another, there really is not much of a chance that a world conflict will happen the way it did in the first half of the 20th century. There are too many obstacles to such a conflict, and the world is so interdependent that any declaration of war will be self-crippling to whichever nation issues such a declaration first.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drivingincamaro
wow Blur that was really in depth 
you Really know what your talking about what did you go to college for? |
I graduated from the University of Kansas with a BA in Political Science. One of the 4 sections that I focussed very closely on studying was international politics. There are 5 areas in the political science field that KU uses to organize its classes. I fulfilled the requirements for 4 of those sections and half of the requirements of the 5th.