Differences between WW2 and WW3 (aside from nukes, draft, manufacturing)

Great Debates
1

The biggest differences between World War II and a hypothetical World War III seem to be:

  1. There are thousands of nukes in the world today; there weren’t any during World War II until near the end.

  2. WW3 is likely to be much shorter and sharper. If there were a war between NATO and Russia, or China vs. Japan+other allies, it probably won’t last years and involve everyone on the home front going all Rosie the Riveter and winning the war on the factory floor. Chances are, it would be over in months. It would very much be a “go as you are” war, just like how nobody has time to go shopping for a fire extinguisher when the house catches fire.

  3. Probably won’t be a draft, nor much need for a one. WW3 would be much more a war of machines than people. WW3 might be over before the first drafted conscript has even finished training.

What else might make WW3 different than WW2?

2

You are assuming that WW3 would be total war. I have my doubts. Take your example of China verse Japan, US, Taiwan and, probably South Korea (and, almost certainly, India). Sure, it MIGHT go nuclear…but if so, China would be completely and utterly destroyed. Full stop. China has approximately 250 nuclear weapons, and that’s certainly a lot, but at least some percentage of those would be intercepted during the early boost phase. On the other side, the US has thousands of the things. While the US et al would almost certainly be crippled, China would cease to exist in this scenario. So, given that, why might they launch nukes? I don’t see any reason they would, unless the CCP thought it was going down for good.

That said, a conventional war where China attempts a forced entry invasion of Taiwan is…well, not likely, but it’s plausible. Hell, the CCP has said they WILL invade by 2020 (with some weasel words if they don’t pull it off), and the PLA and the various alphabet soup PL variants have and are training for just such an event. That could happen. And if it did, it’s plausible (hell, highly likely) the US would join in. And that would almost certainly bring Japan in, especially with their expanded constitution and more forceful stance on China. South Korea…well, they might also come in (or be forced in if the North decides this is the time). India…that’s more speculative, but the US is in the process of expanding mutual defense treaties with India, and there has been talk of something like NATO but in the Pacific, and India is definitely part of those talks. Hell, Vietnam is trying to get in on an alliance with the US (ironic as that seems), and there are others in the region on the fence. If several of those came into play it would be a ‘world war’, IMHO…but I don’t think it would necessarily go nuclear (my own weasel words come out).

So, how might it play out? My WAG is China might think it either has no choice but to invade (if Taiwan actually breaks with the One China policy and decides independence is what they want), or might think (see Orange Haired Idiot In Charge of Mixed Signals) that the US wouldn’t involve ourselves and this is their chance to bring Taiwan back into the fold. This would spark a fairly substantial conventional war in the region. If India and Vietnam come in (low probability, but possible) then it would be a ground war as well as a sea/air and seaborne invasion one. It could last a year or two, possibly a lot more depending on how it would play out.

If WW3 is just a nuclear exchange then, sure, it’s going to be over quickly…and WW4 will probably be fought with rocks (or Mad Max style). But it doesn’t have to be that way, and I’d say that it probably won’t unless someone miscalculates or perhaps if the CCP (or Putin’s Russia) thinks it is really going down for good (or that idiot in North Korea decides to push the button because what the hell? Or…well, Trump). I can think of several WW3 scenarios with either Russia or China that don’t necessary mean nukes.

3

Massive cyber front for starters.

Possibly “rods from God” or other space based weaponry, even minor space battles most likely.

A larger " civil war" aspect to it …no idea how far this would go but America is nowhere near as consolidated as a single people as it once was, much larger portions of the populace are from countries we’d likely be at war with.

4

As for the thread title, definitely I think you’d see drafts in Taiwan, maybe Japan, definitely South Korea if they came into it, and perhaps China, though probably not. It’s not going to be exactly like WWII. I think the countries involved would be fighting with basically what they have on hand or can get from, say, the US or other neutral countries wrt weapons and systems. Everyone would, of course, be manufacturing stocks as quick as possible, but major weapons systems? I seriously doubt that China would or could replace the air craft it would be losing, and as for fleet units, I can’t see them being allowed to…I don’t think China could protect it’s ports well enough from US and other raids to build replacement ships, and they would lose a hell of a lot. I doubt Japan could or would either, or be able to keep up with replacements for air craft losses. Same goes for South Korea. They would all be working miracles to keep up production of munitions expenditures. Even the US wouldn’t be able to keep up with losses of air craft or ships…it takes years to build major surface or underwater combatants after all, even for us. Planes would be similar. What the US would almost certainly be doing is shifting planes from other theaters and bringing back planes from mothballs and refurbishing them for combat. We could probably keep up with pilots, but I doubt the rest would be able too. Same goes for naval crews…we have enough in the pipeline or in reserves to keep up with combat losses for a while, but China? No way…they are stretched to man the fleet and air force they have now wrt well trained personnel, and everyone else is going to be in that same boat for the duration of any kind of realistic war.

5

WW3 will involve a lot of cyberwarfare.

Drones will be a huge part of WW3. So will automated sentries powered by AI.

6

But this sounds very similar to the proxy regional wars we’ve had before, such as the Korean war, which had Troops from all over the world including direct involvement of large powers such as China and the US, but I wouldn’t call it world war 3. IMHO in order to be a world war it would need to be a war that has multiple fields of battle scattered around the world, not just in a single region. Now if as well as trying to take Taiwan, China also made a move to seize the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, then I could consider calling it a world war.

7

I think a modern WW3 would have to be something like Russia going full Tom Clancy on NATO *and *also simultaneously North Korea goes all-out on South Korea *and *China goes all-out on its neighbors.

And maybe, on top of that, a full-out war between Iran and its Sunni neighbors, to make it official for the books.

8

XT has me thinking something else, too, which is that a WW3 might end up with nobody being conquered and occupied in the end (with the possible exception of North Korea). If Russia invaded NATO, it could expect to be thrown back to its borders, but NATO isn’t going to march to Moscow.

9

A 21st century WW3 would barely be a world war at all, until the ICBMs get involved. It would be a very local conflict over somewhere local trouble spot (Taiwan or Ukraine for example). The problem would be that happens when one side gets the upper hand in that local convwntional conflict? Then there is real chance of it going nuclear.
Even a cold war era WW3 wouldn’t have been all that global, as a land war (esp if China had stayed out) basically just Europe I think. Though the European theatre would have been a shit show.

10

This.

Fortunately, I don’t think we’ll have another World War where there are multiple nations being attacked/invaded with multiple nations involved in the defense. I think the closest we would come to a World War would be repeat of the Korean War/Conflict with China providing support to North Korea and the U.S. coming to the defense of South Korea. And the likelihood of any other nation(s) becoming involved is slim to none.

As for the use of nuclear weapons, it likely won’t happen as one of the primary justifications for the use of them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was than a land invasion of the mainland Japanese islands would costly in lost lives and time. With the numerous smart weapons and alternative extremely high power conventional bombs like the FOAB and MOAB (Father Of All Bombs and Mother of All Bombs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs, there’s fortunately no need for nuclear weapons.

11

There won’t be a Marshall Planequivalent after WWIII.

12

Weapon system lethality is an order of magnitude higher now than it was in 1945. If we assume a full scale conventional war, but not nuclear (which is fantasy, to be honest) between Russia and its puppets and NATO, most tanks and aircraft in the battlespace will be destroyed in four or five days, and whether or not Russian submarines would succeed in significantly interdicting Allied convoys in the Atlantic is a matter than would be settled in two weeks, tops.

The wild cards in determining which side wins are

  1. Whether or not the aggressor has strategic surprise (a point, since it’s been mentioned, that Clancy was very specific about in “Red Storm Rising” - the USSR failed to achieve strategic surprise, to the protest and consternation of his Russian protagonist, General Alekseyev. This is a critical point in his story explaining why NATO wins) and

  2. Whether or not, depending on how the war starts, NATO holds together; to use another work of fiction, this is critical in how Ralph Peters explains a Soviet victory in “Red Army” - NATO falters, and West Germany sues for peace.

It’s impossible to guess how these things will go. It is simply not a guaranteed matter than NATO would win a war in Europe, because the politics and willingness to fight just aren’t clear.

MOAB is cool and has a cool name but in no way does it reduce the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear weapons aren’t displaced by just a big conventional bomb, and a nuclear power in any sort of existential crisis is going to start flinging the real stuff.

13

I have trouble seeing a military conflict between major powers because world economics are so intertwined. There are so many multinational companies who might have a factory in both sides. Look at the gulf war, how no matter what, we kept buying oil from Iran.

Then look at travel. Tourists from every country are everywhere. Would we want that to end?

So while yes, China might posture and a saber rattle about Taiwan would they really risk a total war over it?

14

Would it? Not sure. But it could. You are not taking into account the amount of political capital, I guess, that the CCP has put into the One China policy especially wrt it’s own internal narrative and population. They have been putting a lot of pressure on Hong Kong to toe the line and basically drop the one country, two systems policy they agreed to abide by (they haven’t been for a while now). WRT Taiwan, I think the pressure is mounting both internally (i.e. within the CCP) and externally (by the people) that China needs to Do Something™. A lot of this is simply because the CCP has been pushing nationalism big time. Some of it is that Taiwan is in the news quite a bit, especially Taiwan’s seemingly growing movement towards becoming an official sovereign nation (instead of the quasi-nation sovereign state no one acknowledges it’s been for so long). China and the CCP have upped the pressure lately on other countries as well to move away from Taiwan, even pressuring international countries to reflect China’s narrative that Taiwan is part of China and really a Chinese province (air line companies, for instance, have been pressured to change their web sites and flight data to reflect this narrative). All of this is mounting the pressure on Taiwan and on the international community leading to…well, something. Sure, it might peter out at some point, but that’s not the direction it’s going in the last 5-10 years. While I don’t think that China would pull the trigger on an actual invasion of Taiwan as long as the US is there and would almost certainly side with them, it’s not inconceivable that they would, especially if there is a change in the status quo. If Taiwan actually votes for full independents and fully breaks with the One China policy then, yeah, it could happen.

15

I can’t see any scenario where major powers want to be involved in a war with each other. I constantly hear people trying to raise concern about China, but I just can’t see China deciding to alienate its biggest customer, not the US trying to alienate one of its biggest buyer of bonds. I don’t see the US increasing taxes to fund its war machine.

Major countries will continue to invade minor ones. The US will continue to invade Latin American and Middle Eastern Countries, Russia will continue to invade the former Russian Empire, and China will probably buy large portions of Africa, no war required.

16

That is the point at which it likely goes nuclear. The NATO forces might not push on to Moscow, but they also aren’t going to conscientiously stop at Russia’s borders (not that it would even be possible in a fast moving mobile war) if they are winning, in order to give them a chance to regroup.

At that point, when the NATO forces have or are close to invading Russian territory, the Russian point of view would be "why do we have nukes if we can’t use them to protect our territory from foreign invaders?:

17

Maybe, but the OP thread is about what a WW3 would be like, not whether it would happen or not.

18

And, conversely, I could see several that could potentially bring major powers into direct conflict. I don’t think that automatically means nuclear, but there are several hot spots around the world that could bring conflict. Pointing at trade and just categorically saying that this means conflict is impossible is, IMHO, burying your head in the sand or putting your fingers in your ears and going ‘nanannananananna…I can’t hear you’. There are a number of very complex and conflicting interests in the world today, as well as a very weird (especially from the US) mixing of signals as well as being deliberately opaque wrt what our response might or might not be. There are actually several hot spots that could bring China into conflict with other major powers, not just Taiwan…and not just the US. They could, for instance, have a major conflict with India…which might bring the US in. Or with Japan…which might (almost certainly would) bring the US in. With Australia, which might (again, almost certainly would) bring the US in. With South Korea…etc. Heck, they are certainly expanding into Africa, but it hasn’t all been rose petals at their feet, and there is potential for conflict there as well. Same with their expansion into places like Greece and potential conflict with the EU. China is doing a hell of a lot more than buying ‘large portions of Africa’ that could potentially bring them into conflict with their neighbors, which could, in turn bring them into wider conflict with one or more of the great powers.

19

I’d think first, we’d have to lay out who the players/alliances would be.

If it was a European war, it would be NATO vs. Russia, and likely fought in the Baltics/Poland.

If it was an Asian war, it would likely be the US vs. China, and would likely be a naval war for the most part, with maritime powers like the UK and Japan joining in. My guess would be something around the Paracel or Spratly islands in the South China Sea and China’s military buildup and absurd nine-dash line claims.

That said, it’s likely that either would be short, very high intensity affairs, as the tempo and lethality of many weapons is higher than in WWII, as are communication capabilities and detection capabilities.

If somehow, it dragged on past a few months and ended up as a stalemate somehow (unlikely in either case), we’d see a drop in intensity as precision munition stocks are used up, and my guess would be that we’d see both sides gathering up stores of those as they’re produced, and then deploying them in offensives or as defensive reserves, or possibly in dedicated units under higher level commands.

But the likelihood of that is low; the US outmatches China drastically in the naval arena, even if you do put a lot of credence into the (dubious) DF-26 missile claims, and even though it’s likely that Russia would achieve early gains in the Baltics, the NATO conventional forces far outweigh Russian ones- once mobilized, they’d be able to push the Russians out.

Both scenarios would likely end with some sort of nuclear threat from the Russians or Chinese, or defeat, and likely a worse situation postbellum.

20

I just don’t see it. Indian and Pakistan are two nuclear powers that have been in open conflict for decades. Actual war would be bad for both countries, so it won’t happen. The history of World Wars is mostly about imperialism. Modern imperialism happens through trade, not through hugely expensive wars. Governments will make bellicose threats to one another, but modern warfare does not involve equal players. There will not be an armed conflict if armed conflict means destroying both participant’s economies. Why would there be?