417
China's foreign minister tells EU that Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose in Ukraine, media reports (kyivindependent.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
126 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I think we're already in it. A world war, as I understand it, is basically just a situation where a variety of alliances and tensions build up until when a war erupts in one spot it rapidly spreads around to involve a large number of countries world-wide. That seems to be the case already, you can easily build a Pepe Silvia wall-of-crazy showing all the connections between Russia and China and Iran and Syria and Israel and Hungary and Ukraine and Belarus and the United States and Taiwan and on and on. The actual shooting pew pew warfare is still relatively confined (though bear in mind that literally a million Russian casualties have happened over a thousands-of-kilometers-long front line riddled with trenches and minefields, which is pretty significant) but all these countries are throwing their weight in on those fights and it's easy to imagine them branching out quite quickly when conditions change.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    You make a good point. I see it as the U.S. being in a Cold War type situation, but as you note, there are already regional conflicts. However, even during the Cold War the U.S. was involved in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, where it saw itself as trying to stem the growth of Communism being spread by the Soviet Union.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    I think you've got an overly narrow view of "direct involvement." If I'm in a war with someone and a country tells me "here, take these weapons" and I say "you know I'm going to use these weapons to kill soldiers of the country I'm at war with" and they say "yes, we know. We actually have some specific conditions about how and where you can use these to kill them, and some satellite photos to help you target them" then I'd call that direct involvement. Flesh-and-blood soldiers are only one small part of a nation's military these days and not every part of a military needs to be involved for the military overall to be involved.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [+] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don't care about what international law says, this is what world war means as I understand it. I said that to begin with. International law is often even more nebulous and open to interpretation than most national law given there isn't really a universal framework for adjudicating it.

    I'd be curious for a citation, though. I looked for some and found way more instances where international courts and laws held that supplying weapons counted as being involved in a war than the contrary. For example:

    • The law of neutrality (Hague V & XIII of 1907) prohibits neutral states from furnishing “supplies of war” to any belligerent. Violating that duty strips a state of its neutral status and exposes it to lawful countermeasures by the aggrieved party.
    • Under state-responsibility rules (ILC Articles on State Responsibility, Art. 16), a state “aid[ing] or assist[ing]” another in committing an internationally wrongful act—armed force included—is complicit, provided it does so with knowledge of the circumstances.
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)