DBWI: Another Great War?

Kim Jong-Un and Trump’s current bad blood could start a war. Purely hypothetical situation here, North Korea invaders South Korea. US backs South Korea and so, China joins North Korea. UN is dissolved and powerless due to the infighting between the Big Five. Russia backs North Korea and NATO retaliates by supporting the South. Within months the North Korean side is routed. The combing force of NATO crush’s the Russians. North Korea is swiftly navaly invaded by the US. China falls within a month fighting a two front war on the Korean Peninsula and Siberia. On the Eastern front, Pyongyang, Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai are nuked by NATO. In the US,Washington DC, Chicago and Boston are nuked are nuked by Russia and China. In Europe most most of the major cities in Baltics, along with Berlin were nuked by Russia. St.Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan as retaliation. In a few months, more civilians were killed than both the previous world wars combined.
 
Kim Jong-Un and Trump’s current bad blood could start a war. Purely hypothetical situation here, North Korea invaders South Korea. US backs South Korea and so, China joins North Korea. UN is dissolved and powerless due to the infighting between the Big Five. Russia backs North Korea and NATO retaliates by supporting the South. Within months the North Korean side is routed. The combing force of NATO crush’s the Russians. North Korea is swiftly navaly invaded by the US. China falls within a month fighting a two front war on the Korean Peninsula and Siberia. On the Eastern front, Pyongyang, Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai are nuked by NATO. In the US,Washington DC, Chicago and Boston are nuked are nuked by Russia and China. In Europe most most of the major cities in Baltics, along with Berlin were nuked by Russia. St.Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan as retaliation. In a few months, more civilians were killed than both the previous world wars combined.

Wrong POD. "Another Great War" in this context refers to OTL WW1, not WW3.
 
For the majority of the 19th and 20th centuries, rulers in the European empires had an almost neurotic fear of a pan-European conflict breaking out once again; a 'world war' in the same vein as the Great War¹, and other conflicts in the Early Modern period. Whilst there have been some apparent close calls - the Crimean, Franco-Prussian, Alpine, and Mediterranean Wars being examples - no conflict has exploded to continental proportions since 1815.

My question is: how could you get another war in the same vein as the Great War to break out? There are many reasons why another major conflict hasn't developed in over two hundred years (interconnected economies, interconnected royal families, European cooperation in the undeveloped world, etc.), I don't believe these have always been enough to prevent another pan-European conflict.

I will say this: arguably.....as much as some may want to dispute this.....we have arguably been quite lucky, if anything. But, as an American myself, there is one event that may well have played a major role in turning people against war: the First Great Reaction of 1914-1918, wasn't quite as bloody as the Civil War, but it was still quite horrifying, nonetheless, with nearly 100,000 people dead; the Second Great Reaction of 1933-1938 saw 300,000 people killed and the attempted takeover of entire states(and, at one point in 1936-37, even the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were targeted, terrifying our northern neighbors). My understanding is that the SGR in particular greatly horrified many Europeans, even amongst many conservatives.

If anyone's interested, the American Historical Society has a really, really good overview of the whole thing.

One close call was over in Southern Europe due to Serbian anarchists and rebels. Some thought the Russian tsar would step in to help them out when Austria-Hungary went to cause trouble, but they decided it wasn't their business and even backed up Bulgaria to serve as a Southern Slavic united sort of state.

The Ottoman Empire nearly went under, but then it put down the insurrections by the House of Saud thanks to the House of Rashid. Then the so-called sick old man of Europe discovered oil in the Mashriq and Arabia and quickly became prominent once more. They and Bulgaria (due to the Romanian oil fields) became prominent power players

True(especially in the "Ottoman Renaissance" period from 1932-59), but that honestly didn't stop them from once again teetering on near total collapse by the late 1970s, though(this time, thanks to decades of ethnic tensions, massive wealth inequality, and general anger against a stubbornly anti-reformist government especially amongst the young, etc.). I mean, sure, it technically still exists, but the Sultan has been a ceremonial figurehead since the reforms of 1990, and that only happened after over a decade of turmoil, and significant international intervention(the Danubians did play a big role in that! Their own experiences from the Austro-Hungarian Civil War no doubt was a major motivation).

And, of course, they also no longer have Palestine, Lebanon, Assyria, or Iraq to push around anymore.

Any modern 'great war' so you speak of would probably be over quite quickly. The arms race that has existed for most of the last two centuries between the great powers to develop new and more technologically advanced weapons would mean it would be short, brutal and fought in every theatre - air, land and sea. You might even get a war start in September and be over by Christmas. Anything more drawn out would be immensely expensive on logistics though as the army would need to develop new means of transporting potentially thousands to millions of shells, bullets and men to frontlines. Though the relative speed of armoured/mechanized warfare seen in some more recent conflicts would be decisive in making war a speedy operation. One more interesting area may be you'd likely get a much more super-power based world rather than the relative division of power between several major regional powers that we have today. One power, propelled by the economic growth of a great war, may come out 'on top' so to speak making it a global hyperpower able to project influence anywhere. Either way, i'd expect a much less peaceful world than we have today.

Maybe in this day and age, sure. Would have been a rather different story circa 1910, though.

(OOC from a warfare perspective this would have enormous ramifications. Nuclear weapons would be non existent to start with as the Military would never have the incentive or political backing to develop them. Simple doctrines of modern war like rapid logistics would be highly undeveloped and if a big war did break out, much like in the first world war irl, countries would literally run out of ammunition and shells in a matter of weeks even if they had enormous reserves. The most interesting schism though is no war in the world would be able to be decisive or gamechanging in this world as in order to maintain such a fragile and paranoid peace you would need a highly bipolar world of many superpowers that project peace through strength, any war that did happen would have to be so small or short and undamaging that there would be no major shift in power. For example, the Germans would never have been able to form a state under this scenario as doing so would unbalance the European balance of power to such a degree that there would be a major war of some form eventually, if just out of fear by the Russians, French etc that they would become too powerful and dominate the continent. Essentially you'd need a world in which nobody fears another nation is becoming too strong and therefore would build coalitions to contain them. Funnily enough the economic situ of this world would also probably be weaker and there would likely be a lot more monarchies. Either way i expect everyone in this world to be convinced that wars would be short and bloody due to a paranoia about the human cost of conflict and the certain arms race between the great powers that would still be ongoing to oppose one another enough to not encourage war due to weakness.)

OOC: Interesting thoughts, though I'm afraid you're wrong on one thing: there would have been nuclear weapons developed at some point.

If Germany became some economically bankrupt that they needed a war to rebuild their lost fortunes, then that could happen. But luckily it didn't and the German Empire is now one of the most stable and progressive nations in the world, much like Japan.

Let's not forget, though, it took some backlash thanks to the Second German-Polish War that finally got that ball rolling. And the Empire mainly only survived because Frederick V was smart & decent enough to listen to the outcry of the weary German people and institute some truly genuinely effective reforms for the first time in decades, starting in 1969(which nearly got him assassinated, twice!).
 
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