Q: Why won't a World War 3 occur?
Primarily because of nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, WW3 and WW4 would have started & ended in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine or even India.
The great thing about nuclear weapons is that it gives people the chills. Imagine all the people talking about Hiroshima-Nagasaki even though it is well less than 1% of all deaths in that war. As though the 99% of other deaths from bombs and bullets were from showering roses.
People talk so much about nuclear weapons, because in their mind the conventional bombs are not that dangerous. These conventional weapons don’t scare them to death when it actually should. Since the populace is not scared, they don’t stop their governments from fighting silly wars.
The beauty of nuclear weapons is that it makes people really worry about the consequences of war. They cannot just send their young boys to war while they sip their coffee [like what the Americans are doing while fighting half dozen wars right now]. The nuclear weapons promise total destruction. Someone could bomb their home right there in the middle of the US or China or Russia or India and instantly vaporize them. They could “enjoy” the same consequence as their brave lads on the frontlines that they have sent to fight [through voting].
This bone-chilling fear of personal harm keeps us from being too irrational. Not trade or prosperity. There was enormous world trade before WW1, but they didn’t have a deadly weapon to scare the people.
However, there will come a day when the danger of nuclear weapon will peter off. We will find a way to disable or destroy nuclear warheads in a consistent way. At that point, the public will once again lose this fear and plan of delivering vengeance. The leaders merely reflect the public opinions and they might act irrationally too. That is when the WW3 occur. Or there might be a party that could lose a nuclear weapon when a third party could steal and use against another nation. That will start a major war.
Until that time, the present nuclear weapons regiment provide a sufficient protection against a war. Fear works.
Q: Did Americans freak out when their President died in the middle of World War II?
By the time FDR died, the ninth US army had already crossed Elbe river and closed in on Berlin. It was only a question of time when Germany surrendered as they had no way to escape from that position. Only Hitler thought that FDR's death would change the ground situation and he was already a mad man by then. On the Pacific too the end was nearing in Burma, Okinawa and China.
The other major leaders - Churchill and Stalin were still alive [Churchill would soon be voted out in elections] and that US democracy offered a very smooth transition of power. This means that there was more sadness than panic.
If you browse through the Life magazine of that week: LIFE - you can see that the media has already taken the end of war as granted.
Here is the NY times front page. Again the focus is on the victory.
(The author, Mr.Balaji Vishwanathan, is a Top Writer on Quora with more than 216,000 followers.)
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