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51 thoughts on “Chart of the day: How likely is World War III?”

  2. devondjones

    Looking at that data, I think a better explanation of the trend is that before 9-11 we had around 40% that thought this, then we have a discontinuity and a fairly stable 53ish % after 9-11. If anything, the data post 9-11 has a negative slope.

    1. cmayo

      Yep, this.

      Also: this makes me laugh/scoff. Seriously? A "world war", where nearly every country is involved in some way? That's just not going to happen.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        The popularization of the electric car could set Russia on its Citgo-with-Nukes heels enough to induce a hot war.

        New access is Putin-MBS-Maduro where the old was Hitler-Mussolini-Hirohito?

      2. Special Newb

        World War is not every country was involved. Hell in WW2 Peru and Ecuador had a war that had absolutely nothing to do with anything in WW2. (Peru annihilated Ecuador btw).

        A world war is a war fought across a number of a different theaters between 2 sides.

        1. cmayo

          Multiple theaters, global effects. "Nearly every country is involved in some way" - sorry, I should have said impacted in some major way. A world war has global knock-on effects even if there are only a couple of antagonists.

          But the point is: the likelihood of that is pretty darn low.

      3. Jasper_in_Boston

        World War 3 in contemporary usage is just a proxy for "nuclear war involving the superpowers." And if even "countries all over the world" don't' directly participate, such a cataclysm would: A) obviously create massive, global effects and B) involve countries on opposite sides of the world.

          1. Jasper_in_Boston

            Far too likely for comfort, at least given the consequences. Do you honestly think humans will be able to hold off a war involving nuclear weapons indefinitely?

            Some day we need to summon the will to ban/abolish/eliminate them.

    3. quakerinabasement

      Agree.

      I'm not doing any analysis other than just looking at the line. The peak at about 2003 seems to have a disproportionate effect on the slope of the trend line.

  3. Joel

    Within 10 year, probably not, unless we elect a Trump Republican for president.

    But within 30 years, climate change-driven resource wars will be occurring all over the planet, so I wouldn't be surprised at all by then.

    1. tigersharktoo

      Imagine India and Pakistan or China going to water over control of the headwaters of rivers.

      All armed with Nukes.

      1. Solar

        And yet his foreign actions performed purely for show or personal interest (the killing of the Iranian general, abandoning the Kurds, giving carte blanche to the Saudis and Israel) still resulted in massive loss of life, and his idiotic insults with Kim did not end up in open war only because Kim turned out to be the saner of the two.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      #cancelculture &/or the proscription of the Latin Mass &/or a globalized one child policy & resulting spike in infanticide & the marginalization of respect for life &/or a woman president.

      Take your pick.

  5. Maynard Handley

    Perhaps this tells us something about the value of polls no, even that supposed gold standard the GSS?

    For a horrifying example of just how bad they are (truly the astrology of our time) read item 2 on this page:
    https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-july

    ie compare the Economist graph/claims to the followup link showing how much the answers change with the slightest changes in the wording

    1. ScentOfViolets

      Your source might have some merit ... if they hadn't linked David Friedman, fergawdsakes. Read the room, kid. That sort of thing is _not_ going to fly.

      1. Maynard Handley

        Oh yes, forgot; this is a room that thinks it's always more important to be posturing than to be informed.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          You think that David Friedman is any sort of authority on anything other than being a libertarian douche? Pro tip: Fat, drunk and libertarian is no way to go through life son.

          Grow up. Just ... grow up.

  7. Victor Matheson

    Hard to do real statistical analysis with only about 40 data points, but just eyeballing it looks like a clear structural break at 9/11 and then no real change since then.

    Fitting a line like this is a bit like these terrible global warming graphs where temperature shoots way up and then recedes a bit so the climate deniers point to global cooling,

  8. iamr4man

    I suppose the answer to that question is dependent on what you consider to be a “World War”.
    There was a period of time during Trump’s presidency when I thought a nuclear war with North Korea was possible. Would that count?

    2. Special Newb

      It looks like after Trump defused that (and make no mistake he did, the statements were bellicose but no concrete actions were ever taken to move us to war and then he gave Kim what he wanted) the line has gone down ever since.

    3. rational thought

      I would say no way. North korea can cause a lot of damage if they manage to deploy effectively a number if nukes. And their conventional strength can cause some short term bad times in South Korea and wreck Seoul.

      But they just do not have the capacity to get anywhere close to causing widespread damage world wide. And even less chance to being able to sustain any actual war fighting capacity against the usa and s korea. Any war would be initially scary and damaging with maybe millions of dead in s Korea and even possibly in usa if they can manage to nuke a us city. But it would then end soon after with n korea crushed, including made a radioactive wasteland if necessary. Bad but not world war.

      What is scary about n Korea is they seem possibly way beyond Hitler level insanity
      or Saddam insanity with respect to starting something they cannot win. But my guess is that might be more of an act.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        We could prolly get Li'l Kim out of power & Juche ended, with the DPRK on the path to a Vietnam style Marxist Kapitalism, if we promised him exile in Hawai'i, a percentage of his current wealth, & ownership of an NBA team.

        Give him the Suns, is what l'm saying. He'll be a better owner than Sarver.

        1. rational thought

          I tend to doubt that is close to true but, if it was, I would certainly offer that deal. One thing that I think Obama screwed up was Libya. And not about what a mess it is now, but that quadaffi agreed to give up his nuke program when the Iraq war started ( and turns out that iraq was less of a threat there than we thought but Libya was closer to a nuke than we knew). And he did that because he got scared of what the usa would do when all stirred up but also because he was basically promised that we would not throw him out of power if he gave up nukes and was a " good guy".

          And Qaddafi was ok after that and did not cause much trouble, sponsor terrorism, try for wmd, etc. Still a jerk to the Libyan people but was no threat anymore to the usa or the world.

          And then we basically broke that promise and backed a revolt where he got assassinated.

          What does that say to someone like Kim? What if he would accept a deal like a comfortable exile in luxury, and had the power to accept it? Would he be able to trust that the deal would be honored and he would not end up being tried in front of the world court in 5 years?

          And I am not convinced that he is the one even really in charge in n Korea.

          1. Clyde Schechter

            It's not as if our duplicity in Libya was just a one-off. We also did it with Iran vis-a-vis the JCPOA.

            At this point, nobody who has outgrown the tooth fairy would ever rely on the word of the US government.

      2. kenalovell

        Kim is eminently sane. He played the Trump family like a fiddle. I imagine he's very happy being absolute ruler of his little country and has no intention of upsetting the established world order.

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          Yep. People throw around the term "insane" too frequently. Kim's diabolical. But he's far from insane.

      3. Solar

        "What is scary about n Korea is they seem possibly way beyond Hitler level insanity
        or Saddam insanity with respect to starting something they cannot win. But my guess is that might be more of an act."

        Based on how Kim dealt with Trump it is safe to say he is far from insane (quite the opposite in fact), since Trump's antics gave him all the excuses a madman could have been looking for if he wanted to start a war they couldn't win.

        He is an egomaniac and a despot but he seems to be fully aware of how much he can and can't get away with without bringing his own doom.

  10. rational thought

    I lot depends on how you define "world war". Under cmayo's definition above, I would question whether ww2 would qualify.

    I think most sort of think of it as a huge war that significantly effects most of the world 's population where a lot of major powers are fighting at near total war level.

    Looking at the chart, the trend line from 1990 to today is, imo, an understatement of the increase in true chance.

    I would contend that through all the period the chance of an actual such war has been consistently overstated.

    So we had at or close to a 50% chance of world war within ten years for 35 years or so and still no war. Are we just incredibly lucky or is 50% bs? And my estimate is that the real chance today is closer to the poll number than at any other time ( with maybe 85 to 88 being arguable).

    And what seems laughable to me is the spike up in 1990 after first gulf war and in 2001 after 9/11 and the Afghan war. Actually those should be low points, not high, especially after first gulf war.

    A true world war would most likely happens when a challenger power or coalition is ready to start a war against the world dominant power coalition because they think that either the dominant power does not have the will to fight even if they are stronger, that they can win by surprise or some strategy or that they are actually able to become stronger in real war potential. Or sometimes because the dominant power or an equalish power sees an inevitable decline and flashes out whole they can. Third type maybe the weaker power just led by insane people.

    In 1985, the risk was a declining ussr making a " last stand". But that was never that realistic as they realized that just not strong enough to win and by 1989 or so that threat was mostly gone.

    After first gulf war, the demonstration of the clear superiority of us and western technology, organization and skill, plus demonstration of at least some will to fight made the prospect of any challenger in ten years remote. Iraq was never a real serious threat. At that time, even if you had some nut in charge, no other nation had the war potential to even force a world war much less win one.

    2001 and terrorism was serious but never at world war level. If usa really wanted to, it could have fully occupied every Muslim middle east nation harshly and still not needed to fully mobilize. And in 2001, no other nation or coalition was realistically able to consider challenging the west. The Iraq war was very impressive by usa in pure conventional military terms even if the occupation was screwed up.

    In last decade china has emerged as a nation that can seriously challenge the usa in actual war fighting potential and might surpass our true fully mobilize war capacity. This had not been the case since maybe early 1900s.

    1. cmayo

      I should have said impacted by in a significant way, not involved in some way.

      And/or that most/all of the major economies were undertaking total war in its waging.

      As for total war (something that I think a lot of people think of when they think of "world war"), I just don't see that happening at all.

  11. Justin

    I suppose that explains this.

    “The Senate Armed Services Committee's surprise decision to endorse a $25 billion increase to the Pentagon's budget this week was an utter blowout — and the clearest sign yet that Democrats are more than willing to back sizable increases to President Joe Biden's military spending plan. The committee adopted a proposal to boost the budget in a whopping 25 to 1 vote Wednesday during a closed door markup of its version of annual defense policy legislation, according to four Senate aides with knowledge of the deliberations.”

    Democrats are completely useless.

  12. frankwilhoit

    One of the most durable of the apocryphal Einstein anecdotes has him being asked (post-Hiroshima) what the weapons of World War III will be. He supposedly said that that was beyond guesswork, but that the weapons of World War IV would be stones.

    It is now clear that the weapon (singular) of World War III will be software. None of the other "weapons" will be used, or can be used, or are meant to be used. Their procurement and maintenance is a disguised -- but extremely effective -- economic stimulus program. If your company is part of the Defense supply chain, or if it is big enough to make its revenue by manipulating financial instruments, then you're doing fine. If not, then not.

    2. rational thought

      I somewhat hope if it comes to that you are right and it will be a software war.

      Because what I fear is that it will be bio warfare with something that will make covid look like nothing. And you will not even be able to know who attacked you.

    3. Jasper_in_Boston

      I don't think it's remotely likely, much less "clear" that "none of the other weapons will be used" though I'd love to think you're correct.

      You seriously don't think there's any chance at all that, say, a clash over the Taiwan straits might quickly escalate to one involving nuclear weapons? Just software?

      I actually think if cooler heads didn't prevail, it might well be the US that introduces nuclear weapons first. Washington has never foresworn first use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and one could imagine a situation where it would be awfully tempting to use them if China's sheer numbers and regional advantage in conventional weaponry pushed America to the brink of defeat.

  13. D_Ohrk_E1

    So what you're saying is, for the last 26 years, an increasing amount of Americans have become increasingly pessimistic but also wrong?

    Or, increasingly over the last 36 years, we're seeing pessimism because of a rising divide between the left and right in the US and around the world, leading to mistrust between groups?

  14. galanx

    Polls that show people's inclinations are good. Polls that involve factual information are pretty useless. Violent crime has soared since the 90s! US government spends 25% of federal budget on foreign aid!

  15. kenalovell

    I find that chart quite reassuring, given the way so many American pundits and politicians have spent recent years telling everyone war with China is inevitable.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      I find it the exact opposite. The US electorate in the mains seems worryingly oblivious to the increasing hawkery emanating out of the Potomac. There's virtually no debate, for instance, regarding the country's obligations (if any) vis-à-vis Taiwan in the event of a PRC attack.

      The mere fact that a lot of people don't perceive there's much to worry about in terms of tail risk doesn't mean they're right. Look how wrong they were about pandemics!

  16. Jasper_in_Boston

    Fun fact: my hotel room overlooks the Taiwan Strait. It's a beachy city called Xiamen. Lovely town. Like Miami or Rio with much less crime. Highly recommended if you ever find yourself in southern China.

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