Can the Third World War begin tomorrow? Well, for example, if the North Korean dictator decides to once again tug the tiger for a mustache, he will not believe that American "strategic patience" is running out and will arrange any missile test near Tokyo or Seoul? Will Russia and China try to defend the DPRK in the event of decisive measures by the United States? - Vitaly Portnikov writes for Radio Liberty. "And North Korea itself?" Is it ready to use nuclear weapons? To the organization of man-made disasters in the south of the Korean peninsula? To the transformation of the space around itself - and itself - into a scorched desert? And how will the main players of the region and the world behave in this case? Agree? Will they enter into a confrontation? Limit this confrontation with economic sanctions or debate in the UN or start a real war?.

In fact, we do not know the answer to this question - as on the eve of the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars it was impossible to foresee the sequence of actions that led to the tragic final. Great wars always begin not from the planned, but from inconsistency and misunderstanding of the potential reaction of a potential adversary. The third world will not be an exception. But what can be said with all certainty is that it will not resemble either the first or the second. And in this - the main problem of those who are trying to prepare for it.

Mankind - this is the feature of our psyche and the perception of the world - is always prepared not for the wars that will be, but for those wars that were. That is why the question that is asked today, when one thinks about a possible clash of civilizations, needs to be formulated correctly. We do not really care if the third world war begins. Interested in whether the second world.

Because most of us imagine war on military films - bombing, shelling and, of course, the worst thing in the final - Hiroshima. But the third world war will not be like the second. The risks of the second world are obvious even for the most insane and untied dictators, and after its termination there appeared a huge number of technologies that allow us to fight quite differently.

When, after years, we will analyze the history of the beginning of our millennium, it may turn out that we have been living in a third world war for a year already. That Russia's attack on Georgia and Ukraine, the annexation of the Crimea, the war for Syria, cyber intervention in the US presidential election, attempts by the DPRK and Iran to obtain nuclear weapons - this was the beginning of such a war. Who said that in our time the war is necessarily announced? This is the beginning of the first world ceremonial monarchs exchanged notes. And when the second began, the aggressor by no means always informed the victim of his intentions. The rules have changed, they are changing and now. The date of the outbreak of the third world war may be generally unsettled.

Or this date is well known to us - we simply did not understand yet what it really means.

However, history teaches that a contemporary does not need to know the date of the outbreak of World War II. For him, the most important thing is to live to its end.

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