The first "real" world war (Putin, wage, suspect)

[Cida]

Sometimes Tom Friedman is off-track, but I think this is right on the mark.

I was thinking about just this recently - that Putin may not have realized what a difference it makes to have, via the internet, the swiftness of information, no matter how hard he might try to clamp down - and may not have realized that Trump's indifference to the fate of other countries isn't necessarily true across the board.



Ukraine Is the First Real World War
Almost six weeks into the war between Russia and Ukraine, I’m beginning to wonder if this conflict isn’t our first true world war — much more than World War I or World War II ever were. In this war, which I think of as “World War Wired,” virtually everyone on the planet can either observe the fighting at a granular level, participate in some way or be affected economically — no matter where they live.
Putin was never going to let a Slavic Ukraine become a successful free-market democracy in the EU next door to his stagnating Slavic Russian kleptocracy. The contrast would have been intolerable for him, and that is why he is trying to erase Ukraine.
But Putin, it turns out, had no clue what world he was living in, no clue about the frailties of his own system, no clue how much the whole free, democratic world could and would join the fight against him in Ukraine, and no clue, most of all, about how many people would be watching.
https://www.fcnp.com/2022/04/08/ukra...eal-world-war/

[Listener2307]

The OP is not alone in his observation of this war. It is fought with guns and bombs but in this case - Russia against the world - it is fought with sanctions.
In this video, talented journalist/teacher Johnny Harris walks us all through the sanctions and how they are used by the world to wrest Russia back under control. No nation functions alone, he observes. Nations are all intertwined. Russia exports some things and imports many others. The list of what can no longer be imported to Russia is amazing - Netflix; computer chips; iPhones...
Not only that but people are personally sanctioned. There are many people who cannot leave Russia because they cannot get a visa to any country.
I believe Russia must give up its ambitions or crumble, and there is a likelihood that both will happen; Russia will enter a depression and become too poor to wage the war.



It's worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ppy3dVz8c

[ElectronicOverlord]

I can't help but worry about WW2 in retrospect, given that 1) there was no internet back then; 2) incentive to propagandize is massive; 3) humanity has yet to reliably prevent bad people from rising to the top; and 4) the victors typically write the history.
But back to the current affair, I'm mostly waiting and seeing from the sidelines. I would caution against calling it Russia vs. the world though. Some countries are continuing trade, possibly increasing trade, which honestly isn't too surprising.

[Cida]

Originally Posted by ElectronicOverlord

I can't help but worry about WW2 in retrospect, given that 1) there was no internet back then; 2) incentive to propagandize is massive; 3) humanity has yet to reliably prevent bad people from rising to the top; and 4) the victors typically write the history.
But back to the current affair, I'm mostly waiting and seeing from the sidelines. I would caution against calling it Russia vs. the world though. Some countries are continuing trade, possibly increasing trade, which honestly isn't too surprising.

You're absolutely right that the internet makes a huge difference - in the speed that news travels, in the way suppressed news gets out, in the way propaganda is spread. I suspect that even though Putin may have used the internet very shrewdly to interfere with the 2016 election, it's taken him by surprise with Ukraine.