In the past two years, there have been many people who have seen the battle situation in the middle of the night. The screen of the mobile phone lights up: Some air raid alarm, occasional friction on a certain channel, and a small-scale firefighting at a certain border.
A friend asked me, would I light the world all at once? I always wave my hand: Don't be scared by the title party. There are Mars, but there are still several thresholds to a full-scale war in which all major powers are involved.
If you really want to fight a world-class battle, the premise is never "who is emotionally important", but "both sides feel confident".
That was the case with World War I in 1914. The German Empire stared at the timetable and mobilized, with Austro-Hungary, Ottoman and Bulgaria behind it; opposite were Britain, France, Tsarist Russia, and later the United States made up for the position.
The British naval tonnage was pressing against Germany, and the German army and steel production pushed the other side so hard that they could not lift their heads. Neither of them gave in. So after four years of tug-of-war, he pulled Europe from the Marne River to the Somme River.
1939The Second World War was the same: Germany, Italy, and Japan took the lead step by step, France and Britain retreated to the island to breathe, the Soviet Union was forced to take over, and China gritted its teeth and carried it for eight years.
After Pearl Harbor, the United States opened the entire mainland production line to the red line, and tanks and aircraft poured out of the conveyor belt, and several years of expansion overturned the balance. In other words, World War I and World War II are all the result of "chess matches" and not "one-sided" impulse.
The Cold War is even more dangerous. Warsaw NATO is staring at each other's flight time and button reaction links. Everyone knows that if they are wrong, they will be doomed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the situation collapsed halfway, and the world entered the world with one super and more strong. This is not a question of whether you like or not, it is reality: whoever has an industrial belt and whoever holds the technology chain will hold the rhythm in his hand.
Pull the shot back to today. Everyone has been staring at the Ukraine front for several years and should understand a simple fact: modern warfare is a contest between supply line and computing power.
Russia has soldiers, artillery, and experience, but its allies have limited size and coordination. If you can give it or not, you can understand it at a glance. On the other side, it is not just Ukraine that is holding on, but behind it is a whole system: NATO's logistics, financial blood transfusions, and industrial countries' ammunition lines. Even battlefield perception is outsourced to satellites, starlinks, and drone algorithms.
This is not a question of who is braver, but who has practiced the 21st century's tactics more easily.
Look at air power again. The various types of stealth aircraft in the United States have already formed a scale, and the stealth aircraft of the F-15 and F-16 are still fighting, and the carrier-based aircraft on the aircraft carrier are one after another.
Russia also has Su-57, but the quantity and guarantee rhythm are still climbing. Other models are old, have many tasks, and are difficult to maintain. The quality and quantity gaps overlap together, and the battlefield becomes a game of "who sees who first and who fights who first".
The same applies to sea. Eleven nuclear aircraft carriers are cruising outside, coupled with a full Aegis, which means that far-sea delivery is a reality rather than a slogan.
The scene of the sinking of the Black Sea flagship is still like a cold water today, telling you: if the expensive large platform is not systematically protected, it may fall in front of an inexpensive weapon.
Don't deify it on land. The beautiful record of the war history of M1 does not mean that it is invulnerable to swords and guns. Russian tanks are not "paper-made", but in the "dive courseware" that intensively anti-tank networks and drones, whoever emerges will fall.
This time it depends on who has a more dense repair station, who has more spare parts, and whose data is faster to pass back. War is like a long-distance race, fighting for lung capacity and metabolism, not the starting foot.
nuclear power is of course still there, it suppresses everyone's impulse like a ceiling.
The button is not without, but everyone knows what to face after pressing it. The number of warheads is one thing, and the “false alarm rate” of reliability, maintenance, command chain, and early warning system is another. No party is willing to take their country on "rolling dice", which is why crazy declarations often stop at the microphone.
Some people compare today's confrontation with the eve of World War I, but I don't agree. At that time, European powers were highly close in strength, and colonies and trade routes were integrated. Everyone felt that they could get better chips through a short battle. Behind the United States is an entire group of developed countries, with supply chains spanning three oceans; even if Russia has depth and resources, it is difficult for it to gather teammates of the same level.
On the one hand, semiconductors, software, financial liquidation and high-end manufacturing are in hand, and on the other hand, they have to face the four pressures of front line, sanctions, population and finance at the same time.
These two countries are like two boxers, one is a professional player who is systematically trained, and the other is a strong street guy who lacks coaching, physical therapy, and is also limited to the number of games. Tough guys can win, but they have to rely on surprise attacks and make mistakes on opponents, and the cost is extremely high.
So when someone asks if World War III will come, my intuition is: It will be difficult in the short term. It’s not because humans suddenly become kind, but because more and more people are settled.
The weak side has no chance of winning, and will not take the initiative to spread the cards on the table; the strong side will not be willing to turn the stable structure into a coin toss. A more realistic consideration is that the global economy is too deeply integrated with each other: energy, food, shipping, data, payments—whatever chain is broken, it is not the pain of a certain country, but the pain of everyone.
Who will put out the fire? At this time you will find that the role of China is a bit special.
More than eighty years ago, China took eight years to hold back the war in Asia. This is not an old story, but a historical memory of this country. Therefore, in today's world of transmission, China is more inclined to speak slowly and build a bridge more steadily. Talk if you can, and be stable if you can. From the infrastructure of the "Belt and Road" to the agenda for expansion of the BRICS, to the dialogue mechanism of the SCO, the method is not fancy, but the focus is on executable.
You can say it is conservative or it is steady; whether you like it or not, this does conform to the intuition of an economy with a population of more than one billion: Don't muddle the waters of the world economy, and don't let the gears of trade and logistics reverse.
Some people will mutter: Is this considered "choose a side station"? I feel it's more like "holding the edge". Maintaining communication with Russia does not mean endorsing anyone; at the UN Security Council, it is about principles and buffering, not about being on the wall, but about giving all parties a decent step down the stairs.
Real politics has never been a single choice question, but more often it is "how to make the bad result less bad".
If you lower the camera a little, you will see that peace is not an abstract word - it means that the ship schedule does not delay, the natural gas price does not surge in winter, the overseas construction sites can resume work normally, and the insurance company does not increase the premiums near the war zone to the sky.
The battlefield is still there, and the news will not become gentle immediately. Ukraine's counterattack and counterattack, Russian firepower suppression and logistics pull, the fragile red line in the Middle East is provoked from time to time, and Eastern European and Baltic countries are staring at the radar screen.
History is never flat. We must admit anxiety and learn to sift out exaggerations from the noise. Don’t be led by one or two videos, and don’t mistake “snippets” for “full picture”. Military, the system determines the upper limit; politically, the cost determines determination.
In this game, the cost and unknown returns are hard constraints.
I prefer to describe the present as a river with rising water levels. There are rapid and slow tributaries, some people are going against the current, some are going down the current, and there are also many stones, but the direction of the main river is there: Trade is still moving, technology is still running, and the supply chain is still rearranged. There are occasional torrents, and no one wants to block the entire river.
Preventing skirmishes and trying to control fires within an extinguishable range is probably the tacit understanding of most major countries.
The push jumped out again at night, and who fired a few shells at the border. I put my phone on the table, there was the sound of a child practicing piano outside the window, and someone was drying clothes in the next building. Peace is not a slogan, it is these ordinary and repetitive daily routines.
When tomorrow morning, the subway will enter the station on time, and the vegetable market will open as usual. In the news, there will be more shots of negotiators and fewer close-ups of missiles, and the world will be a little safer.
Whoever is working behind the scenes, who is trying to persuade people to make peace at the front desk, who speaks slowly and stretches his hands more steadily, time will give the answer. What we need to do is to take back our emotions, open our eyes to the facts, and let reason prevail.
After all, behind every thick line on the map is the life of thousands of households.
