We seems scarily only one rogue actor or screw up from
WW III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
People keep bringing WW3 up but I disagree. There's such a huge aversion in EU countries against any kind of war against Russia and the governments know it. They will let a LOT slide on Russia's side before any kind of retaliation (and I mean by force) is coming. Russia could probably kill several service members with a drone, claim it was an accident and the only thing coming from Europe would be a stern letter, some more sanctions and telling off the ambassador (and the Kremlin knows this too).
Don't we already have that? It's just a smoulder instead of a conflagration.
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
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Where the misbehaving misfits are the aggressors, i.e Russia, the USA, and Israel?
That is the point of these "one offs".
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
Hawe you been in coma? There has been a ww2 sized war in eastern europe for 4 years
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
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No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.