Are all out wars out of style or something?

Question

Seems like for the past dozen years or so the world has so many small t*t for tat small skirmishes. Don't get me wrong, hundreds of thousands of people in Africa have seen death as a result of these types of skirmishes. But mostly, the battles around the world are relatively small compared to World War I and World War II or even the U.S. Civil War. How come nations don't have big wars anymore? They're quicker and the results are more definitive. Why doesn't everyone say, "s***w this small c**p, let's just have one big war and get it over with."

Answer 1

Credible security guarantees, mostly provided by the U.S.

Answer 2

because with 20,000 nukes worldwide everyone loses

Answer 3

A world war has a big chance of going nuclear.  Nobody wants that and there are even more abominable weapons than nukes.  In the cold war the USSR developed antibiotic resistent Yrsinia Pestis (plague) and weaponized smallpox.  Either of those could more or less end humanity.  

I guess we need to perfect our ballistic missile defenses and kick USAMRIID into overdrive finding cures for bioweapons.  Then we can teach Russia a lesson while we remain in relative safety.

Answer 4

I will put money on it that if there was another War you would be the first to squirm out of it.You are like an empty bottle, lacking in guts or even loyalty to your Country, and yet you incite others to start one. Why don't you just go and suck your dummy, and leave the political side of things to be people that have the brains. I went through the last War, and I would sure as h**l not  want to go through another, not for the likes of you who incited it in the first place.Wars do not solve anything, because if you look around the World you would see the results of all those, that have happened.

Answer 5

Cause some of the big leaders with nukes are crazy, just checlk out the guiy In North Korea, when Bush calle him a terrosrist his response was you want to fight lets fight, I know thatif we fight bith Koreas will b turne to ashes but I garantee that a big portion of the US will burried in the sea. And look at the guy in Iran he is willing to blow up half of thi continent just to prove he is not afraid of anyone.



So yeah big war = the end of human kind.

Answer 6

Remember how the last big war ended, you know, World War II?  It ended with the use of nuclear weapons.  That was when only one country on Earth had them, and they only had two actual working bombs, both of which were used.  Now there are eight countries that have them -- thousands of them -- and they're all bigger than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

But besides that, and speaking as someone who has studied military history for more than forty years, small wars have always been much more common than big ones.  I don't think there's been a single year in the last several thousand that someone hasn't been fighting somewhere.  The difference is that now, with modern communications technology and a 24-hour news cycle to fill, you hear about every little dust-up that happens anywhere in the world, frequently with live footage from the "front."  Wars are not more frequent, just more often reported.

I would like to end this with a quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein, one that may give you pause in hoping for big wars:  "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."    

Answer 7

because we did that in WW1 and that led to WW2 and that led to the cold war.

In other words: it doesn't work.