Are we already in a third world war? (Part 1)

Ukraine, Russia, and why France recently threatened to deploy troops in the conflict

War is hell. War is a racket. War is crony.

The past two world wars, one over a century ago and the second nearly a century ago did not begin exactly as most of us have learned. World War I (The Great War) did not begin only because of the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand in Serbia. Nor did World War II begin with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. There were precursors to both conflicts. Before World War I there was the Russo-Japanese War (the first war in the modern era where a European power lost to a non-European power) and the Italian invasion of Libya, to name two of many. Before World War II there was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Spanish Civil War, to name two from that war.

Are we in a similar situation now? Are we seeing rumbles of a larger coming conflict?

Possibly. One thing must be said from the outset and that is that the US has been in a form of “forever war” since September 11th 2001. Afghanistan. Iraq. Various lesser entanglements in Africa and elsewhere. But this ongoing war, which has seen its ebbs and flows over the last two decades, does not constitute a “world war”.

Defense types use the term “Global War on Terror” (GWOT), but it was not a “world war” with peer and near peer states going toe to toe with one another. GWOT, though obviously key to the 21st century version of the Great Game, was and is a lot of the USA going around and stamping out fires. In some cases fires lit by the US in the first place. Drone strikes and occasional SEAL Team operations were the order of the day.

But the world changed.

Russia annexing the Crimea in 2014 was a key turning point. Russia felt that it was under pressure from NATO which continued to march eastward year in and year out. Some also believe that NATO engineered the removal of a pro-Moscow leader in Kiev in 2014. Putin saw that the Black Sea Fleet was in potential peril, which is based in Sevastopol in the Crimea, and so moved to annex the peninsula long under Moscow rule and populated generally with ethnic Russians. (There are many versions of how things went down, but this is where we are on the subject.)

NATO was not happy. Russia was not happy. But there was a general peace. That peace would of course be broken when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

It was then that black and white visions of World War II immediately filled the minds of western leaders. All eyes were drawn toward Moscow to see if Putin would try to engineer a reverse Operation Barbarossa in central Europe.

This thankfully did not come to pass if it was ever really in the cards. It seems reasonable that Putin might have wanted to take Kiev (and even then) but a push further westward into NATO member states would have been near suicide and Putin knew (and knows) that. Regardless, Ukrainian resistance and lots and lots of western money and weapons checked Russia at the Donbas region, a part of Ukraine that like the Crimea is dominated by ethnic Russians. Now Russia and Ukraine are locked in a particularly ugly attritional war with both sides sending their young men to die over territory that in the end will probably not mean much globally. What is Ukraine and what is Russia has shifted over the centuries and the death associated with this particular territorial shakeout gives testament to the willingness of old men to send young men to their deaths.

In the end Russia will probably end up with much of the Donbass and will retain control of the Crimea, but this is assuming things don’t morph into something much bigger.

Last month French president Macron hinted at something bigger.

(From Politico)

On Monday, Macron said — after a leaders' conference on support for Kyiv — that there was "no consensus" on sending ground troops to Ukraine in an "official manner," but that "nothing was excluded."

The prospect of sending Western troops to Ukraine was rejected by other NATO members, including the U.S., U.K. and Germany, and sharply criticized by French opposition parties, but not dismissed by Estonia and Lithuania. French officials also downplayed Macron's comments, pointing to activities such as demining and arms production which might involve a Western presence in Ukraine.

The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament even warned Macron against sending troops to Ukraine, saying they would meet the same fate as Napoleon’s army.

Macron also said that the West shouldn’t be “cowards” in the face of Moscow, and even though Macron’s threat was “rejected” by most NATO members French leadership continues to keep their hands on their sabres.

(From Politico)

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné was in Lithuania on Friday, where he met his Baltic and Ukrainian counterparts to buttress the idea that foreign troops could end up helping Ukraine in areas like demining.

"It is not for Russia to tell us how we should help Ukraine in the coming months or years," Séjourné said at a meeting chaired by Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis and attended by his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba. "It is not for Russia to organize how we deploy our actions, or to set red lines. So we decide it among us."

In fact acording to Ukrinform (which, granted is a state operated mouthpiece for Ukraine) some in France even think that a full war footing is warranted with the “requisitioning” of private factories to make arms instead of consumer goods.

What year are we in? Is Paris going to start issuing ration books next?

French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said that defense orders for the country are currently a higher priority than civilian ones and did not rule out the requisitioning of industrial capacities to speed up the production of arms and shells needed on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The minister stated this at a press conference on Tuesday, March 26, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

According to him, the defense minister has the appropriate powers according to the law.

Thankfully Macron was indeed “criticized” by most NATO members, but this sort of talk is one way regional wars expand. If French troops directly engage Russian troops on the battlefield that changes the nature of the Ukraine war on a fundamental level. Things get much more dangerous.

What many people do not know is that Macron is likely ramping up his rhetoric because of recent developments in Africa in addition to the happenings in Ukraine. Russia has recently usurped France’s position in many long controlled territories on the second largest continent.

Though technically independent, “Francophone Africa” was until very recently utterly dominated by France. We say until recently because starting in 2020 a series of coups rocked the the Sahel region of Africa, the area of transition from the Sahara to the north and the wetter regions of Africa to the south. These coups upended France’s position in the area and severely jeopardized the flow of raw materials, particularly uranium, which is vital to France’s massive nuke industry.