As tensions mount over Syria and North Korea, World War III again a U.S. fear
Ever since the second one ended in explosions bright as the sun, we have feared the start of the third. World War III would be the real war to end all wars, and maybe the human race. Einstein said he didn’t know with what weapons it would be fought, but that World War IV would be settled with sticks and stones.
Now, America is butting heads in Syria with Russia, the other great nuclear power. We are watching the range of North Korean nuclear missiles stretch inexorably toward Seattle. And people again are thinking about the unthinkable: an attack of which there is no warning, for which there is no defense, and from which there is no escape.
At 92, Annamarie Choo has lived through it all — Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, she says, “In the top of my mind, I think about war. I don’t know how to say this, other than Russia and America, there are communication problems, a big gap. They don’t really understand each other.’’
She lives in a retirement community on a mountain in western North Carolina, and voted for Hillary Clinton. In Malta, Ohio, a 45-year-old auto parts store manager who voted for Donald Trump feels likewise.
“My greatest fear, I think, is a third world war,’’ says Jeremie Clifford. “We’re letting the leader of North Korea get away with more, or just as much as, what we let Saddam Hussein get away with.’’
Visit Curtis Ingram’s barbershop in Mauldin, S.C., and you’ll hear more of the same: “I believe we’ll wind up in another war,’’ he says.
“World War III’’ surged as a Google search term last month. Trump had ordered a missile attack on a Syrian airbase to retaliate for Syria’s use of chemical weapons on civilians. Tensions with North Korea had ratcheted up over that nation’s rocket tests; the U.S. said it would dispatch an aircraft carrier, and North Korea said it could sink such a ship. According to a Public Policy Polling survey taken last month, 39% of all voters (and two thirds of Clinton voters) think Trump will get the U.S. into World War III during his presidency.
It’s hard to know how hard to worry. This week, Trump said he’d be honored to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — only with certain preconditions, the White House hastened to add — and had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But last week Trump said a "major, major conflict" with North Korea was possible. Asked on CBS’ Face the Nation whether the U.S. might use force to stop North Korea’s program, he said only, "We’ll see.’’
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The Doomsday Clock, created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to reflect the proximity of nuclear war, is almost as close as it’s ever been to midnight, or Doomsday. Earlier this year the clock (which actually hangs on the wall in the journal’s Chicago office) was moved 30 seconds forward, to two and a half minutes before midnight. That’s the nearest it’s been to Doomsday since 1953, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union both tested their first hydrogen bombs.
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