The Third World War: August 1985

To end these reflections on the Third World War upon a technological note may appear odd. It is unlikely to seem so to some future reader. Wars commonly produce an acceleration of technical advance. This one did more: it took the lid off Pandora’s box. We are now moving forward into a world which will be more and more dominated by electronic technology. It is likely to prove a very different world from the one we knew, the one which came so near to destruction in the Third World War. That war was fought, it is true, under the shadow of the threat of nuclear devastation. On the basis of NATO’s rediscovered confidence and hastily repaired defences it was largely won by electronics. We cannot begin to guess how our lives, and even more our children’s lives, will be influenced by the possibilities which these swiftly developing techniques are now opening up. An unfamiliar, perhaps uncomfortable world awaits us, very strange and new. We can only be thankful to have survived, and wait and see.

CHAPTER 28: The Beginning of the Future

We believe that later historians who write the history of the Third World War will not drastically alter our conclusions about its causes. However, we are writing very shortly after the end of the war and can only provide the best predictions we have about its effects — and we are very mindful of the anecdote with which this chapter concludes. History is not an exact science. And ‘the historian of the future’ is as much artist as scientist or academic. But the futurologist cannot be taken lightly. He bases his conclusions on perceived trends, and his predictions themselves may possibly have some effect on the future: in helping either to prevent his predictions coming true or to realize them.

Nobody can be sure which of the many meetings and international position papers of the first three months of 1987 will prove of lasting significance to the world. At least one of these papers, we suspect, may have begun to paint the picture of the future.

It was prepared for the meeting of the EEC heads of government at Copenhagen. It had been collated in the Council of Foreign Ministers. This had not been a recipe for meaningful documents in the past, but this document may be destined to play a role in the history of Europe more significant than the past treaties of Rome, Versailles, Vienna and Utrecht put together. What it embodies has already become known as the Copenhagen doctrine. It is a lengthy document, legalistically expressed. A detailed summary of it appeared in The Times of 15 February 1987, and we quote this in full:

1 At the end of the 1939-45 war there were two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1985 war, there are again two superpowers: the United States and the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere. The difference for us this time is that Europe does not lie between them.

2 America and China-Japan will face each other — we hope in amity — across the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific basin will become more important to each of them than the Atlantic is.

3 The most extreme version of this emerging Pacific superpower isolationism is already being expressed in the Schneider memorandum, from the American General Art Schneider, who was most angry when President Thompson allowed European political instincts and fears in 1985 to delay the invasion of East Germany which Schneider (popularly known as ‘young blood and guts’) had expected his own army group to spearhead. Schneider, who may be the Democratic candidate against President Thompson in next year’s 1988 presidential election (and failing that will almost certainly win the now almost as important office of Governor of his native California), has written:

‘Henceforth we should let Europe and Africa stew in their own tribal wars. It will not be worth the death of a single American soldier to prevent them, especially as (a) the Birmingham and Minsk bombs have shown that the whole world is not contaminated by single N-blasts and (b) it will be possible for China-Japan and the US to quarantine smaller countries’ N-wars from afar by saying that any country which launches an N-weapon will immediately have a neutron bomb from us homed in by missile to its president’s palace.’