WWI was fantastically destructive war of 4 short years, which is very short for a war. 'People' always underestimate the cost of war when selling the idea to the public. Imagine if they were realistic then maybe we wouldn't go to war.
I'm not suggesting WWIII would be short because someone wins it, just that if a nuclear exchange happens there won't be enough left to keep fighting with.
It's not a given that WW3 would escalate into nuclear soon. All sides understand that once you go there, there's no way back. But there are still goals that can be achieved and territories that can be contested without resorting to nukes, and without making one's opponent desperate enough to do the same.
Of course, this presumes rational actors on all sides, which is very much not a given (esp. looking at Russia right now).
An India vs Pakistan war could continue after a nuclear exchange as they don’t have that many nuclear weapons to glass each other and survivors would presumably want vengeance.
For the US it might take a reasonably effective missile defense system, but that’s not outside the realm of possibility.
I wouldn't classify India vs Pakistan as a world war. The primary nuclear belligerents would be US and Russia. I wouldn't trust the US military industrial complex to be honest about their missile defence capabilities and it worries me that the west is being so cavalier about possible nuclear war.
To be clear, I was suggesting an India vs Pakistan nuclear exchange could be part of a much larger conflict. WWII was called a world war because so many countries where involved and WWIII could similarly spiral even without a US vs Russia nuclear exchange.
Anyway, I personally don’t believe the US has a highly effective nuclear defense system, but even the possibility of such changes the calculus of war. The more bombs you need to send to each target the fewer targets you can hit. DC and NYC are presumably fucked either way, but Tuscaloosa Alabama could easily survive the second scenario.
It’s completely theoretical at this point, but coming up for plausible scenarios where the Jones Act ends up worthwhile doesn’t seem that difficult.
My expectation is the coming conflict will be between NATO and a Chinese Russian alliance. The US maintains its current standard of living based on cheap Chinese goods, cheap Russian energy (indirectly) and financialization. I expect that none of those things will survive such a conflict. Even if a city avoids getting nuked what life is left for them. Maybe they could get a job at Foxconn.
Simply look at how much damage the Russian Ukraine war is doing to the US and that is relatively a minor skirmish that the US is not even directly involved with.
