As a profligate metaphor for the gateway between left and right (brains as well as politics) posing as east and west, the Berlin Wall was remarkably small compared to other separations (96 miles compared to The Great Wall's nearly 4000 mi).  1978 - during the hiccup of the Carter-Callaghan years, the former commander of NATO, John Hackett, penned a book by committee (The Third World War, August 1985) that was best understood as science fiction, a story in pensive framgents that detailed a tactical war the Soviets would fight as World War III, part of a unique genre of narrative (the 'what-if' altered from retroactive to active) that hovered between suggestive propaganda and realistic fear-mongering. Having been a strategist that made Berlin a ground zero for any future wars on his watch, Hackett gave his WWIII a three week premise (the other WWs totalled some 10 years in length) that involved a decaying Soviet economy foraging for greater European control and a leadership playing blink with atomic weapons. The initial invasion of West Germany is halted and repulsed by NATO ground war strategy and as an attempt at coup d'grace the Soviets drop a devastating ICBM on Birmingham U.K. NATO responds by liquifying Minsk. The book's too simplified arc is that the bombing of Birmingham unified NATO and the extra Soviet world and the loss of Minsk helped dissolve the already fragmented and collapsing states in the Soviet realm. Strangely the same thing occured minus all the predicted warfare and the tactical armageddon as the Soviets turned inward reflectively in 1989 and allowed their bitter children Afghanistan, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany to escape dominance. Hacket updated the book in 1982.

What happened to a WWIII, could it really be happening now in slow motion instead of Hackett's three weeks? Replace his 1985 euro-invasion with 1979 Afghanistan and suddenly the time-frame shifts, attacks are indirect (we practiced third-party warfare via insurgents and now it is practiced on us). As the Soviets fled in their attempt at jockeying a mummified communist regime in Kabul, will the coalition leave after propping Karzai's democratic regime? As we no doubt served to assist the mujahadeen of Afghanistan, who now feeds currency and weapons to the Taliban to assist in our possible exit? Does a WW, its nascent rebellions and corresponding technology become cheaper to operate in third-party warfare? Why have three 'superpowers' (Britain, U.S.S.R., U.S.) each fought for control of Afghanistan and two so far walk away bruised and confused?