World Wars One and Two were so-called because the belligerents included nations with colonial empires spanning the globe. Commerce raiding took place as far afield as the Indian Ocean or Cape Horn. That said, the wars had little impact outside of their direct theaters. South America had several nations be perfunctorily belligerents but again little true impact.
So what would a “true” World War look like? Literally half the planet at war against the other half; a global civil war if you will?
Stranger
You would see much more leverage of the national instruments of power (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) into the nations’ strategies. I would expect to see initiation of WWIII through:
These are just a few ‘opening steps.’ A true “World” War would involve mobilization of economies and populations to support the political effort. IMHO, right now, economies/populations/military resources are relatively compartmentalized nowadays to isolate detriments from one to the other (the glaring exception to me being North Korea, where everything is tied to military service/support).
Tripler
We’re not there. . . yet
Maybe not quite yet but I’ll note that three of your four prerequisites are objectively satisfied, and while no major nation has yet PNG’d an entire diplomatic contingent of another, we’re inching closer toward that on almost a weekly basis.
Stranger
Aren’t we rather ignoring the elephant in the room, here?
I hate to threadshit - and don’t intend to - but the main reason that WWI and WWII didn’t actually go truly global is because South America and Africa mostly had little reason to get involved in things.
Say that tomorrow, China declares war on all of East Asia, the whole Middle East goes aflame again over some Israel thing and Russia declares war on all of Europe. That’s about as close as you could get to a World War III - but again South America and Africa would have little reason to get involved in anything.
sigh Nobody ever remembers the BEF. No, not that BEF, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force; they sent an entire infantry division to fight in Italy in WWII.
I’d disagree with your reasoning for why they were considered world wars; it’s more than a question of world spanning colonial empires fighting each other with commerce raiding occurring far afield from the land battles, the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars for example qualify under that definition. The First and Second World Wars involved every major power fighting under the precepts of total war, in which the entire economy of nations were mobilized and directed to the war effort. The effects reached the entire world, whether nations were involved in the war or not. WWI marked the first-time colonial nations recruited huge numbers of colonial subjects, armed them, and sent them to fight other European powers in Europe. This was repeated in WWII, and these, combined with the economic costs of the two wars to colonial powers played no small part in the decolonization of the world that followed WWII.
A global nuclear holocaust. Nations directing their entire economies to total war ala the World Wars have that as their logical conclusion. It’s dated, having been made in 1984, but the BBC television drama Threads is some seriously disturbing nightmare fuel.
They’d get hit with the fallout.
Some of it probably literal.
A true World War, held in the current state of the world, might not quite actually be the war to end wars. But it would almost certainly be the end of this particular civilization. Let’s not have one. I’m not entirely enthralled with this particular civilization in a number of ways; but getting out of it in that fashion would be highly unlikely to be an improvement.
What’s the date of that video?
I agree with you that we’re perambulating along towards perdition, but I think my three main examples are either being met between a “Great Power” and a regional one (Rus vs UKR), or are being met in different spheres: the economy of Europe is under strain by Russia, the Chinese are literally making islands to grab more ocean space, and Russia still continues PSYOPs against the US.
In the former, I’d call that a “limited war” in the grand scheme of things, that could prove to be the trigger for WWIII, whereas the latter is too disjointed in action to have an effect against identifiable targets… Now, if China and Russia started pooling resources, and committed acts that lent themselves to an identifiable strategy, then there’s a cause for war.
But I see Russia’s ineptitude and China’s regional superpower-ism a little short of the line than I suspect you might. I just don’t see a concerted pattern, yet.
Tripler
Hell, have they positively attributed the NordGas pipeline sabotage to anyone in particular yet?
I don’t know if the only scenario for a global war is nuclear destruction, but it’s the way to bet.
The problem comes when countries think they can go to war with a nuclear power without nukes being used. Sure, in the early days of conflict there will be all sorts of promises that nukes are off the table, but that will go out the window once a country with nukes faces an existential loss. Then all bets are off.
The war in Ukraine could easily go there, if Putin begins to lose hard enough to threaten his regime, or the crazy takes hold in the Kremlin and they decide that this is an existential war for them.
But none of us really knows what a WWIII will look like, because the world and technology are so different from WWII that any predictions based on that war are certain to ve wrong.
No, I’d agree with you that nothing going on thus far either with Russia or China really meets the criteria of open strategic combat between “Great Powers”, such as they are. But we are no longer in the bipolar world of the Cold War, or the unipolar world of the 1990-2010 (roughly speaking) where the United States enjoyed uncontested status as the premier military power and leading technical economy. It is just as likely that a proxy war between larger nations, or a regional conflict that spreads, or one of the increasing number of nuclear states led by an aging autocrat sitting on an existential economic and/or demographic bubble will decide that even if they odds aren’t good on rolling the dice with a nuclear gamble, they’re not really worse than the alternative.
The analogue for the situation today isn’t the lead up to WWII but rather the multiple competing polities, civil unrest, and radical economic transitions that led into WWI. And as horrifying as that war was, with poison gas and tanks and bombs, the scope of it pales in comparison to what a worldwide war would look like today, with not only the physical attacks on front lines but the attacks on electronic infrastructure, interfering with crucial international trade in food stocks and energy, and the looming crises linked to climate change that will intensify both conflict and tragedies.
The Russians are blaming the UK and/or the United States, Sweden says it found traces of Russian explosives, and who knows who else might just have it in for Germany, which is the most immediately affected nation. It isn’t good news regardless of how you slice your pizza.
Stranger
Africa had little choice, being mostly still part of European empires. The crucial difference was the extent to which both sides were able/forced/willing to operate there. There was combat in East Africa in WW1 and in North Africa in WW2 - and African troops did serve in European forces.
As for future probabilities, when climate change really starts to make more areas of the world uninhabitable, then we may well find ourselves in a “war of all against all”.
Does WW3 have to be a kinetic war like the two previous? Is economic war not war? Proxy war? Even phony war? Depending what you would consider “war” one could argue you are in WW3 right now. I mean you have Western powers funneling massive amounts of weapons and money to a proxy to kill Russians on a battlefield, while waging economic war against the Russian state. At the same time you have much of the world, China/India/Brazil/Saudia Arabia sort of splintering off and supporting Russia in their own way, or in the least not supporting the Western efforts to degrade Russia. And at the same time you have cyber, economic, technological, and information war with a up and coming peer competitor in China. I mean there are many fronts right now facing the West. Wouldn’t the dollar losing its status as reserve currency be a major blow to US economic and strategic interest? An economic nuclear bomb?
I dont think WW3 has to be nuclear or conventional kinetic warfare on the battlefield as the fronts to fight on are numerous. Why would anyone want to fight the US military might directly anyway? Asymmetrically is where I think most of these revisionist states see they have any sort of advantage.
Yes.
No.
No.
No.
War is war, “Economic” war and the rest are ways to call power struggles that are not really war.
Even if an non kinetic asymmetrical action gets you the same result as what you might consider “war”?
I mean Clausewitz defined war as politics by other means, Sun Tzu considered flawless victory to be speedy and without bloodshed. War to these two authorities was bending your opponent to your will. I dunno if they would agree “war” is condensed strictly down to kinetic fighting.
All those other ‘wars’ lead to ‘kinetic war’ if the countries affected feel enough pain. Oil embargoes of Japan of the 1930’s led directly to Pearl Harbor. ‘Phony’ wars are usually what take place while one side or both rapidly prepare to fight a real one. As Will Rogers said, “The art of diplomacy is saying, ‘nice doggy’ until you can find a stick.”
And once total war begins, it can be nearly impossible to stop until one side is so crushed it can’t continue the fight. It’s getting harder in the technological era to fight to a stalemate like WWI. Our weapons reach behind enemy lines and across the globe, allowing warfare to continue even when fronts of battle are stalled.
Yes, even then, words have meanings.
NATO, Israel, Australia, Japan, South Korea, India on one side
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan etc on the other side.
No idea how Latin America, Africa or the rest of the middle east would divvy up. But I assume most of Southeast asia would be on the anti-China side. I’m assuming if Israel joined the NATO side that a lot of middle eastern nations would join the China side. But the US has a lot of ties to that area too, so who knows.