When will World War 3 happen and what will the sides be?
I think it was 9/11/2001 and “Everybody vs. Taliban”. Sure, not everybody sent troops, or lifted fingers, but the US did actually gather large chunks of the planet as nominal allies in that conflict.
2012, the armies of God and Satan.
Be rapture ready!
Serious answer; who knows. Depends what you define as a ‘world war’ these days, some classified the Cold War as WWIII due to the amount of wars-by-proxy.
But if that qualifies, wouldn’t it be at least WW IV? Considering the first Gulf War?
I seriously doubt there will ever be another world war. There might be some nasty regional wars that have world consequences (say, between India and Pakistan or in the ME), but I don’t think we’ll ever again see a global conflict between superpowers. At least, we won’t see one while the US remains the only global military hyper-power…
No, even if that happens I just don’t see the remaining military powers fighting directly head to head. The problem is that nuclear weapons pretty much preclude the kinds of titanic struggles of WWI and WWII because the consequences of loosing them are so…epic. Biblical. Whatever.
-XT
I dunno - I don’t recall that many countries bothering to declare their support back then, but perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention.
About 37 countries sent troops as part of the coalition, and more provided financial and other support.
I’ll agree with Otto von Bismark, who predicted World War would start over “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.”
Is it still the consensus that, regardless of how WWIII happens, WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones?
That’s not a world war, that’s a gang rape ;).
World wars were *world *wars : almost every single country took part in them and/or was directly affected by them in one way or the other. There was fighting across the globe.
However Asia, Russia, South America, the majority of the Middle East, Africa : none of these had anything to do with the Gulf War, nor were they impacted by it overly much. That’s not a world war.
I would opine that WW3 won’t happen, at least not in the foreseeable future, simply because there are no more colonial empires, nor major and more or less monolithic “blocs” of countries aligned on the same goals.
Yeah, but Iraq was wasking for it, dressing all slutty like that.
Also, those examples are fucking stupid. They weren’t world wars by any stretch of the imagination. In World War II there was fighting in Europe everywhere, in North Africa, and in East Asia.
Trying to claim that the recent wars the US has engaged in were world wars because a bunch of countries said, “As long as your war doesn’t really affect us, we support it.”, is just silly.
I don’t believe that was ever a consensus. It was just a quote by Albert Einstein that achieved some degree of popularity.
Protracted “Total War” conflicts of the kind that are typified by WWI and WWII really are a thing of the past, largely because there is typically such a disparity between one side and another that a war that involves a major superpower can’t be effectively waged; witness how disastrous both Gulf Wars were to the instigator (and how damaging they’ve been to the invading parties during occupation). The Cold War could really be said to be WWIII; two nations, facing off but via proxy, and pretty much indifferent to the suffering of resident populations.
I’d be hard pressed to call the current campaign against a bunch of religious fanatics a “world war” in any sense. Asymmetric warfare isn’t just a buzzword; it is the only effective way to strike at a major military power, but it is incapable of winning ground. There is nothing novel about this; the Algerians, the Vietnamese, and the Irish have engaged in it very effectively, in terms of repelling an invading or occupying force, but it’s not an effective way to increase influence, which is the purpose of a globe-spanning “world war”. And our response–particularly our reluctance to engage in “total war” tactics like carpet bombing of civilian populations–doesn’t hallmark it as a major war effort. Indeed, one could argue that the political decision-makers are so reluctant to “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” that it is hardly a war at all, much to the lament of soldiers that are often prohibited from effective warfighting by political hamstrings.
Stranger
We already had WW3, aka the Cold War.
World War III has been going on for more than a decade, although it’s heated up in the last several years. It’s cyberwarfare. The latest news item about Google and China is part of a much deeper cyberwar between the US and China.
Nobody dates the start of the First World War from the beginning of the dreadnought race. WWIII never happened. Or. hasn’t, yet.
The short answer to the OP is “Nobody knows.” Consider this; who at the end of the 30 Years’ War could have even begun to imagine the Napoelonic Wars? Who at the end of the Napoleonic Wars could have foreseen World War I?
What about the Napoleonic wars? Count that, with fighting on four continents, and WWII gets promoted to WWIII.
You could argue that the Seven Years War also with fighting on four continents was the first world war.
What about the Seven Years’ War before that?
"The war pitted Prussia and Britain and a coalition of smaller German states against an alliance consisting of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony. Russia temporarily changed sides in the later stages of the war. Portugal (on the side of Great Britain) and Spain (on the side of France) entered the conflict later, and a force from the neutral Dutch Republic was attacked in India.
Fighting between Britain, France, and their respective allies in North America had broken out in 1754, two years before the general conflict, as part of an Imperial rivalry. The fighting in North America is a separate war, the French and Indian War."
Really, one might consider WWI, WWII, the Cold War and the various proxy wars up until the fall of the Berlin Wall as one comprehensive war. It was essentially a 70 year conflict to decide whether Democracy, Facism or Communism would take over from the imperialist monarchies that dominated the world up until that point.
Modern conflicts are between the technologically advanced and increasingly interconnected modern world and backward, theocratic and tribal regions in the Middle East and Africa who nontheless have access to critical resources. In a sense, the latest “World War” started with 9/11. Instead of nations mobilizing great armies to battle around the globe, this war consists of low level conflicts, intelligence and police actions and occassional terrorist attacks. It is a battle of global networks for influence, not control of traditional national borders.
This began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.