Is World War III inevitable?

A world war is created when large political powers fight for control of resources, territory or influence. The fighting state is triggered by lack of willingness to compromise, and the willingness to compromise is a function of the relative power of the adversaries.

The “cold war” did not deteriorate into a real war because the US and the USSR felt matched in power, but several small wars-by-proxy were waged when one side felt achievement through force is possible: in Afghanistan, for example, the Soviets invaded expecting low opposition, resulting in the US funding of the Mujahadin/Taliban. A war in Europe between NATO and the USSR didn’t break because it was deemed un-win-able.

The second and first world wars were a result of one block expecting an easy win. The commanders of the Imperial German army in WW 1 expected to be in Paris within few weeks.

In today’s world, the strengthening of new blocks along with their armies, such as the Chinese army, the resurgent Russian army, and so forth, is accompanied with a dwindling and overstretched US army, with reduced NATO support and no European army whatsoever. It is therefore to be expected that the rising blocks will consider military success to be more likely, resulting in applying military power on other powers.

You’re assuming that the world is ready to work together and utilize our resources. I wish that were true, but only a blind man could see that in today society! There is so much terrorism and disagreement among countries. Arguments between dictatorship, democracy, communism, and even if the country leaders got along, would the civilians of each group accept it, or would their be revolutions? We are not ready to “join hands, share ideas and work together”. As much as we all know it’d be the ideal state for the world, we’re not there, which means your theory as to why it won’t happen also is not there. So it doesnt exist. We’re still at a large threat for WWIII

Mutual defence pacts may deter one country from attacking the other, but if large blocks of pacts are facing each-other, the result is the opposite: the deterrence is non-existent due to the equality in block sizes, while any hostility between two members of different blocks will pull the other members in, by the pull of their mutual defence obligation.

WW II started in this way exactly: the invasion of Germany into Poland triggered the mutual defence pact of Poland, Britain and France, which entered the war and forced Germany’s allys (Italy and Japan) to also declare war. In WW I pacts also played a role in the deterioration to a world war.

We are now living in a world of abundant resources, but oil is reaching the peak of production, and so are other resources. Here lies the reason why WW3 is not only possible, but inevitable: throughout history, when any nation had to deal with severe reduction in available resources, the choice between reducing living standards to taking the resources by force was always decided toward the second option – war.

It is often a lack of information (or else too much information that cant be processed) that causes wars. If one nation is ignorant of another nation there is much more likely to be diplomatic misunderstandings, a power may misjudge its or its opponents strength, the intention of other leaders etc. Any of these things can cause events to spin out of the control of leaders and lead towards conflict. As even relatively minor events such the assassination of Franz Joseph can change the situation rapidly, or be taken up by a nationalistic public it is relatively easy to get into a war that was not intended by either side due to lack of information. As we can never ensure prefect knowledge there is always the possibility that there will be another world war. The cold war was relatively stable after the Cuban missile crisis because there was a phone line between the two leaders and there were only two nations that could spark off a global war meaning that both sides had good knowledge of who they were dealing with, both in terms of the opposing country, and its leaders. With the world moving in a more multipolar direction this is no longer possible. As the question asks is a third world war inevitable and does not set a time limit I would have to say yes, at some point there will be a information or communication breakdown that will cause a war that will become a third world war… no saying how long before this happens though.

There is no pact between the blocks that matter and that could possibly start a world war. Europe is at odds with Russia over resources and the political fate of the states between the EU and Russia. The US is at odds with Iran, North Korea, and possibly China. There are more examples of oposing blocks without any pacts.

Pacts like this were created to try and stop war 100 years ago and look where we ended up. WW1

All globalization has done is to shift the view of the “other” into larger bodies. Instead of an Englishman seeing a German is the “other”, we now have a Muslim seeing a European as the “other”, and vice versa. The reason for that is that people always feel closer to people they have meaningful contact with, not to people they once saw on a trip.

Besides, the people’s support for war is mostly an issue in the democratic world. Of the large political blocks today, we have China, Russia, the Muslim world and large parts of Africa who are ruled by people who could care less about the will of the people – but would have to be dead in order to achieve that. Additionally, the people in most of these blocks are much poorer than in the West, therefore travel less and even interact less through the Internet. So even if the West won’t be starting the war, it may still happen.