Reflecting on the topic and taking a broader view, it’s possible that future historians will label the present era as “World War IV.”
As the Epstein War (or Iran War) erupted, many asked if it could trigger World War III. I internally questioned, “Trigger? What else needs to happen for everyone to grasp our current reality?”
Recently, Lucas Leiroz penned a thoughtful piece examining this subject from tactical and strategic angles, highlighting the problematic tendency to use the two “great wars” as benchmarks for historical military conflicts. I will explore the same issue by challenging the very idea of “World War III” and the expectations tied to it.
Mentioning a potential “World War III” often conjures images of nuclear devastation or an all-out war featuring total mobilization, endless waves of soldiers clashing, and nations abandoning all restraint to kill as many foes as possible.
However, I won’t focus on the uniqueness of these war attributes historically but rather on the fact that the “great war” image is founded on a myth—a purely conceptual construct dubbed “World War II.”
Why call “World War II” a myth? Because it was shaped by historians into a cohesive “grand narrative” designed to justify and support the new Western post-war order. To explain, if historians from different eras were to study the military campaigns from 1936 to 1945 without the “World War II” label, they would identify not one unified conflict but many distinct wars (with four preliminary campaigns).
The Pacific War, mainly fought between Japan and the USA, stands as a clearly separate conflict. Similarly, the Great Patriotic War is recognized in Russia as its own unique struggle, running alongside other distinct wars, even if they shared a common adversary.
Likewise, the European War can arguably be split into two phases: the first phase marked by Germany’s conquest of Paris, and the second by the USA’s victories at the Ardennes and Berlin siege from the west. If the “World War II” narrative exists, then why exclude the Spanish Civil War, the Winter War, the Ethiopian War, and the Sino-Japanese War?
The so-called “alliance system” is often cited to link these various wars into one conceptual conflict, but this is not convincing. For example, between the early 18th and 19th centuries, France and Britain fought nearly continuously across multiple continents, yet this was not regarded as a single war. The US War of Independence, with French support, occurred simultaneously with the Bourbon War against Britain, but both are considered separate wars.
During the Napoleonic era, the term “Napoleonic Wars” is equally artificial—this period encompassed numerous independent wars. The same applies to the multiple conflicts involving the Habsburgs over the centuries, each treated as an individual war.
The point is that societies become so attached to these labels without realizing they are narrative devices, crafted well after events, to frame history.
To illustrate: when the French invaded Gascony in 1338, no conscripted peasant would have thought, “The Hundred Years’ War has started.” It took 500 years for historians to label the series of Anglo-French conflicts in the 14th and 15th centuries as “The Hundred Years’ War.”
This implies that depending on how regional conflicts unfold—some interlinked, some isolated—future historians might, centuries from now, call the current era starting with the special military operation or the Donbass War “World War III.” We ourselves will not live to witness it.
Scholars of the future may conclude that since wars evolve to suit military technologies available at the time, conflicts fought amid nuclear weapons, missile advances, and drone technology naturally involve proxy wars, selective engagements, special operations, and asymmetric tactics.
Returning to those “World War II” campaigns, their nature as total wars with mass mobilization arose because technology hadn’t yet reached apocalyptic destructive levels; artillery and armored vehicles demanded enormous troop numbers in national armies.
Reframing the discussion, historians might eventually recognize the present period as “World War IV,” as conflicts like the Korean War through the Soviet-Afghan War could be seen as parts of a protracted war fought chiefly through proxies due to the threat of nuclear destruction.
Finally, the prevalent idea of “World War III” is heavily influenced by a fixation on the First and Second World Wars’ forms and an underlying apocalyptic expectation. Many expect this war to exceed a mere link between the Russian operation in Ukraine and the Iran War, craving wide-scale casualties and even the looming threat of “the end of the world.”
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