Has World War III already begun?

The latest strikes between Israel and Iran point toward the spread of global conflict. Should it be considered the start of a new World War? Or have we been in one and not recognized it?

Albert Einstein is quoted to have said that he didn’t know what weapons humanity would use to fight World War III, but he knew that World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. This was following the development and use of atomic bombs against Japan to bring World War II to an end with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

It didn’t take long before nations were all rushing in the decades since to get the bomb, with at least 10 confirmed nations as members of the Nuclear club. America might have had it first, but then the Soviet Union had one to go along with Britain and France’s bombs, then others began to make sure that if attacked, no one gets out alive. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel (they won’t say so for sure, but c’mon…) and North Korea are all part of a small club that could cause global destruction with the launch of a single missile at the wrong time.

Despite all that, somehow the nations of the world have kept from destroying each other with artificial suns throughout the past decades. Now the dream of peace is becoming a nightmare of an ugly war.

Last week, Israel began an air operation against Iran, deciding that a unilateral strike against top commanders, nuclear scientists and the rogue nation’s nuclear program was warranted as a means to ensure that the Islamic Republic never has a chance to obtain atomic weapons. The aftermath of those strikes have seen both nations continue over the past four days to trade missile strikes, with Iran sending hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones toward Tel Aviv, Haifa and other parts of Israel in retaliation for the bombings.

The Israelis have increased their bombing tempo daily as well, with their Air Force dominating the skies over western Iran on missions to take out everything from missile launchers to additional commanders as Tehran is now a target. Reports from over the weekend even suggested that the Ayatollah was a potential target as well – one that President Donald Trump decided would be a bad idea to hit, allegedly. The President has denied those claims made by Israeli and sources unnamed in the White House.

Israel’s war really began with the October 2023 attack by Hamas on civilians, with the capture of innocents as hostages and the murder of hundreds of people in communities and even at a concert. The operation against Gaza and Hamas has continued since, with strikes and attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well, with the most widely covered example including the use of pre-sabotaged pagers and electronic devices which were used to kill dozens of the terrorist organization’s leadership in 2024. During this time too, the Houthis in Yemen have continued to attack Israel, shipping along the Arabian and Red Seas, and helped ensure that the Middle East remains a tinderbox ready to explode at any time.

The explosion finally happened as Iran – who had traded attacks with Israel previously after strikes and counter-strikes – continues to lob missiles into civilian areas, and Israel is responding (somewhat) in kind with additional attacks on the military infrastructure holding the Iranian regime together. Events are spiraling out of control, and fast.

Meanwhile several thousands of miles away on the eastern front of Ukraine, a war that began in 2022 has continued and escalating as the gloves are just about completely off on both sides of the war. Russia might call it a Special Military Operation since it began with the late February invasion that failed to topple Ukraine’s government and people, but it is a full-scale war. The Russians have been bombing and destroying everything in their path throughout the conflict, and Ukraine has been responding in kind with their own operations ensuring that their neighbor doesn’t leave unscathed – sinking large portions of the Russian Black Fleet, damaging the bridge connecting Crimea with Russia several times, and most recently the drone attacks on air bases spanning multiple time zones in a coordinated, singular event the likes of which have not happened in decades.

Russia’s once-believed superpower status is now null and void, especially after the Ukrainian’s version of the CIA carried out Operation Spider’s Web, knocking out a chunk of the old USSR bomber fleet and newer Russian models with drones in an attack that included airbases thousands of miles from the front line. The two sides have since traded missile and drone attacks while Russia continues to push against the entrenched defenses of Ukraine’s army, making yards of progress at a time and maybe a few miles in a month. It is warfare like the world hasn’t seen before: old style defenses combined with technological breakthroughs making every moment spent on a battlefield dangerous for the foot soldier all the way up to the four-star generals.

Amid all of the turmoil of the past years, there have been conflicts aplenty all across the globe. Fighting in East Africa in the Sahel, in Central Africa a decades-long struggle continues in The Congo, and Somalia and Kenya could be warring at anytime over border conflicts. Ethiopia and Eritrea are right next door to that, also battling over land and resources. The continued multi-sided Civil War rages onward in Myanmar, and Syrian rebels recently finished toppling the regime of Bashar Al-Assad last year after decades of the Assad family’s cruel and torturous rule. Cartels continue to operate in Mexico, spreading violence and fear. Venezuela is still fighting with their revolutionaries, and have been poised to start a war with neighboring Guyana over territorial claims that just so happen to coincide with mineral discoveries.

In recent weeks, India and Pakistan – nuclear powers to boot – began trading fire via their air and ground forces after a Pakistani radical Islamic terrorist group in the Kashmir massacred a number of ethnic Indians. Tensions remain high, but the two neighbors stopped trying to destroy each other for the moment.

There’s continued tensions and (so far as of this writing) mainly non-destructive skirmishes in the South China Sea between the People’s Republic of China’s Naval forces (and those essentially part of the “Coast Guard” but are really modified fishing boats) and the nations of Vietnam and the Philippines over territorial waters. Taiwan remains under constant threat from their mainland cousins who wish to retake the large island they claim is theirs.

Conflict is even here at home, where examples abound over the past decade as protesters clash with law enforcement, individuals undertake mass shootings or use anything they can as a weapon to cause harm, and then there’s the horrible events of January 6th, 2021 too. Political assassinations (and serious attempts) are growing at an alarming rate.

Add to all of this the growing political divisions domestically and internationally. Longtime allies are now looking at the United States backing away from global leadership. European leaders are running to rebuild their military forces to avoid being caught without defense since they can no longer rely on Americans to come to their aid if attacks occur. Here at home, the two parties easily able to agree on a common foe in Communism for decades prior to the Berlin Wall tumbling down are more divided on their own

All of this begs the question: have the combined battles across the globe constituted a new World War?

Coming Soon: Conflict

It is on the minds of regular people and policymakers alike, who believe that the conditions for global conflict have already been reached and World War is underway. Maybe it isn’t as massive as those in years past when nations threw their armies against each other to determine who might rule on a global stage. The only true winner in those two conflicts? The United States.

Among those who believe we are already at war is UK defense advisor Fiona Hill, who was mentioned by The Guardian in May having claimed the world is already in the midst of a new World War, it just hasn’t recognized what it is. European leaders decrying the foreign policy moves of President Donald Trump in pulling back from its posture of arming Ukraine as a sign that America will break its promise to NATO, and might even leave. YouGov UK polling from major nations in Europe and the US have a good percentage of those questioned believing that war is imminent within the next five to ten years.

The weekend attacks between Israel and Iran are just another indicator the growing conflict that threatens to engulf the world at-large if it continues unchecked. Especially as President Trump said there was potential for the United States to enter the campaign on the side of Israel as the bombs were falling on Tehran and Tel Aviv alike.

All of these incidents are adding up as nations, organizations and even private military contractors are marching off toward an inevitable clash and without any clear alliances of power being drawn on any particular sides of future conflicts. The war-torn areas of Eastern Europe or the Middle East for the moment remain regional problems that Americans are willing to ignore until they are forced to reckon with what is abundantly clear: no one is prepared for a World War, even if it is already happening.

President Trump seems to have decided on Tuesday to speed up the potential American involvement in the war – ignoring the evidence the CIA previously presented that Iran was “years away from the bomb” and posting on social media that if the US wanted, we could “take out the Ayatollah” and knew where he was, and demanded “unconditional surrender.” (How very Ulysses S. Grant of him…)

All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be in place. But why won’t anyone look at the whole and recognize the picture in front of us?

Even if no one wants to call it what it is yet, all the elements for global-scale conflict are there for anyone to see. Multiple theaters of battle are happening at the same time across a large area of the globe. Nations are spending billions of dollars to increase defense spending on new technology previously nonexistent or in infant stages of development before the war began and is now becoming commonplace to find on battlefields. Could anyone imagine AI piloted drones taking out dozens of Russian bombers in a coordinated attack 10 years ago? Now it seems like just a drop in the bucket of what is possible with technology on the killing fields of Eastern Europe.

Under the Trump administration, the United States may be more selective about where it chooses to deploy the military – especially ground forces – following the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan in 2021. Instead we send armaments and some limited intelligence support to ensure that Ukraine stays alive in the war, but has been the total sum of where the U.S. has been and is willing to get involved in the battle against Russia.

Allowing Putin and its allies to claim the war is over America’s dominance over the global stage, and how it has abused the world in the decades since the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is also about Nazis too, if you believe the Big Bad Red Bear’s propaganda machine.

The beginning of something new is definitely been underway, but is it enough to call it a World War? Or are these regional conflicts without real connection, and should be treated as such?

A Globe Already on Fire

If looking at the whole of the world over the past decades, humanity has collectively been destined to get to this point. Every twist and turn in this latest conflict’s origins were rooted in the downfall of the USSR. As America lost an enemy it could focus its ire, and many of the nations reliant on the former Soviet block began to crumble and fall apart, control over the larger tensions that tend to drive nations and peoples into violence was growing fast.

Wars began to spark again as old territorial foes found new reason to fight one another in the Balkans, in Africa and the Middle East, and across Latin America. The growing fears over Islamic terrorist attacks in the late 1990s culminated with the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 that begat the Global War on Terror. Since then, Americans have been on battlefields large and small in fighting insurgencies and terrorist organizations, nations and individuals alike.

We’ve seen groups like the Islamic State rise and then fall, and rise again in the battles over hearts and minds that end with both sides trading bombs and bullets. Amid the War on Terror and its destabilizing impact on a large swath of the globe, whole new areas of Africa are fighting on tribal and national lines in nearly every corner of the continent. Partisan violence has already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths on every continent.

Sides have been forming now for some time, with alliances like NATO growing, and then finding itself at a crossroads thanks to new foreign policy dictates of the Trump administration. The BRICS alliance seeks to unseat the power of Western economies and bring about the downfall of the Dollar as the de facto global currency.

Historical arguments could be made from the time the second plane hit the Twin Towers more than two decades ago, America has been in the midst of its own World War and the rest of the nations around the globe are finally catching up to what has already been underway.

Others could argue that the real war hasn’t started yet, and only large-scale conflicts between nations, or against rebellions or terrorist organizations shouldn’t count since the sheer scale of the warfare isn’t truly global. Clear sides haven’t been taken, and only a portion of the population is in any real danger in specific spots across the planet.

Recent events have proven that no one is safe when a determined foe is willing to find a way to strike deep into the heart of a country and spread destruction and fear to everyone – combatants and civilians alike.

If that isn’t enough evidence to argue that World War has been underway in one form or another, here’s something to consider: in one form or another, some two dozen of the 195 recognized nations in the world are in conflict in one form or another. Look right next door to the United States in Mexico and just across the Gulf in Haiti. The list includes most of Africa, much of South Asia, a good portion of the Middle East is involved in some form of warfare, and even in tropical paradises in the South Pacific and Indonesia have internal struggles underway.

What is the line between true warfare and minor conflicts or skirmishes? Is it required that a World War include large nations battling it out? Based on what I’ve found so far, apparently it is based more so on the number of people killed on either side. The larger the number, the more it is considered a “war” in a collective sense. How many people have to die before it is, say, a World War?

The first World War saw 15 to 24 million deaths between those in uniform and civilians, and the second saw more than 60 million killed worldwide all together.

However, the intervention of modern medicine should be taken into account when it comes to survival of battlefield wounds. Where a soldier in World War II might have died before being seen by trained medical personnel in field hospitals due to a variety of factors, the advancements made through Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere have increased survival rates for wartime casualties. These advancements have proven to ensure that we have more veterans returning home instead of flag-draped coffins, to the point where over 20 years in Afghanistan (where traditionally empires have gone to die) US personnel who died never topped 2,500 killed and only 20,769 wounded in action. What should have been a bloodbath for US Forces in Iraq was compared to World War II a mere bruising when it comes to statistical evidence. Just over 4,400 died in Iraq and just shy of 32,000 were wounded.

Compare that to over 50,000 lost over 20 years in Vietnam, and the hundreds of thousands of men who came home maimed in the aftermath of that horrible “police action.” Or the hundreds of thousands lost in World War II in two theaters of combat, and the hundreds of thousands who died in combat and disease in World War I, which included the “Spanish Flu” that killed millions across the globe within the span of a couple of years. (Doesn’t that feel familiar?)

The factor of death toll has greatly decreased as warfare has evolved alongside lifesaving measures in western societies, thus its impact has to be measured at least in the calculus of combat toward determining whether America has already been in a World War of sorts. After all, the casualties in Iraq have been estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and thousands more insurgents – not including the death toll suffered by the invasion in the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard. The story is a similar one in Afghanistan, where at least 200,000 combined died over 20 years of conflict in the nation or in the border regions in Pakistan. More than 45,000 of those were civilians.

Civilian and combatant deaths (at least in Western nations) have dropped significantly over the past decades, bringing the human cost of warfare down. A variety of reasons exist for this fact (weaponry that is more precise, change in tactics and targets, etc.) but it does suggest that as conflicts evolve over time, so should our thinking about them as well. All of this is to say: relying solely on statistics to help define any particular subject – historical or otherwise – has lost its meaning in a world full of datapoints that are constantly changing.

Another area we have to add to our current situation of global warfare: it is no longer confined to a physical space. Cyberwarfare will come into play at some point in the immediate future, and we must prepare for our digital lives to be interrupted. Communications rule the world more so than machinery, thus attacks on this infrastructure will be the most effective than any other. This wasn’t the case in conflicts past – and has already been employed by all sides toward each other. It actually started with Iran’s nuclear program, as Stuxnet was originally designed and deployed by the west to interrupt the Iranian centrifuges producing refined uranium to turn into plutonium and build weapons.

This factor alone should be one of the new leading reasons why we should classify the conflict we’ve lived through for more than two decades now as a World War. It might not be remembered as such by history books when it comes down to it, but it matters.

One last thought before I move on: the world has changed significantly in the decades since the past World War, and most of the generation who fought in that war have passed on and are unable to contribute their wisdom on the subject, having lived through total warfare on a global scale. It means we have to find our own way when discussing the current situation.

All of this isn’t without precedent. It almost feels as if all of this has happened before in a way. And it’ll all happen again – a horrible rabbit hole that seems to never have a bottom.

Through the Looking Glass

All this mirrors in a few ways the prelude to the start of the second World War, when Hitler leading the Nazis took over great swaths of Europe essentially unopposed, while an Imperial Japan waged genocide and slaughter across China amid some of the ugliest days of human history in the 1930s. An isolationist and economically depressed West wasn’t prepared for a major war, but it was going to happen after appeasement won the day in Munich after the German takeover of Czechoslovakia was rubber stamped by Britain, unwilling at the time to go to war over the landlocked nation in far-off Central Europe. So the conflict continued to brew, until finally after the pressure boiled over in August 1939.

It wasn’t until the invasion of Poland that Europe’s war began and declarations were officially made. Now the two sides were declared enemies with all the pomp and circumstance of protocol, it was now war in its truest definition. The battles were still confined to what is considered overseas by most here on this side of the Atlantic, and the it wouldn’t truly become World War II in the United States for two more years. It took Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, alongside US and allied bases across the Pacific in a coordinated attack in December 1941 before President Roosevelt declared the 7th a “Date which shall live in infamy.”

Honest truth? All of this was a matter of semantics and not reality that drove whether war is declared or being waged. Conflict is conflict, despite what terminology is used before votes are cast and speeches are made promising destruction of enemies, foreign or domestic. Well before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, America was already deeply involved in the War in Europe through Lend Lease, through patrols and convoy protection duty for England at the time, with tankers and cargo ships being sunk by German submarines within sight of the American coastline at times.

Even through economic warfare and sanctions imposed on Japan as their terror campaign across Manchuria continued well into 1941 and beyond.

The same is happening here and now as leadership looks to avoid being dragged into regional fights not yet deemed by politicians on either side to be “global warfare.” Even though the sides are being picked by “democratic” leadership in Europe, dictatorships in Africa, and autocrats in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang and Beijing. Much like the bad days of the 1930s, sides are forming amid individual national interests. Where is America in all of this?

If Donald Trump has anything to do with it, trying to turn Canada into a 51st state, Greenland into a new American territory, and Mexico into a warzone.

Good historical parallel: land grabs by the Italian dictator Mussolini in North Africa during the 1930s were meant to be the beginning of the new Roman empire, a rebuilding of an ancient global power. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

China spreading its power through economic influence has the same flavor of a greater Asian empire sought by Japan during their terrible takeover of East Asia during the Pacific war. Russia seeking to regain their influence has the same awful tones that were previously pushed by Hitler in prewar Europe, then Stalin afterward as the Iron Curtain fell over half of the continent in the wake of mass destruction.

The pieces of the puzzle were all there at the time, but it took that “dignified” decision-making process that Hollywood makes look so brave and stoic in movies decades later that we are nostalgic for leadership who during their day had no idea if the choices they made to go to war would lead them to victory or defeat. They didn’t have the luxury of looking at what happened as the past as we do today, able to say “World War II was really going on long before it was declared.” Just as we hardly have the luxury of time at all anymore to think through what is happening on a daily basis.

No one can see the forest for the trees in these situations, past or present. Thus even the idea to most that we could be in the midst of a World War without someone telling us that is what it is seems, well, inconceivable to the minds of the masses. But let me tell you from two decades of experience as a reporter and editor of news: just because the talking heads on television or the politicians won’t say something is happening doesn’t mean it isn’t going on in the world. Every day the globe becomes more interconnected, more visually available through millions of videos uploaded to sites like YouTube and TikTok that provide proof positive that global conflict is happening.

Recovering addicts understand the importance of reality more than anyone with their first principle: you must admit you have a problem.

Well, we have a problem: we’ve been in a World War for some time, and it is time everyone get with the program and start acting like it is happening.

Otherwise, we’ll wake up with bombs for breakfast one day and there won’t be any turning back after that point.