World War III
World War III (abbreviated WWIII), or the Third World War, is a term used to describe a hypothetical conflict on the scale of World War I and World War II, or even larger, such as a nuclear holocaust. Most usages of the term assume the use of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. On rare occasions, actual events, such as the Cold War or the War on Terror, are referred to as World War III.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and the USSR was considered feasible. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is generally thought to be the historical point at which the risk of World War III was closest. Other potential starts have included the following:
Historical close calls
19501953 Korean War. General MacArthur planned to invade and bomb China to eliminate the threat of communism in eastern Asia.
July 26, 1956 March, 1957 Suez Crisis: The conflict pitted Egypt against an alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Israel. When the USSR threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson feared a larger war and persuaded the British and French to withdraw. The Eisenhower administration, also fearing a wider war, had applied pressure to the United Kingdom to withdraw, including a threat to create a currency crisis by dumping US holdings of British debt. Lester B. Pearson later received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts towards peace.
October 27, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: The conflict pitted the United States against an alliance between the USSR and Cuba. The USSR was attempting to place several launch sites in Cuba in response to the United States installation of missiles in Turkey. The United States response included dispersal of Strategic Air Command bombers to civilian airfields around the United States and war games in which the United States Marine Corps landed against a dictator named "ORTSAC" (Castro spelt backwards). For a brief while, the U.S. military went to DEFCON 3, while SAC went to DEFCON 2. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 (piloted by Rudolph Anderson) was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 over Russia was almost intercepted when it strayed over Siberia, after Curtis LeMay (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff) had neglected to enforce Presidential orders to suspend all overflights. See also: Vasily Arkhipov.
October 24, 1973 Yom Kippur War: As the Yom Kippur War was winding down, a Soviet threat to intervene on Egypt's behalf caused the United States to go to DEFCON 3.
November 9, 1979 False "Soviet First Strike" Alarm: The US made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realized that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator inside the NORAD facility at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes in the future. The 1983 film, WarGames, was inspired by an article detailing this and the following event.
September 26, 1983 False "US First Strike" Alarm: Soviet early warning systems showed that a US ICBM attack had been launched. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, in command of the monitoring facility, correctly interpreted the warnings as a computer error and did not notify his superiors, even though this was against standing orders and ultimately resulted in serious career consequences for Petrov.
November 1983 Exercise Able Archer: The USSR mistook a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as a fake cover for a NATO attack and subsequently raised its nuclear alert level. It was not until afterwards that the US realized how close it had come to nuclear war. At the time of the exercise the Soviet Politburo was without a healthy functioning head due to the failing health of then leader Yuri Andropov, which is thought to have been one of the contributing factors to the Soviet concern over the exercise.
April 15, 1986 - Libya launched two Scud ballistic missiles towards Italy in retaliation of American bombings. The missiles landed in the sea, the first two kilometers northwest and the second two kilometers southeast of Lampedusa.
January 25, 1995 Norwegian Rocket Incident: A Norwegian missile launch for scientific research was detected from Andψya Rocket Range and thought to be an attack on Russia, launched from a submarine five minutes away from Moscow. Norway had notified the world that it would be making the launch, but the Russian Defense Ministry had neglected to notify those monitoring Russia's nuclear defense systems.
Difficulty in determining a "World War"
The term "World War" has only been officially used once during a conflict, and that was World War II. The first World War was known as the "Great War" rather than the "World War"; in the aftermath it was called the "World War" (although the Germans called it a Weltkrieg, or "World War", throughout). Therefore, it may take years before another major time of tension, such as the Cold War or the current War on Terror could be officially recognized as a World War III (or if both are the case, World War III and World War IV). It should also be noted that serious wars, before and after 1914 and 1918 are not included as part of World War I despite international attention, such as the Balkan wars from 1912 to 1913 and the Soviet-Polish War from 1919 to 1921. The same is the case for World War II, as previous serious conflicts in the world were occurring from 1931 to 1939 such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and later China, the Spanish Civil War, the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss), and the occupation of Czechoslovakia, but these events are not considered part of World War II, but only a prelude, despite the severe political instability. Therefore, determining a specific point of where a world war begins is difficult, but usually occurs when a conflict affects large areas of the world, especially through alliances.
During a press conference soon after the start of the 1991 Gulf War, King Hussein of Jordan directly referred to the conflict between the United States and its coalition of allies against Iraq as "the Third World War" but there was no indication of any other world leaders accepting the definition.
Also, the first two World Wars were characteristically total wars involving war economy, massive mobilization, food rationing and tremendous casualties on both sides. World War III might thus be expected to follow that pattern. If so, this would rule out the Cold War and the War on Terror as candidates for the "distinction".
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