It’s no surprise that there is a considerable amount of talk these days of World War III due to the Russian/Ukrainian conflict. It has also been alluded to when speaking of sanctions on Iran if they continue with a nuclear program (which they are legally allowed to pursue). The truth of the matter is that World War III began on September 11, 2001.
Putting aside the fact that Nostradamus predicted World War III (or Orson Welles did in his 1984 HBO program Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow) there is considerable evidence that dictates “yes” we are living in an age of global conflict.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on October 7th, 2001 it did so with its partner the United Kingdom as well as the support of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which now includes 28 nation-states.
Propagandized as “Operation Enduring Freedom” and meant initially as an operation to eradicate supposed Al Qaeda terrorist training camps, Operation Enduring Freedom has turned into the one of the longest conflicts in United States history.
Consider that World War I lasted a mere 4 years by comparison while World War II lasted but two years longer for a combined length of 10 years. Ten years for two world wars to begin and end, yet the Americans find themselves in Afghanistan for 13 years now. The plan is to remove all U.S. troops by the end of the current president’s administration. Yet does the U.S. ever really “pull-out”? A cursory look at a map depicting military bases in Germany & Japan sheds doubt on whether the U.S. will actually leave Afghanistan at all.
Afghanistan became part of a growing theater of operations given the very colorful name of “War on Terror”. This War on Terror included the Iraq war, also given a colorful propagandized name of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and included drone attacks in Yemen. These operations, unlike the Afghan conflict were not sanctioned by the international community nor by the U.S. people’s own constitution leading some to deem the war as “illegal”.
Since 9/11 we have seen a near global economic collapse and an “Arab Spring” of populist revolutions in the Middle-East. Whether there is any correlation between these two events and 9/11 remains to be seen.
The Arab Spring, which began in December 2010 in Tunisia spread East to the Levant region and West to the Maghreb region with varying effects. During this time various Arab leaders were removed from office such as Hosni Mubarak ( and later his successor) as well as the notorious Mumwar Qadafi who was executed in his own streets by his own people after being found in a hole and sodomized.
The affects of the Arab Spring are ongoing, best typified in the Syrian conflict where Sunni separatist battle the Shiite backed President Assad. All in all, approximately 20 nations were directly involved with a significant Arab uprising that continues today.
As if the Middle-East was not enough of a powder-keg of violence, we now see in the last few months Russian becoming increasing more aggressive towards their neighbors and former satellite state, the Ukraine. A recent downing of a civilian jet-liner has increased tensions making it quite possibly the RMS Lusitania of it’s day.
Between the NATO assault on Afghanistan and the Arab Spring alone there are close to 50 nations involved, but wars frequently spill over to other regions and many a nation has been the victim of terrorism, usually at the hands of Islamic extremists. Pakistan has become a point of contention for the “housing” of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda head; as well as for the U.S.’s illegal use of drones in the nation killing 3 innocent victims for every 7 killed by a drone strike. Pakistan’s neighbor has also felt the horror of terrorism during the Mumbai Hotel attacks of 2008.
With the number of nations involved in what seems to be a related theater of war, it is not a stretch of the imagination to say “yes” we are living in an age of global conflict unseen before on this planet.
Critics will say that it is not a world war because the casualties do not make it so, yet high estimates of the Iraq war point to the numbers of dead being as high as 1,000,000. What’s more disconcerting is that since the U.S. pull-out from Iraq a new group has formed called ISIS or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS, said to be worst then Al Qaeda an disavowed by the group itself, continues to bring-up the tally of the dead in Iraq while the international community seems unwilling to act…as in the case of Gaza.
Adding further fuel to this global fire is the near five decade illegal occupation of Palestine by the Zionist run Likud party of Israel, run by its war-mongering prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Despite numerous human rights abuses, the international community seems paralyzed to act against the Zionist take-over of the Gaza strip.
So while no nuclear conflict has unfolded (yet, the day is still young) the number of nations intertwined and involved in some sort of conflict is significant. As the lengths of these conflicts wax on we will see more deaths, perhaps on a greater scale.
The number of casualties may not equal those of the past world wars, but the number of nations involved as well as the duration of this War on Terror seems to point to a greater conflict, a global conflict, a world war. World War III.
