WORLD WAR III AND ITS POSSIBILITIES (ePub)

This book is the first volume of the international relations series "Peace, Security and the World" scheduled to be published before 2025, following the complete works of the "Christianity and the World" series published by the author in 2022.These two series of complete works are a summary of the author's decades of research on international relations.
World War III, or WWIII, is the name given to a hypothetical large-scale third World military conflict after World War I and II. Since at least 1941, the expression has been used. Some apply it loosely to limited or minor conflicts, such as the War on Terror or the Cold War. Conversely, others assume that such a conflict would surpass previous world wars in scale and destructive impact.
Because of the development of nuclear weapons by the Manhattan Project, which was used in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima toward the end of World War II, and several nations' subsequent acquisition and deployment of them, the risk of a nuclear apocalypse decimating civilization and life on earth is a recurring theme in World War III speculation. Another important fear is that biological warfare might lead to many victims. It can occur purposefully or inadvertently, such as the unintended release of a biological agent, an unforeseen mutation of an agent, or its adaption to other species after usage. These large-scale cataclysmic occurrences, produced by sophisticated destruction technologies, can leave the earth's surface uninhabitable.
The years 1914-1918 of World War I was regarded as "the war to end [all] wars" before World War II in 1939. World War I was commonly referred to as "The Great War" during the interwar period. It was widely believed that a global conflict of this magnitude would never happen again. The outbreak of World War II dashed hopes that humanity had "outgrown" the need for full-scale world wars.
In 1945, the Cold War began, and with the spread of nuclear weapons technology in the Soviet Union, the possibility of a Third World conflict became more plausible. During the Cold War years, military and civil authorities in many countries anticipated and planned for the possibility of a Third World War. Scenarios included everything from conventional combat to limited or catastrophic nuclear war. Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was devised during the Cold War, according to which an all-out nuclear war would destroy all nations involved.