World War III, also known as the Third World War, is a hypothetical future global conflict subsequent to World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945). It is widely predicted that such a war would involve all of the great powers, like its two predecessors, and the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, thereby surpassing all prior conflicts in scale, devastation, and loss of life.
World War III was initially synonymous with the escalation of the Cold War (1947–1991) into conflict between the US-led Western Bloc and Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, though the United States and the Soviet Union never directly engaged. Since the United States' development and use of nuclear weapons in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the risk of a nuclear apocalypse causing widespread destruction and the potential collapse of modern civilization or human extinction has been central in speculation and fiction about World War III. The Soviet Union's development of nuclear weapons in 1949 spurred the nuclear arms race and was followed by several other countries.
Regional proxy wars, including the Korean War (1950–1953), Vietnam War (1955–1975), and Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), while significant, did not lead to a full-scale global conflict. Such a conflict was planned for by military and civil personnel around the world, with scenarios ranging from conventional warfare to limited or total nuclear warfare. The certainty of escalation from one stage to the next was extensively debated. For example, the Eisenhower administration promulgated a policy of massive retaliation with nuclear forces in response to a minor conventional attack. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of war, the strategic doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which held that a full-scale nuclear war would annihilate all parties, became widely accepted. At the 1985 Geneva summit, U.S. and Soviet leaders first jointly stated "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought". Advocates of deterrence theory hold that nuclear weapons prevent World War III–like great power conflict, while advocates of nuclear disarmament hold that their risks far outweigh this.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, speculation about World War III has shifted toward emerging threats, including terrorism and cyberwarfare. Great power competition has been renewed between the United States, China, and Russia, sometimes termed a Second Cold War. Various conflicts, most significantly the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present), the Middle Eastern crisis (2023–present) which includes the 2026 Iran war, and rising tensions over the status of Taiwan, have been perceived as flashpoints for World War III.
Etymology Time magazine Time magazine was an early adopter, if not originator, of the term "World WarIII". The first usage appears in its 3 November 1941 issue (preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941) under its "National Affairs" section and entitled "World WarIII?" about Nazi refugee Hermann Rauschning, who had just arrived in the United States and his belief that there would be a pause in fighting before Hitler would attempt to invade Great Britain. In its 22 March 1943, issue under its "Foreign News" section, Time reused the same title "World WarIII?" about statements by then–US Vice President Henry A. Wallace: "We shall decide sometime in 1943 or 1944... whether to plant the seeds of World War III" in reference to a potential war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Time continued to entitle with or mention in stories the term "World WarIII" for the rest of the decade and onwards: 1944, 1945, 1946 ("bacterial warfare"), 1947, and 1948. Time persists in using this term, for example, in a 2015 book review entitled "This Is What World War III Will Look Like".
Military plans
Military strategists have used war games to prepare for various war scenarios and to determine the most appropriate strategies. War games were utilized for World War I and World War II.
Operation Unthinkable
In April–May 1945, the British Armed Forces developed Operation Unthinkable, thought to be the first scenario of the Third World War. Its primary goal was "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire". British prime minister Winston Churchill was concerned that, with the enormous size of Soviet Red Army forces deployed in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and the perceived unreliability of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, there was a serious threat to Western Europe. The plan was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.
Operation Dropshot
Operation Dropshot was the 1949 United States contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union in the Western European and Asian theaters. Although the scenario made use of nuclear weapons, they were not expected to play a decisive role.
At the time, the US nuclear arsenal was limited in size, based mostly in the United States, and depended on bombers for delivery. Dropshot included mission profiles that would have used 300 nuclear bombs and 29,000 high-explosive bombs on 200 targets in 100 cities and towns to wipe out 85% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential in a single stroke. Between 75 and 100 of the 300 nuclear weapons were targeted to destroy Soviet combat aircraft on the ground.
The scenario was devised before the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was also devised before US president John F. Kennedy and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara changed the US Nuclear War plan from the 'city killing' countervalue strike plan to a "counterforce" plan (targeted more at military forces). Nuclear weapons at this time were not accurate enough to hit a naval base without destroying the city adjacent to it, so the aim of using them was to destroy the enemy's industrial capacity to cripple their war economy.
British-Irish cooperation Ireland started planning for a possible nuclear war in the late 1940s. Co-operation between the United Kingdom and Ireland would be formed in the event of WWIII, where they would share weather data, control aids to navigation, and coordinate the Wartime Broadcasting Service that would occur after a nuclear attack. Operation Sandstone in Ireland was a top-secret British-Irish military operation. The armed forces from both states began a coastal survey of Britain and Ireland cooperating from 1948 to 1955. This was a request from the United States to identify suitable landing grounds for the US in the event of a successful Soviet invasion. By 1953, the co-operation agreed upon sharing information on wartime weather and the evacuation of civilian refugees from Britain to Ireland. Ireland's Operation Sandstone ended in 1966.
Seven Days to the River Rhine
Seven Days to the River Rhine was a top-secret military simulation exercise developed in 1979 by the Warsaw Pact. It started with the assumption that NATO would launch a nuclear attack on the Vistula river valley in a first-strike scenario, which would result in as many as two million Polish civilian casualties. In response, a Soviet counter-strike would be carried out against West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, with Warsaw Pact forces invading West Germany and aiming to stop at the River Rhine by the seventh day. Other USSR plans stopped only upon reaching the French border on day nine. Individual Warsaw Pact states were only assigned their subpart of the strategic picture; in this case, the Polish forces were only expected to go as far as Germany. The Seven Days to the Rhine plan envisioned that Poland and Germany would be largely destroyed by nuclear exchanges and that large numbers of troops would die of radiation sickness. It was estimated that NATO would fire nuclear weapons behind the advancing Soviet lines to cut off their supply lines and thus blunt their advance. While this plan assumed that NATO would use nuclear weapons to push back any Warsaw Pact invasion, it did not include nuclear strikes on France or the United Kingdom. Newspapers speculated when this plan was declassified, that France and the UK were not to be hit to get them to withhold the use of their nuclear weapons.
NATO nuclear sharing
NATO operational plans for a Third World War have involved NATO allies who do not have their nuclear weapons, using nuclear weapons supplied by the United States as part of a general NATO war plan, under the direction of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander.
Of the three nuclear powers in NATO (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States), only the United States has provided weapons for nuclear sharing. , Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey are still hosting US nuclear weapons as part of NATO's nuclear sharing policy. Canada hosted weapons until 1984,. and Greece until 2001.. The United Kingdom also received US tactical nuclear weapons such as nuclear artillery and Lance missiles until 1992, despite the UK being a nuclear weapons state in its own right; these were mainly deployed in Germany.
In peacetime, the nuclear weapons stored in non-nuclear countries are guarded by US airmen though previously some artillery and missile systems were guarded by US Army soldiers; the codes required for detonating them are under American control. In case of war, the weapons are to be mounted on the participating countries' warplanes. The weapons are under custody and control of USAF Munitions Support Squadrons co-located on NATO main operating bases that work together with the host nation forces.
180 tactical B61 nuclear bombs of the 480 US nuclear weapons believed to be deployed in Europe fall under the nuclear sharing arrangement.. The weapons are stored within a vault in hardened aircraft shelters, using the USAF WS3 Weapon Storage and Security System. The delivery warplanes used are F-16 Fighting Falcons and Panavia Tornados.
Historical conflicts and incidents
With the initiation of the Cold War arms race in the 1950s, an apocalyptic war between the United States and the Soviet Union became a real possibility. During the Cold War era (1947–1991), several military events have been described as having come close to potentially triggering World WarIII. Even after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, some incidents afterward have been described as close calls as well.
Cold War
As Soviet-American relations grew tense in the post–World WarII period, the fear that the tension could escalate into World WarIII was ever-present. A Gallup poll in December 1950 found that more than half of Americans considered World WarIII to have already started. (via Google Books ).
In 2004, commentator Norman Podhoretz proposed that the Cold War, lasting from the surrender of the Axis powers until the fall of the Berlin Wall, might rightly be called World WarIII. However, the majority of historians hold that World WarIII would have to be a worldwide "war in which large forces from many countries fought"Definition of "World War": Cambridge Dictionary Cambridge University Press. Downloaded 21 April 2017. and a war that "involves most of the principal nations of the world".Definition of "World War": Random House Random House/ Dictionary.com. 2017. Downloaded 21 April 2017. The Cold War was termed as such due to a lack of direct action by the two main belligerents, the United States and the Soviet Union, out of fear that a nuclear war would possibly destroy humanity. In his book Secret Weapons of the Cold War, Bill Yenne concludes that the military superpower standoff from the 1940s through to 1991 was not World WarIII.Yenne, Bill (2005). Secret Weapons of the Cold War. Berkly Book, New York.
Korean War: 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953