WW3 Will Not Happen!
Contrary to popular belief
Since the war in Ukraine started, World War 3 has been the talk of the town. But I strongly believe people are mistaken, let me make my case.
To understand were I’m coming from you have to understand the past, World War 1 was fought by huge empires that gobbled up the earth. The big ones were England, Germany, France and Russia. They occupied huge swaths of land and colonies all over the world. When they decided to go to war they had troops coming in from their colonies. For example, over one million Indian troops fought in WW1 for the British Empire.
So we established how those colonies got involved but what about countries that entered the war without being attacked? During the war some countries that decided to participate either had some kind of signed agreement that forced them to or they were promised land. For example, Italy was promised territorial gains if it stopped being neutral and joined the war. You understand? These were empires and they were highly motivated by the though of their empires expanding.
Now let’s get to WW2, it was almost the same dynamic as WW1 structure wise but the empires retracted a bit. How could they not, WW1 had 40 million casualties. The Ottoman empire collapsed into pieces, the Russian Empire collapsed, Baltics got independence, etc. etc… But the Japanese sun was shining bright.
The Era of Nation States & Nuclear Weapons
It’s 2023 and we don’t really have empires anymore (maybe Russia *cough*) or colonies. Nation states are not really territory hungry, in recent history the United States invaded tons of countries but did not keep their territories. So a scenario like World War 1 where counties were promising each other territories if they joined the war is less likely to happen. Plus, nation states aren’t really equipped for that pursuit, especially with guerilla warfare being a prevalent and very annoying tactic. No one wants to fight a forever war against some shadow network (Al-Qaida *cough*).
With Nuclear weapons your can destroy cities from the comfort of your own home. Russia and the United States have thousands of them. In WW1 If you were a not obligated by treaty to join the war you could be incentivized by land gains. If you participate in WW3 in a meaningful way, the only thing you’re going to gain is an extra ICBM. The potential to get nuked will disincentivize all countries that are not bound by treaty from joining in. Some countries would even hugely benefit from not participating and watching the involved parties destroy each other (what the US did in WW1 lol).
Let me give you a scenario:
If The US was to get into a nuclear war with Russia, NATO and maybe Japan would join because they’re bound by treaty but that’s mostly about it. China would not join because they have more to gain by not joining, let NATO and Russia Nuke each other and come out the top country (what the US did in WW1 lol).
But then again, the future makes fools of all of us.