Are we at brink of World War III ?

Sure. Iran can’t wait to start a war with its entire oil market. They’ll start basket weaving as their new primary industry and export earner.

No.

China and Russia are not going to go to war with us. Our markets depend on each other.

Iran vs. the Western world wouldn’t be much of a “world war.” Iran is not going to start a war; they would be obliterated.

And I think it’s much more likely that such a war would start through someone like Sarah Palin becoming president or Israel getting cheeky and bombing Iran pre-emptively than any actual aggression on Iran’s part. (Iran is clearly wants to have nuclear weapons capacity and I would never want to live in their insane theocracy of a country, but unlike the U.S. and Israel they have never actually started a war.)

We already are.

Just being done with bankers and red tape.

@ChazMaz, that’s not what the word “war” means.

“War is a reciprocated, armed conflict, between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at reorganising a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result.”

The pen is mightier then the sward.

When isn’t the world on the brink of war?

@J0E, there is usually some kind of armed conflict somewhere in the world at any given point in history.

However, we are not on the brink of World War III.

@Qingu while we do a lot of business with China, we are by no means their only key to survival. There are plenty of Factors that could go into a spark up between the US and China. Taiwan is just one example. To put it simply, We like Taiwan the way it is, China Doesn’t, If the US, China, or Taiwan do anything to tilt the balance it could easily snowball.

Iran is as unpredictable as you can get, either side could do something stupid and it could spark conflict in the entire region. And I don’t know if they’d be obliterated. Their terrain is a nightmare, Take iraq, mix it with afganistan, maybe throw in some balkan style genocide, then multiply that by 10 and you’ve got how brutal a war with Iran in the near future would be. The US simply wouldn’t be able to hand a conflict with iran anytime soon, we’d be undermanned and at a total disadvantage in every aspect of war except technology, and even then Iran’s terrain negates a lot of our technological prowess. it’s nothing by cities and mountains for most of the country, you have the oilfeilds to the north west and south, where the first fighting would be done. However, as soon as the Irainian army switched to survival tactics instead of preservasion strategy it would become a bloody, nasty slug fest that America doesn’t have the resolve, or money, to sustain for very long.

Iran knows this, The world knows this. Any country that picks a fight with us in the near future will know that if they can simply outlast American willpower (which isn’t difficult) they’ll begin to waver. We’re an easy target, there’s no denying that.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03, China can “survive” without us. Survival is not difficult. You can even survive in a post-nuclear holocaust dystopia. We are, however, China’s key to “prosperity.” If you think disagreements over Taiwan are so important that they can actually set off World War III, I think you’re just being paranoid.

Re: Iran, World Wars I and II were wars of attrition. Both sides of the conflict tried to kill as many people on the other side as possible. It caused unbelievable destruction and killed hundreds of millions of people. If a world war was fought today, nuclear weapons would certainly be used. To my mind, that is what makes a “world war.”

Our wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, while horrible, are quite different. They are not wars of attrition. They are wars of occupation. We have not used the complete power of our military to destroy the infrastructure of these countries—if we did, they would be nuked.

I agree, occupying would be extremely difficult (and inadvisable, and pointless). But if we wanted to obliterate Iran—in response to, for example, Iran shooting a nuclear missile at one of our allies—we could. Iran, unlike the Soviet Union, is completely outmatched in the nuclear arena; any world-war-level provocation on their part would, under the doctrine of MAD, result in their swift and total obliteration. Which is one reason why they aren’t going to provoke World War III.

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

@aprilsimnel ;-)

No, we’re really not.

Maybe if the Afghanistan stuff spilled more and more into Pakistan and India got involved?

The first Iraq war was nearly a World War. Bush Sr. did a marvelous job of building a coallition of many countries.
Now, with so many countries having nukes and missles, we may never see a World War, in that individual countries at war can blow everything up.

Nobody wants a world war III, not Iran, not China, not Russia or anyone else… so there would not be a world war, it would be too much of a burdon and loss for all the countries worldwide to have one… so just let go of all these thoughts and enjoy your days without worrying about what might and what might not happen.

unfortunely with the joint millitary exercises with russia and china, war could break out at any moment. Russia will eventually put the 20 year plan to invade the U.S. into action with the help of China and Iran. This will not happen until the U.S. intervine with Irans nuclear weapons program. China will be the large group of pawns in Russia’s plan and will be the first to invade. If I was you the only way citizens of the U.S. will survive such a mass invasion is to hide in the appallation mountians, just how we won the revolution.

World War 3 and Nuclear War Future Predictions – 1 / 3rd of World Destroyed

The above Video describes the whole phenomenon of WW3