Has WWIII already been fought?

[The Romulan Republic]

Not really, precisely because the major powers never really came into direct conflict with one another on a large scale (well, unless you count China fighting in the Korean War, and I don't know if China back then counted as a major power).

There is the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict which was not a major action, but the Zhenbao Island incident nearly brought China and Russia into full scale war.
Probably would not escalate into world war, but would have been interesting.

At the time, the officially recognized China that held the Security Council seat was... Taiwan.

Cold War politics.

[New Axiom]

It has not been fought yet. Historians and scholars have to classify a war as a world war for it to be World War III. I think it will be fought if Russia attacks a NATO country like Estonia. That would trigger the whole NATO alliance into a war with a superpower. I am pretty sure scholars would classify that as World War III.

I dunno if NATO would respond. Remember Ukraine?

[The Romulan Republic]

It has not been fought yet. Historians and scholars have to classify a war as a world war for it to be World War III. I think it will be fought if Russia attacks a NATO country like Estonia. That would trigger the whole NATO alliance into a war with a superpower. I am pretty sure scholars would classify that as World War III.

I dunno if NATO would respond. Remember Ukraine?

Not remotely comparable.

The Ukraine is not a NATO member. NATO has no treaty obligation to defend it militarily. None.

Whereas if NATO refuses to defend a NATO member from a Russian attack, it basically negates the central purpose for NATO's existence.

[New Axiom]

I dunno if NATO would respond. Remember Ukraine?

Not remotely comparable.

The Ukraine is not a NATO member. NATO has no treaty obligation to defend it militarily. None.

Whereas if NATO refuses to defend a NATO member from a Russian attack, it basically negates the central purpose for NATO's existence.

Yeah but Ukraine was trying to become part of the EU, which NATO would still help defend if it fell under attack.

[The Two Jerseys]

world war

noun

a war involving many large nations in all different parts of the world. The name is commonly given to the wars of 1914–18 and 1939–45, although only the second of these was truly global.

-The definition of a World War from Google.

We all know there have been two technical world wars, one and two. Both had a huge group of nations fighting another huge group of nations. Both had large numbers of casualties, and involved large armies face punching each other with huge amounts of troops, artillery, and in the second one, airplanes and ships. But was WWIII already fought in the Middle East?

Iraq, 1990. Third largest army in the world with tough as hell soldiers that have had been fighting for at least a decade, supported by relatively new Soviet and American equipment provided to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war.
In '91, the US and a fairly large number of other nations invaded Iraq and by March 1, the Iraq republican guard was a candy coated shell of its old self. I am clearly describing Operation Desert Storm, and although there was not very many (Coalition) casualties, or very many massive land battles or any other characteristic of the previous world wars, the whole concept of an alliance against one nation seems strongly familiar to the last stages of WWII.

If ODS wasn't world wars enough, what about the War on Terror? This war was fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Africa(I think), Iran, and Syria. That covers the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, if parts of the WoT were fought there.

Were either of the aforementioned campaigns, or another war unnamed here in this OP, enough to constitute a world war?

Desert Storm was no more a world war than the Boxer Rebellion was.

As for the War on Terror, that's the equivalent of saying that the suppression of separate groups of pirates in the Caribbean, North Africa, and East Asia are all the same war.

[Gig em Aggies]

Not remotely comparable.

The Ukraine is not a NATO member. NATO has no treaty obligation to defend it militarily. None.

Whereas if NATO refuses to defend a NATO member from a Russian attack, it basically negates the central purpose for NATO's existence.

Yeah but Ukraine was trying to become part of the EU, which NATO would still help defend if it fell under attack.

NATO and the EU are two separate bodies
NATO= Political and Military alliance,
EU= Trade partnership with European nations.
NATO has no obligations to defend EU

[The Romulan Republic]

Not remotely comparable.

The Ukraine is not a NATO member. NATO has no treaty obligation to defend it militarily. None.

Whereas if NATO refuses to defend a NATO member from a Russian attack, it basically negates the central purpose for NATO's existence.

Yeah but Ukraine was trying to become part of the EU, which NATO would still help defend if it fell under attack.

NATO likely would defend the EU, but is not obligated to as far as I am aware.

More importantly, Ukraine was not yet an EU member, not even close.

[Forsher]

]As for the War on Terror, that's the equivalent of saying that the suppression of separate groups of pirates in the Caribbean, North Africa, and East Asia are all the same war.

Not really. The War on Terror is more than just one group or an array of groups suppressing an array of different independent groups for similar reasons. The War of Terror is a semi-co-ordinated* suppression of groups which, in some cases, incidentally (maybe it was also true of these pirates) exist (at least, as we know them) because of the semi-co-ordinated bit.

*Because sometimes it is a coalition otherwise international thing, sometimes it is a Western political doctrine and sometimes it is a US policy.

[The Lone Alliance]

Really I think we're more on to looking for the 4th or 5th world war if another one started again.

If you talk about a world war as being a war waged across the planet, the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolutionary Wars, and all the wars that involved fighting in European Colonies fit the bill as World Wars as well.

And lets not get into some of the Asian wars.

[Republic of the Cristo]

No because those wars only had a select few countries involved in it.

Syria= Civil War
Iran= nothing
Afghanistan= start of the war on terror/after 2011 mass pull out it became small scale insurgency
Lybia= Civil war
Iraq= invasion/civil war
Yemen= Civil War

All these conflicts except Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan are just regional instabilities caused by the Arab Spring.

Correction, the insurgency in Afghanistan is quite large - racking up a record number of deaths in the last two years and taking over significant sections of the nation ( if only for short periods of time ).

[Vassenor]

Isn't the Seven Years' War sometimes referred to as a world war?

[Victoria and Vacuna]

Isn't the Seven Years' War sometimes referred to as a world war?

Yeah. Obviously so given the scope of its' battlefield, ranging from India to America. Good times, good times.

[Free Missouri]

Yes, but not in the way that you think of it.

The War of 1939-1945 was the third world war.

The Seven Years War was the true first world war, as French and British forces fought each other across the globe on top of the entirety of europe fighting each other. The French and British fought in India, America, the Caribbean, everywhere.

[Gim]

I say the word, "large", can be interpreted in a sense that the nations are industrially "large"(developed), and, therefore, the war in Iraq during the nineties involved many small nations, compared to many European powers involved in wars during 14-18 and 39-45.

[Melon feud]

Here's the deal ,,,nerf Fer brains,,, yes!
World wars 3 thru 42 have been battled ALREADY!,, YET,that pesky ANTICHRIST goomer(a Roman/Italian) is GONNA SHOW THE FU*K UP with a peace contract for the Mideast(ISRAEL signs on),,:MORE PEOPLE WILL DIE BY HIS HANDS THAN ALL THE FALLEN IN ALL THE (world wars combined)
glad to have schooled just a few ' nerf brains',,, thank/hate me later,cuz_ I could give a flying rip.

[The United Federations]

Isn't the Seven Years' War sometimes referred to as a world war?

Absolutely, it's a consensus of many historians, especially in the sense that while it was once again only two powers (France and Britain), they went out of their way to fight on every front, the Americas, Europe, and India, dragging both the New World and Old World at the time into conflict. Of course this usually seen as a pre-World War in the sense that it demonstrated that a war could effectively be fought by multiple participants on fronts around the world, but it is not considered as great as what many believe are worthy of being considered a World War. Mostly this is due to technological advancements and therefore the increased use of resources and loss of life in these eventual wars.

[The United Federations]

In regards to the question, however, the Third World War has not yet been fought, at least not in the sense that we have defined World Wars as of yet. Since we've defined the first two World Wars as wars with extensive loss of life and devastating effects on societies, development, and a high prioritization on advancing technology for warfare in the name of defeating a specific nation state or alliance (eh, eh?), we have yet to see it occur. While many may argue that certain conflicts may currently be or had been the Third World War, as a global society we have yet to reach the point in which we had reached a state of total war like that of the previous World Wars. No draft has been enforced, no massive build-up of military forces has been encouraged (despite what many may think about U.S. Military-Industrial Complex developments, or any other military power). So no, it hasn't happened yet, but who knows, it could, people are always surprising...