"World War 3" is Not Inevitable: How Sequential Thinking Shapes Our Perception of Conflict

The moment we started numbering world wars like entries in a blockbuster movie franchise, we set ourselves up for failure.

The war of 1914 was called The Great War at the time. But when we renamed it “World War I,” it was both a historical label and an unintentional promise. By assigning it a number, we embedded the idea that its sequel, “World War II,” was always going to happen. And now, whether we admit it or not, humanity has been waiting for World War III to drop like the next season of a prestige TV drama. If there’s a “1” and a “2,” the existence of a “3” feels not only possible, but plausible, and then probable, and then all but inevitable.

But this mindset—the numbering of global conflicts—trains us to think about war as a progression, as though history is some sort of cosmic conveyor belt pushing us toward an inevitable apocalyptic climax. In reality, the events we now call the First and Second World Wars weren’t discreet, self-contained stories in a narrative that makes any kind of sense, like The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. They were more like two particularly nasty chapters in a centuries-long European saga of border disputes, shifting alliances, greed, and the violent birth of the modern nation-state that encompassed everything from the French Revolution to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. But by slapping numerical labels on them, we’ve encouraged ourselves to think of them as separate “installments” in an ongoing series, each with its own plot, villains, and resolution.

This numbering has warped the way we understand history. Wars don’t spontaneously erupt because “it’s time for the next one.” They’re the product of deep, systemic tensions—economic disparities, power imbalances, the human urge to conquer, and, of course, bad decisions by people in positions of power. The so-called First and Second World Wars weren’t isolated phenomena; they were the culmination of centuries of rivalry among European empires jockeying for dominance. From the Napoleonic Wars to the Franco-Prussian War, the story of Europe and her neighbors is one long chain of territorial disputes, unstable treaties, and unquenchable thirst for expansion. It just so happened that by the early 20th century, the industrial revolution had provided nations with shiny new machines of death and destruction, making those old rivalries deadlier than ever.

But instead of viewing these wars as part of a messy, interconnected history, we’ve framed them as isolated events in a linear sequence. Worse, this framework has turned “World War III” into something we almost expect—like the next chapter of a cursed prophecy. This fatalistic attitude does nothing to prevent future conflicts; if anything, it makes us more likely to accept their inevitability. After all, if wars are just numbered entries in a series of inevitable, conceptually linear conflicts, then why fight fate?

We have to resist the simplicity of sequential thinking. Wars aren’t Marvel movies, and there’s no law of the universe demanding a trilogy. Instead of waiting for the so-called “inevitable” next war, we’d do better to focus on dismantling the systems and ideologies that make war possible in the first place.

History is messy, tangled, and non-linear.

Maybe it’s time we start treating it that way.