WW1, WW2, WW3

An Anglospheric view about a post-WW3 world...

 

The first world-wide war was the Seven-Years War, in the XVIIIth Century, according to Winston Churchill, as related in his Memoirs.

He was quite right. That war, the real World War 1, opposed the then-powerful kingdom of France to an emerging British Empire, and took place in North America, in Asia (mainly on the Indian subcontinent), and Europe, and also wherever both kingdoms had possessions, here and there on the oceans of Terra.

As for the Second World War, World War 2, it happened in the fist half of the 20th Century, in two parts, separated by the space of a generation, with much of the same people, unknown or known, in them, but at different stages in their life. That war mainly fought between an emergent Germany and a reigning British Empire, with many other actors (America, Soviet Union, France, Italy, Japan, Brazil, etc.). An interesting point is that both Germany and Italy were newly united countries, having been created only in the preceding century, why the Japanese Empire, also the recent result of the unification of many fiefdoms, was still in an expansionist, colonialist period of the long existence of that nation.

The third world war, WW3, is not something that will happen one day, whether against zombies or some alien race. It has already begun. World War 3 started last year, in February 2022, with the invasion of Ukraine by the Federation of Russia. This still-unfinished armed conflict may well be aggravated (or possibly followed) by the beginning of another armed conflict. That conflict may start in Asia, more precisely on the island of Formosa, if (or, more probably, when) the People's Republic of China decide that it is high time to repossess the breakaway province of Taiwan, created in the XVIIIth Century, first as an extension of Fukien Province (in order to reincorporate Chinese settlers established on the island of Formosa, quite possibly to escape Imperial taxation), and forcibly taken from China in the XIXth century, when it was incorporated into the Japanese Empire.

In 1945, not so long ago, it was brought back into the fold of China, after the defeat of Japan. To be more precise, tt was returned to the then-government of China, that is to say to Nationalist China, that is to say to the Kuomintang and managed by that government/party till the end of the Civil war on the Chinese mainland. Then, most of the civil administration and most of the military units of the Kuomintang escaped impending annihilation and took refuge on the islands of Hainan (not yet a Chinese province by then, but just a part of neighboring Kwangtung Province), and Formosa (seat of today's Taiwan Province).

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PLUS:  @charles.millar3 (Twitter)