Many people find it difficult to understand the current global situation as a possible Third World War. This is largely due to the automatic correlation of the term “world war” with the massacres of the twentieth century. For most people, a world war is synonymous with images of piles of bodies, destruction on an industrial scale, and prolonged conflicts that consumed tens of millions of lives. Until such images appeared, few would believe that something similar was actually taking place.

Yet this correlation is misleading. Massacres such as those of the two World Wars were a historical anomaly, not the rule. Throughout history, the vast majority of conflicts have occurred on a much smaller scale of death, and what we witnessed in the years 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 is unlikely to be repeated except under conditions of equally profound technological revolutions.

The explanation is simple: the World Wars of the last century resulted from the collision of two incompatible realities. On the one hand, there was modern military technology -heavy artillery, combat aviation, tanks, automatic machine guns. On the other, military thinking was still guided by pre-modern methods inherited from earlier European wars. The clash between these two forces produced unprecedented human catastrophes.

A clear example can be seen in the Second World War. When observing the military movements of the time, we find a paradox: enormous numbers of soldiers engaged in frontal combat, almost as if they were medieval armies, yet equipped with technologies of mass destruction. Tanks and heavy artillery were employed within linear formations typical of older battles. The result could only be an industrial-scale massacre of human lives.

Ernst Jünger, in his memories of the First World War, describes this transformation of the battlefield into a veritable factory of corpses. We can relate this phenomenon to the concept of pseudomorphosis developed by Oswald Spengler, according to which the techniques, values, and customs of one civilization interfere with the development of another that absorbs them. Moving from anthropology to military studies, one might say that industrial technology arrived abruptly within the armies, while military mentality evolved much slowly. The result was a war mechanized in its destructive capacity, yet pre-industrial in its strategy and tactics.

Today, however, the situation is different. Military thinking has evolved considerably. The devastating impact of the World Wars taught military planners that massive frontal offensives are not only ineffective against modern technology but potentially suicidal. Contemporary conflicts, with their heavy use of missiles, drones, and small units of soldiers, reflect decades of technological and strategic adaptation, aligning military mentality with present technical realities.

Let’s imagine, for instance, if Russian and Ukrainian forces attempted today to replicate the massive frontal assault formations of the Second World War. With ballistic missiles and drones readily available, the result would be an instantaneous massacre. Yet such a scenario does not occur because the major contemporary armies fully understand these risks and limit their strategies to methods compatible with the available technology.

Even so, the risk of a new military pseudomorphosis has not completely disappeared. Artificial intelligence represents the most significant potential technological shift since the twentieth century and has the power to transform warfare drastically. If autonomous attack systems were implemented without adequate strategic preparation, we might witness something comparable to the massacres of the past.

For now, however, contemporary wars remain within comprehensible limits. The possibility of death tolls comparable to those of the World Wars arises primarily in nuclear scenarios, not in conventional conflicts. In other words, the World Wars were a historical anomaly, the product of an extremely rare conjunction between advanced technology and archaic mentality – not a model easily replicated in future wars.

Understanding this is crucial. The concept of a world war should not be confined to the images of the past. The current World War III, fought from the steppes of Donbas to the mountains of Iran, resembles nothing from the twentieth century. It is technological, strategic, and, paradoxically, less lethal. Yet it will still bring changes and consequences as profound as those brought by the Allied victory in 1945.