It’s already under way but, like the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, etc., etc., ad nauseum, obozo missed the TV news report while on the golf course.
War is statecraft by (with) other means. Clausewitz
The long contest of civilizations does not end save by the elimination of one of the contesting civilizations, islam and the west have been in contest from the beginning.
Charles Martel and others of his era are the reason that that contest stalemated for a long time. The industrial revolution and its foundation in the West provided a term of western ascendancy, the debacle of WWI provided the fertile ground for a resurgence of islam.
After WWII the Soviets payed to destabilize the near east and the USA propped up the house of saud that used petro dollars to export its strain of islam (wahhabism)
So in a real sense there is no WW III just a continuation of a conflict of civilizations