It’s a little alarming how almost everyone thinks WW3 is a given at this point. Is it time to que up the last scene of Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.
Nuclear war permits them to go into their hidey-holes in the Southern Hemisphere and emerge when the radiation dies down to enslave the survivors. It's their way of throwing over the table and ending the game by scattering all the pieces.
That's why I think it has become unavoidable.