[George W. Bush]

WW I 1914-1918
WW II 1939-1945
WW III 1949-1990 apx. (Cold War)
WW IV 2001- date (Islamofacist War)

I'm not sure why people enjoy being so dramatic over these terms. Plainly, the two world wars actually drew in all branches of the armed forces of all the major countries in formally declared warfare under their national governments. Their economies and citenzy were fully mobilized for total warfare, not a guns-and-butter war.

The confinement and economic strangulation of Soviet expansionism was certainly a policy. But it was not a shooting war. There are no WW III veterans. Warfare by proxy (Korea, Vietnam) does not qualify and no historian or military expert apply the term.

As for the War On Terror, it is much more comparable to the international efforts against the bomb-throwing anarchists and assassins prior to WW I. The archduke's assassination was the result of anarchist plotting and was the last major action they instigated, the spark that began WW I.

The most likely candidate for WW III is a conflict with China, largely over oil and resources and land and their desperation to continue their communist dictatorship.

[Broker]

I have am a certified documented veteran of the cold war. Many people died in that global effort. Just tried to put war & conflict into historical context.