People, including responsible scholars and journalists, have begun to wonder publicly about the possibility that with conflicts (Ukraine, the Middle East, perhaps China-Taiwan) spiraling out of control, perhaps this will lead the world to another devastating World War. (We’ve had global peace for far too long, I guess.)
I suspect future historians will frame it differently. They will know that it’s a world war. They will simply debate if its beginning should be marked by Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula and the Donbass region (February 2014); Russia’s full-scale invasion attempt (February 24, 2022); the Hamas attack on Israel (October 7, 2023); or some other event.
But that’s like debating if WW2 really began with, say, the Spanish Civil War (1936), the Marco Polo Bridge incident in Beijing (July 7, 1937) that marked the start of the Japanese occupation of parts of China, the Anschluss (March 12, 1938), the Sudetenland occupation (October 1, 1938) or Germany’s full-scale attack on Poland on September 1, 1939.
The thing is, people in 1939 did not yet know that it was a “world war”. Eventually, they found out of course. Kind of hard not to, when the world around you lies in ruins.