Experts believe that in the first half of the 20th century, people's understanding of the word "world war" was different from today's. Now a "real" war is impossible, because it will lead to the destruction of all parties to the conflict.
The word "war" is rarely used in official documents and speeches. This is because the Charter of the United Nations prohibits the use of "war" as a means to deal with conflicts. At the same time, officials often use the terms "armed conflict" and "military action", but obviously, the nature of armed struggle has not changed.
Military science experts pointed out that war has many important characteristics. For example, the country declared a state of war, and all areas of domestic social life shifted to the military direction.
In the international community, the main feature of a war is that it usually ends in some well-documented solution, such as attending a peace conference, signing a peace treaty or surrendering to one side. At present, most modern conflicts do not have these characteristics.
Previously, any war would have a step of "declaring war" and it would be carried out in accordance with strict rules. Nowadays, "armed conflict" is a rather vague concept. From this point of view, the possibility of military action escalating into a world war of total destruction is very low. Because of the existence of nuclear weapons, the possibility of world war is zero.
Some experts believe that in the near future, there will be a final shift from the traditional "conventional war" to the "technical war". Now, conflicts between many countries will exist for a long time, but they will not further evolve into "combat operations."
Information warfare, national liberation movement behind enemy lines and sanctions are important components of modern conflicts. These means are called "mixed wars". The definition of "mixed war" is very vague, which also means that there is no clear dividing line between "war" and "armed conflict".
The Syrian crisis is a typical case of mixed war. No western country officially declared war on the Syrian government, and even Turkey, which fought openly in Syria, never declared war directly.
However, due to the pressure of economic sanctions on Syria, the covert support of the West for the so-called "moderate opposition" terrorists, Israel's frequent attacks on Syrian territory, and individual operations, in fact, half the world has clashed with Syria.
The development level of modern technology makes "controllable conflict" possible and makes participants cautious about attacking enemy targets.
This allows the conflict to continue indefinitely, but it will not cross the red line and enter a full-scale war in which all parties fight to the last man. High-precision long-range weapons are no longer the privilege of a few scientific and technological powers, and now non-state entities can also have the potential to go deep into enemy territory for precision strikes.
Stefanovic believes that this is a very big change compared with the traditional war mode in the past, and in the long run, it will have a greater impact on the new global security architecture, especially on the European security architecture. Simply put, the question is not how many tanks each side can go to the front, but how many launchers and cruise missiles each side can hit key targets on enemy territory.
Experts say that the existence of non-nuclear strategic weapons that can solve strategic problems is the main risk of nuclear conflict. Because the owners of non-nuclear strategic weapons will think that they can control the escalation of conflicts.
On the one hand, politicians and military authorities understand that every time a non-nuclear weapon is used in their territory to defeat a target, it is not necessary to completely destroy the enemy in response. Not every time a non-nuclear weapon is used, the ultimate goal is to completely destroy the enemy. On the other hand, no one pointed out that the enemy should not use the upgrade "red line" of nuclear weapons.
This also means that the enemy may not draw such a "red line" where you can see it.