Like World War III, World War IV is the name for a would-be global war,
which either has not yet occurred, or else has already started but whose
commencement would be established by historians in retrospect. The names
WW III and IV arise from the view that World War I and World War II set a
precedent which would follow a continued and escalating trend and that designation
as a world war is established by either the world leaders performing the
aggression or by the world leaders attempting to roll back that aggression.
Usage of WWIV to describe the present or past
As some consider the Cold War to have been "WWIII", they also view the so-called
War on Terrorism as being "WWIV", and the term is occasionally used in the
United States political and policy debates that continue in the wake of the
September 11, 2001 attacks. As long ago as 1992, Count de Marenches, the former
head of French intelligence, wrote a book[[1]] alleging that a "fourth world
war", of terrorism versus civilization, was taking place. As a designation
for the post-9/11 war on terrorism, its use was first proposed by Eliot A.
Cohen in his opinion piece written for the Wall Street Journal opinion page
on November 20, 2001 titled, "World War IV: Let's call this conflict what
it is." A core quotation from his thesis is:
The Cold War was World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts
entail the movement of multimillion-man armies, or conventional front lines
on a map. The analogy with the Cold War does, however, suggest some key features
of that conflict: that it is, in fact, global; that it will involve a mixture
of violent and nonviolent efforts; that it will require mobilization of skill,
expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers; that it may go
on for a long time; and that it has ideological roots.
Four days before Cohen's words were published, James Woolsey, former Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave a speech at Restoration Weekend,
sponsored by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, titled World War
IV, in which he outlines the entire rationale for fighting World War IV. In
the most provocative portion if his speech, he says:
But, I would say this. Both to the terrorists and to the pathological predators
such as Saddam Hussein and to the autocrats as well, the barbarics, the Saudi
royal family. They have to realize that now for the fourth time in 100 years,
we've been awakened and this country is on the march. We didn't choose this
fight, but we're in it. And being on the march, there's only one way we're
going to be able to win it. It's the way we won World War I fighting for Wilson's
14 points. The way we won World War II fighting for Churchill's and Roosevelt's
Atlantic Charter and the way we won World War III fighting for the noble
ideas I think best expressed by President Reagan, but also very importantly
at the beginning by President Truman, that this was not a war of us against
them. It was not a war of countries. It was a war of freedom against tyranny.
We have to convince the people of the Middle East that we are on their side,
as we convinced Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel and Andrei Sakharov that
we were on their side.
Cohen was one of the first publicly to single out Iraq as the second battlefield
after Afghanistan in his version of World War IV. On December 23, 2001 he
then wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "War with Iraq will have its perils.
Some are likely to be illusory: the Arab "street," for example, which never
quite rises as promised. Others may be quite real, to include the use of chemical
and biological weapons. Should the U.S. fail to take the challenge, sooner
or later it is sure to find Iraqi terror on its doorstep. It may have already.
Should the U.S. rise to the occasion, however, it may begin a transformation
of the Middle East that could provide many benefits to the populations of
an unfree region. That will, in the end, make us infinitely more secure at
home."
Following Cohen's lead, Norman Podhoretz wrote an article for Commentary
magazine titled, "How to win World War IV" (Norman Podhoretz) in February,
2002. Podhoretz was not as certain as Cohen about specific tactics: "Yet whether
or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing
is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein
still in power.' He agrees fully with Cohen's overall thesis, though: 'In
my opinion, by raising the possibility of a transformation of the Middle
East, Cohen cuts to the heart of the matter. The real enemy in this war,
Cohen argues -- as Daniel Pipes has also so persistently and authoritatively
done at greater length -- is not the generalized abstraction 'terrorism,'
but rather 'militant Islam.'"
Hypothetical or fictional usage of WWIII or WWIV
When asked what kind of weapons World War III would be fought with, Albert
Einstein famously replied: "I know not with what weapons World War III will
be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
The anime series Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG uses the term World
War IV in reference to a second Vietnam War that occurred prior to the story.
