The next globe-spanning total war in the style of World War II will be, yes. But that's not the only kind of war. There's proxy wars like we saw in Korea and V

The next globe-spanning total war in the style of World War II will be, yes. But that's not the only kind of war. There's proxy wars like we saw in Korea and Vietnam during the Cold War. There's cyber attacks and other acts of sabotage carefully cloaked in plausible deniability (for example the 1982 Siberian pipeline explosion, Stuxnet, the attacks on Sony attributed to North Korea). There's limited wars where there's actual open fighting, but neither side is prepared to escalate further (think of the Falklands War, the War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt, or any number of peacekeeping actions by the UN or NATO). Total war between major powers has gone away, but war is here to stay.