Is the likelihood of WW3 — global nuclear war — now higher than ever before?

8 August 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Here is the reason why I think it is:

The biggest likelihood of a World War Three would be a leader of one of the top nuclear powers — such as Trump or Putin — initiating a nuclear war when concluding that to win an ongoing conventional war has become impossible and when feeling that to avoid defeat by that enemy is worth initiating a nuclear war which would ultimately kill more than half of the world’s human population (at least 50% during the first two years after the nuclear explosions, and still more thereafter).

Putin, for his part, has already made clear that if the U.S. empire (such as by extending its NATO to within 300 miles of The Kremlin — i.e., to Ukraine) will force Russia to either capitulate or else initiate WW3, then Russia will indeed initiate WW3.

Trump, for his part, reverses his positions routinely, and therefore only guesses about what he might do are even possible in his case (and never reliable), but if the commonly held opinion about him is true, that he is a psychopathic narcissist, then he will escalate a traditional war (such as against Iran or Russia) that he is about to lose, into a WW3, in order to avoid being defeated by “the enemy.” It will be a personal calculation in his case, not a national calculation (such as in Putin’s), nor a global calculation (i.e., to avoid killing off more than half of humanity). On August 7th I, headlined “Why the Trump Administration Must Be Replaced Immediately”, and provided evidence that Trump is still undecided about what to do in response to Iran’s having won the war to defend itself against America’s (i.e,, Trump’s) aggression. I have long expected this, and headlined on July 21st “Iran Is Winning; U.S. Forces Are Retreating”, but now that it’s been won, Trump still hasn’t yet decided what to do about it, except to lie about it. The longer that he continues to do this, the worse will be the consequences for him; and, so, the higher the likelihood will be that he will take advantage of the argument that the grandson of the former CIA Director William Colby, Elbridge Colby, whom Trump chose to run strategy for the Pentagon and who is instituting for the Pentagon to treat ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons as being NOT even NEARLY as powerful as the atomic bombs that America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, though ‘tactical’ nukes can actually be vastly more powerful than those nukes were. The only reason why the phrase “tactical nuclear weapon” was invented by the U.S. Government was in order to fool the public to believe that there is some qualitative difference between a ‘tactical’ one and a ‘real’ one, when there isn’t really even a quantitative difference between them — it is instead merely a difference in LABELS — for U.S. propaganda-purposes if and when the U.S. Government (i.e., President) chooses to escalate a military loss into a nuclear ‘win’. “By 1950–51, U.S. military planners were developing the concept of using atomic bombs as weapons integrated into ordinary battlefield operations.” This has been part of the plan ever since, but no President before Trump has felt motivated to do it, and even he might not, though his doing so is becoming likelier the longer that he waits before deciding. And this is the reason why I headlined on August 7th, “Why the Trump Administration Must Be Replaced Immediately”. It could literally happen any day now. How many more such days will we continue to have? Nobody knows.

Obviously, something is profoundly wrong with American ‘democracy’.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.