Guest essay from Egor Kotkin. Support Egor’s work on Substack and Patreon. Follow him on UpScrolled, Twitter and YouTube.

Probably the biggest misconception (or misdirection) about world wars is the idea that “world” refers to the scale of the war: that is, when a war becomes so big that it is considered a world war—for example, when fighting takes place on several continents at once. But that’s only half the truth: while World War I involved countries with 30% of the world’s population and killed 1%, and World War II involved countries with over 40% of the world’s population and killed 3-4%, the sheer numbers don’t justify placing them in a special category where they became the first two wars of their kind in history, because in terms of proportion of population affected and killed, the Taiping Rebellion in 19th-century China and the Thirty Years’ War in Europe fall exactly between World War I and World War II, and all four are blown out of the water by the Mongol Wars of the 13th century, which affected about 40% of the world’s population and killed up to 10%.

What made the First and Second World Wars unique on a global scale was that they were the first wars of their kind for global domination. Until 1914, when virtually the entire world was divided between a few empires, and expansionist imperialist aggression was turned inward, becoming an intra-imperialist conflict, humanity had never reached a state where an entire world order could be at stake in a single war.

Capitalism vs. Colonialism

The world order formed by the early 20th century had a distinctively colonial-exploitative character, distinguished from simply capitalist exploitation by the addition of a second, geographical dimension.

The traditional Marxist model holds that with the victory over feudal relations, first in Western Europe and then elsewhere, capitalism was established worldwide. Feudal relations, therefore, were eliminated worldwide (with rare exceptions such as the oil monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula) long ago, or at least very long ago.

This model is not wrong, but incomplete: during the era of colonialism, feudal relations disappeared at the national level, primarily from the economies of the metropolises. However, they reappeared in a latent form in the imperialist world order that emerged by the end of the 19th century, which is in fact fundamentally not purely capitalist, but feudal-capitalist. Capitalism itself is responsible for the basis of this world order: the functioning of the global economy, however, the fundamental defining property of the superstructure of world capitalism is the global inequality of countries, the division into exploiting and exploited countries, which continues to this day the original division into metropolises and colonies—is a phenomenon that is entirely non-capitalist in nature. This inequality stems from the territorial conquests of the colonial era, the legacy of which was a non-capitalist, non-market, non-monetary division of the world bourgeoisie into two classes: global and national—in which global capital is allowed to determine how far national capital can go.

While the exploitation of the common man by capital does not change depending on the country of origin of the capital and/or the capitalist, the capitalists themselves, since the times of the colonies and metropolises, have been divided into two classes: the conventional imperial bourgeoisie and the indigenous bourgeoisie. While both countries’ local populations may export equally, the difference between them arises at the international level, where imperial capital, capitalists, and corporations originating from the metropolis have an advantage in global capitalist relations, based solely on the fact that capitalists from the US and Europe inherited control over the institutions of global capitalism from the time when these empires and institutions were forcibly imposed.

This element of the world order, the class division of the bourgeoisie, has nothing capitalist at its core. It is an economically privileged position inherited along territorial lines. The essence is feudalism. Capitalists from Europe and the US are the dukes and counts of global capital, while those from the rest of the world are counts and barons.

In this sense, the process of defeudalization of the global economy is still incomplete, and capitalism has not yet triumphed everywhere—and is now fighting in world politics for purely capitalist international relations instead of class-capitalist ones. And this conflict—between capitalism and imperialism—is the basis of the phenomenon of world war as a whole, becoming decisive for the First World War and laying the foundation for the Third World War.

After its unification in 1871, Germany was a dynamic young capitalist superpower. Its mastery and success in playing the capitalist game on the international market frightened the then global hegemon and issuer of the world’s reserve currency, Great Britain. Great Britain understood that it would lose to Germany at capitalism if it played by market rules, and its only chance of maintaining its hegemony was to use military force to prevent “fair” market play, ensuring that trade and markets were as free as would preserve the advantage of British capital. Sound familiar?

The victory of the Entente, in which the United States joined the old colonial empires of Great Britain and France, left the issue unresolved: paradoxically, the victory, to which the United States contributed, was disadvantageous to the United States in the long term, as it preserved the prerogative of Great Britain and France to maintain protectionist rules in favor of their own countries in a significant portion of the world market, fenced off by the borders of their colonial empires.

On the other hand, the fatal blow to imperialism had already been dealt: after the First World War, both Great Britain and France found themselves indebted to US capital, their gold reserves largely moving to the vaults of Wall Street. Nevertheless, the original conflict at the heart of the First World War—the revolt of capitalism against the vestiges of feudal relations in the structure of the world market—remained unresolved as long as the old colonial empires continued to exist. The second, final part of the world war that began in 1914, which would have wiped the British and French empires, first and foremost, from the political map of the world, thus remained an inevitable necessity.

However, the Soviet anti-imperialist project shattered this historical inevitability by changing the nature of the Second World War, which actually took place in reality, and involuntarily postponing the resolution of the original conflict of the world war to the third episode.

Private Property vs. Collective Economy

Colonial empires, by their very structure, were forced to defend their position on two fronts: on the one hand, on the external front, they had to fight to preserve the non-market advantage of their capital in the global market. At the same time, on the domestic front, they had to resist pressure from anti-colonial movements, which by the early 20th century had split into nationalist and socialist movements. Nationalist anti-colonial liberation movements fought for the sovereignty of local capital in the exploitation of local populations and resources, while socialist movements fought for the end of exploitative relations at the core of economic relations.

The struggle between colonial empires for global hegemony opened a window of opportunity not simply for anti-colonial liberation struggles, but for socialist liberation struggles, which threatened both sides of the imperialist struggle—imperial capital and national capital.

This is precisely how the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the USSR became possible. Global capitalism found itself in a difficult position: on the one hand, it was necessary to smash the remnants of feudal relations that existed in the form of colonial empires and the rules of the game they imposed, while on the other hand, it was necessary to prevent the spread of socialist revolution, which threatened the destruction of the very phenomenon of private capital and private profit as such.

Interestingly, this may be an overlooked reason for the failure of the leftist project in the 20th century: the transition to socialism is naturally conditioned by the growing contradictions of victorious capitalism. But capitalism has not yet triumphed everywhere. With the overthrow of US hegemony and the transition of international economic relations from the class-capitalist model, where all capitalists were equal—but Western capitalists were more equal—to the Chinese model of international trade with common rules for all, a UN-like model, the beginning of the socialist transition will finally become not a wishful thinking but a material reality, as in the new economic world order, the position of private capital and market relations will change radically.

As a result of World War II, the United States found itself in a dual position: on the one hand, protecting the interests of its capital, it ensured the end of the old imperialist world order. Roosevelt famously sided with Stalin in his trilateral negotiations with Churchill when it came to guarantees for the preservation of the British Empire in its former form.

On the other hand, the presence of the USSR forced the United States to assume, simultaneously with its progressive role as the gravedigger of imperialism, a reactionary role as the defender of an exploitative economy based on private property.

Therefore, the contribution of Roosevelt’s United States to post-war decolonization, while simultaneously ruthlessly fighting to ensure that newly independent states followed a capitalist, rather than a socialist, path, was not a paradox, but a natural balancing act.

The old, imperial model of organizing the world economy was simply too inherently unstable for the interests of capital.

The United States was able to offer a new, more effective neo-imperialist model: dozens of independent national, internally stable states in place of each empire—to close the window of opportunity through internal destabilization for socialist movements—and an international system of military-financial dominance, under the pretext of countering the “Soviet threat,” but in reality preserving the fundamental inequality of relations between neo-imperial capital and the emerging national capital of newly formed states in the world market.

This situation, where in world trade one capital is “more equal” than another based on nationality, where money “reeks” from national origin, is fundamentally unacceptable for capitalist relations.

Thus, the sought-after conflict of the Great War—against the non-capitalist limitations of capitalist relations—remained in force; the Second World War did not resolve it, but merely postponed it until the third act.

Instead of burying imperialism and the rumbles of its industrial superiority to extract the greatest benefit from equitable global trade, the United States simply consolidated imperialism in the form of a military-financially backed neo-empire of the “collective West.” This resolved the threat of intra-imperialist contradictions—the defeated European, Ottoman, and Japanese empires were pacified as US vassals—but it set a historical expiration date for US hegemony until the development of capitalism in the rest of the world came into conflict with the neo-imperialism of the “collective West” (the US-led collective of defeated empires), which penalized “non-Western” capital in world trade in favor of “Western” capital.

And, just as with the German Empire’s threat to British Empire dominance that triggered World War I, Britain, losing industrial competition to Germany, could only defend its central place in world trade through military force, with the shift of the world’s center of industrial mass to East Asia, the maintenance of a US-favorable configuration of world trade fell solely on US military power—thereby making it inevitable that it would have to be resorted to in order to delay or reverse the inevitable—before the design of the world order could come into conformity with the changed relations in the global division of labor.

Collective world intuition of the inevitable Third World War

And this is why we all share collective intuition that there must be third world war. Because there is a shared intuitive understanding that those wars were for the world domination, and in that sense, both of them failed, their objectives weren’t complete: the world remained split. And since the principal players are still around, meaning, the West: both “world wars” were in fact the intra Western conflicts for world domination, and and their direct control over the world actually significantly shrunk since 1914, while their sense of entitlement to be the masters of the world has only grown since, one doesn’t even need a conscious thought, it is intuitively clear: they will try again.

1. In the WW1 the Western empires fought between themselves, and it ended with half of the colonial empires gone.
2. In the WW2 the West was split and fought against the Soviet/Chinese communism, and it led to demise of the rest of the colonial empires.
3. And now, having coalesced around the US empire, reduced to NATO+, the West is about to take it final stand, just as Rubio said, against the world.

Marco Rubio in his 2026 Munich speech framed the stakes in a very helpful way (why I liked Rubio’s Munichspeech more than Carney’s Davos speech): this is about the 600 years of the Western global dominance, world order 1.0 (first ever global order that encompassed the entirety of human species) and I’m failing to see how, having fought two world wars on its behalf already, the West would retreat without starting and failing the third one: there’s no way around or out of this. Only through.

The Unnecessary War of the Sore Losers

But the fight, declared by Rubio and started by Trump, has been lost before it began: when the productive forces of humanity were transferred from Western countries to East Asia, primarily to the PRC, the center of productive human civilization was transferred to Asia along with them.

The material foundation of Western global dominance, which Rubio now intends to defend, is gone. The ground on which the US empire stood, faithfully serving capital, was long ago sold out from under its feet by capital. What remains—and what the Rubio-Trump-Hegseth trio have actually gathered to defend—is a shadow of former might, an illusion of power that any attempt to subjugate in reality will only dispel. What this fight is really about is adjusting the old, Western-built world order, to the new, post-Western underlying material reality, through the war of denial.

So, the chances are that the WW3 will be the last world war. That it will end the Western dominance, 600 years of the colonial and neocolonial world order (or rather readjust the world order to a new world distribution of productive power) is even higher. The only uncertainty is whether the Western hegemony implodes under the pressure against the world, or destroyed with the world in a nuclear war, most likely.

To tie the talk of “heritage” to ethnicity or religion is to miss entirely actual significance of it: hereditary property rights, they want the same power that their ancestors exercised over the world and the wealth that they extracted with it. Rationalizing it in cultural, or even biological terms only comes from them not having any better idea how their ancestors got it and how it why it got so reduced by now.

It’s likely that he US will lose the WW3 the WW1 Germany style. See, Germans never lost WW1 militarily, by the date of their military capitulation they were advancing on both fronts deep inside the former Russian Empire and advancing in France. No ally soldier set foot inside the German borders before they lost the war. The Germans imploded from within: German economy failed first, and, ignited by the Russian revolution, the German Socialist Revolution began. In order to save the regime, Germans surrendered to the Entente.

That seems to be the way World War 3 is likely to actually go. Given the size and firepower of the US military, a complete and decisive military defeat of the US would require a scale of warfare dangerously close to a global nuclear war—but since the US empire today is a firepower without an industrial base, the largest military force, in the rear of which is instead the most powerful industrial economy in the world, as in the 1940s, is the biggest hype and scam bubble in history—it is likely to trigger a financial collapse and implode, possibly under a massive political unrest inside the US, before it reaches that scale.

”Is it possible that from all of this lawlessness a better international order will emerge?”

People, naturally being slaves to the recency bias, “the devil they know,” hold on to the current world order designed by the Western powers, assuming that as bad as it is, on the other side of it must be complete disorder and collapse. While in reality we live the worst of possible world orders simply because it was our first try. Humanity grew and matured well beyond the level, at which the West still tries to push it down. And removal of this hostile force from humanity in itself will be provide a huge relief, a change for the better, even before humanity will take on the chance to prove itself.

World War 3 is the last stand of the old world order against humanity rising. Which makes it potentially the biggest in scale, but also contains a promise of being a much less bloody ordeal that WW1 or WW2 were—if the entire world majority will join to the fight, which, as soon as it does, will be over.

The worst, more dangerous and most violent scenarios all stem from the parts of the world majority dragging their feet and forgoing their responsibility because to each of them individually the US hegemony remains actually quite beneficial, and they would rather negotiate partaking in it rather then fought ending it.

As long as the light at the end of the tunnel is not from the nuclear blast…

Since Lenin there was an understanding of imperialism being on the same continuum as capitalism. But viewing the relationship between capitalism and imperialism as a contradiction opens up a whole new level of understanding the history of the last 600 years—the history of colonialism and the formation of the first world order, in which a vast number of previously enormous and incomprehensible phenomena begin to make so much sense. And above all, the phenomenon of world wars and the collapse of empires.But it makes so much sense: capitalism makes governments to compete with each other, and the more state succeeds in servicing capital, the more hollowed out by the capital it ends up.

How capitalism builds and destroys empires is an almost mythological story, hidden in the depths of historical processes: something about selling your soul for power, becoming powerful yet ending up absolutely destroyed at the end, eaten alive from the inside.

But at the same time, one can see light on the other side of the tunnel which for everybody else is just darkness ahead. Something not only to hope for, but consciously navigate towards, avoiding unnecessary suffering and the worst possible outcome. Like Russia, that cosplays as the anti-imperialist champion of the global majority, utilizing stolen Soviet rhetoric as a cover for his attempt to squeeze Russian oligarchy back in the imperialist club. It is not only insulting to the legacy of the USSR, but also—all this effort only to join a losing game on the side of the losers.

As long as this light is not from a nuclear blast, we are good, and about to see the end of the 600 years-long colonial era of world history, and the beginning of a new chapter, a better world already simply on account of removing the absolutely destructive corrosive Western influence over it.

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