h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's worth noting: we had wars spanning several continents, long before World War I. Between 1750 and 1820, there were at least three such wars:

* The Seven Year War had fighting in Europe, North America, and Asia.

* The American Revolution was part of a general European war, where the UK was opposed by Spain, France, and the Netherlands. These three powers sniped against British outposts throughout the world.

* The Napoleonic Wars spilled into Africa at one point, and there was also fighting in America in 1812.

It's also worth noting that an alliance system was set up in the 1800s, which stomped out all sources of global war among the alliance powers for over 90 years. It didn't even come close to ending war, but it kept all the wars localized to one nation.

In the end, it was newcomers to the alliance system who destabilized things. Germany and Japan were the big culprits.

At present (as preposterous as it seems), we are 55 years into a period of global peace. If we make 40 more, we'll set a record. If we don't, it'll probably be some up-and-coming power (maybe India) which knocks things over.

By the time of the next war, we'll have theatres of war in orbit and in cyberspace. The next war will be so different from the last ones, we'll have to come up with *another* new name.

Perhaps the Ministry Of Defence, Department Of Defense, CIA, MI6, etc should all form some sort of Marketing Corps and have a combined effort to come up with a suitable name, logo and tagline.

How about:

"The First Universe War": All your Mars are belong to us

And if the whole war was fought in cyberspace as some people claim is most likely, how would anyone know about it? We could all be at war with one another right now, with millions of network packets being sent out to the front-line every minute, and none of us would be any the wiser. Just imagine the army recruitment posters:

"Computer Skills? Your Country Needs You! For, uh, no particular reason that we want to talk about, really."

Still, if the war was going badly, a country could at least withdraw from along the lines of "well I'm not playing anymore, and I'm taking my router with me, so ner!"

Computer Sklls - yeah, but when someone got upset they'd send round the commandos with real weapons to bust up the servers, hubs, broadband connections etc.
Also, did it occour to anyone that WW1 didn't actually involve much of the world except europe.

Yeah, I know World War 1 is a misnomer in at least a couple of respects. But there *was* fighting in German colonies in Africa throughout the war. China and Japan were in the war too, as Allies; German enclaves in China and the Pacific saw some action. Besides, there's no changing the name now.

Commando squads might be just what some of those spam-haven foreign providers need...

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I'll mention the idea to the SAS

World War I involved lots of other parts of the world - generally bits where the British shipped troops over. Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, the Caribbean and India all supplied troops as part of the British Empire.