Offering a terrifying, but very possible scenario of a world on the edge of disaster, this work suggests that World War III has become a real threat. Germany and Japan have gathered military strength; the US has retrenched to make way for economic globalization; the UN is widely discredited and NATO has lost its way. In their place, the bodies controlling the global economic order hold a growing authority in an increasingly unstable world. In this book, the author sets out to demonstrate that World Wars I and II were both preceded by trade disputes, minor conflicts in peripheral zones and vain attempts to reconcile competing interests peacefully. He argues that history is repeating itself, and that the changing balance between the Great Powers, after the collapse of the USSR, have set the conditions for new conflict. He maintains that there is a very real risk that the next flashpoint will ignite to create World War III.