The causes of World War Three today: sociological perspectives

Abstract

What logic governs the possibility of a third world war in the contemporary scenario? Building on the materials presented at the conference, this essay revisits the psychoanalytic and epistolary framework developed by Freud and Einstein in order to trace its enduring relevance in the current historical phase. The theoretical framework draws on C. Wright Mills’s critical sociology and Baudrillard’s conceptual tools, with the aim of showing how warfare responds to dynamics of a systemic nature. From this perspective, the drive towards a possible Third World War emerges as the point of convergence between the exhaustion of neoliberal globalization, the socio-technical transformation of the digital sphere, and the degeneration of processes of individualization.