Post Cold War WW3s AHC

With a POD of December 1991. Have a ww3 with nukes flying any time between then and the current date in 2017.

How likely is this?

We'll say factions US/NATO vs Russia and/or China and Iran.

What major close calls could lead to a world war 3

Bonus points for early nineties and 2000s TLs.
 
There's always the chance of a US - Russia confrontation over the Balkans in the 1990s. The Pristina Airport incident is usually the go-to POD for that sort of thing.

I can't find it anywhere, but I recall an article that said that Bush was seriously mulling launching airstrikes against invading Russian troops in Georgia back in 2008. Have no way of knowing if it's true or not, but...it's something.

More recently, we have the US-Russia situation in Syria. A couple PODs for this one, though it might be too recent. Back in October, the Obama administration was considering launching airstrikes against Syrian government targets even as Russia threated to retaliate for any such attack. And the Sharyat strikes in April could have been much, much worse had President Trump chosen to launch a saturation strike (a mass attack on Syrian military targets that would have almost certainly killed a few Russians - Defense Secretary Mattis had specifically cautioned against a saturation strike for this very reason) or had failed to inform the Russian military of their plans to strike Sharyat.

As for China, there was that Taiwan Strait Crisis back in 1996. Maybe the Chinese do decide to invade and the US intervenes to defend Taiwan.
 
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Something like the Donbass War goes wrong which results in Russia attacking Ukraine and NATO backing Ukraine in response; it's oddly reminiscent of how WWI started now that I think about it.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
I can't find it anywhere, but I recall an article that said that Bush was seriously mulling launching airstrikes against invading Russian troops in Georgia back in 2008. Have no way of knowing if it's true or not, but...it's something.

I seriously doubt this. Maybe it was satire you read. Bush 43 was a bit of a twerp but not to such depths of idiocy.
 
Former board member Chris Nuttall wrote a WWIII novel (he could write one every six weeks) featuring NATO vs. SCO with combat theaters in Europe and the South China Sea.

I can't remember the triggering incident though. I just remember he had the Russians using jihadist proxies against France and when people complained, he made the new French president a Muslim Franco-Arab who got the position after everybody above him was killed by said jihadis who rejected Russian blandishments and kept France in the fight. :)
 
There are the islands that China is militarizing in the disputed areas of the South China Sea--a potential conflict with japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the US.
 
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