User:JohnSmithsky/sandbox

World War III
Date 19 August 2005 - 24 July 2008 (2 years, 11 months, and 5 days) Location Middle East, Eastern Europe, Korea, and Southeast Asia Result Inconclusive
Belligerents
Moscow Accord Soviet Union Mongolia Czechoslovakia Shanghai Pact China North Korea Hong Kong Macau Vietnam-led coalition Vietnam Pathet Lao FUNSK Axis of Resistance Iran East UAR Hezbollah Hamas PFLP DFLP	NATO United States Canada Australia Turkey Italy France United Kingdom Germany Saudi-led coalition Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates Oman SEATO Thailand Laos Cambodia Malaysia EATO Taiwan South Korea Japan Non-Aligned Allies: Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary Finland Sweden Israel	West UAR
Commanders and leaders
Vladimir Putin Dmitry Yazov Ali Khamenei Qasem Soleimani Bashar al-Assad Vasiľ Biľak Hu Jintao Kim Jong Il Nambaryn Enkhbayar Nông Đức Mạnh Hassan Nasrallah	George W. Bush Dick Cheney Abdullah of Saudi Arabia John Redwood Lothar Bisky Junichiro Koizumi Lee Myung-bak Surayud Chulanont Bhumibol Adulyadej Ehud Barak	Khaled Mohieddin Ali Salem al-Beidh
Casualties and losses
Military dead: 5,966,000+	Military dead: 3,649,000+	Military dead: 791,000+

The Red Dusk War was a global conflict fought via proxy primarily between two coalitions: the Western Allies and the Eastern powers. Every major power participated, and proxy conflict simultaneously took place across nearly every continent in the world. The main areas of conflict were the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Korea, and Southeast Asia including parts of South China. It was the deadliest conflict in the modern era since the end of World War II, and led to the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The causes of the war included unresolved tensions between the great powers following the United State's perceived victory in the Cold War after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the Revolutions of 1989. The war is generally considered to have started on 19 August 2005 when a three-way proxy war broke out in the Middle East between Soviet/Iranian backed East Arabia, the American backed Saudi Arabia, and West Arabia, which had no external backing from a foreign power. It escalated two months later on 23 October when North Korea launched an invasion of South Korea and China invaded Taiwan. Four months later on 4 February 2006 the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Europe, and four months later from then on 16 June Thailand invaded Vietnam. The war formally ended on 24 July 2008 when world leaders met in Lucerne, Switzerland and negotiated the Lucerne Treaty which allowed the powers to keep the gains they made while preventing the war from escalating into nuclear weapons being used.

The term was first coined by U.S. president George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address on January 31, 2006, where he declared that the Western Allies were engaged in a fight with the Soviet Union, China, and Iran that was no longer just a cold war but also not a direct conflict.

After the Velvet Revolution was crushed in 1989, nationalist dissidents and liberal elements were forced to operate underground. These groups resorted to sporadic terrorist attacks to weaken the government and prepare for inevitable armed conflict. The government, still reeling from the consequences of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, such as stagnation, inflation, and corruption, had no strong structures in place to properly eliminate these groups. On 18 October 2000, a homemade bomb was detonated at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Prague which at the time was hosting it’s 30th party congress. Among the many killed and injured by the attack, the reformist president Miloš Jakeš was severely wounded and became forced to resign due to becoming incapable of serving even basic duties as president. The party quickly elected the hardliner Vasiľ Biľak to serve as replace him, and almost immediately after taking office he declared a state of martial law. Five months later on 20 March 2001 nationalist rebels, overwhelmingly supported by the masses, seized Prague and other key cities in the Czech Republic. On the same day Slovakian nationalists seized Bratislava and started waging armed uprising against the government. The faction of the government and military still loyal to Biľak, was forced into Bohemia from which was used as a base of operations to take back control from the rebels.

The term “crisis” has been commonly used to describe the conflict due to it’s short nature but drastic consequences. The conflict led to the worst refugee crisis in Western Europe at the time since the end of World War II, especially in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Germany. Massive ethnic tensions ensued with a minor period of pogroms against Romani people set up by Slovakian rebels and with communist forces persecuting Slovakian minorities. By the end of the conflict Czechoslovakia was widely regarded as a pariah state under a siege mentality with civil society utterly destroyed. The government's victory only proved to embolden authoritarian regimes worldwide, with soviet hardliners and regimes like Cuba and North Korea citing it as evidence of the resilience of totalitarian ideology against western liberalism. However, western historians treat it as a case study in authoritarian brutality.