A review of history in the early 20th century shows general civil unrest.
Widespread unemployment, unstable money supplies and other resources, and general disatisfaction with unresponsive authoritarian government led to increasing pockets of unrest in Europe, most especially Germany, in the Communist countries, and led to overthrow of governments resulting in even more oppressive regime seizing power. Economies were destablized; currencies were put at risk; and opportunistic nations looked for ways to capitalize on the unrest.
Result: World War I and World War II.
Now we see riots in Barcelona, in France, growing unrest in the UK, in Albania, and now in the Middle East with widespread government protests in Egypt and Jordan who, not insignificantly, are the only allies Israel has in that area.
Today oil is rising drastically and the markets are plunging as investors scramble to protect their assets in the fact of a possible civil war in Egypt alone.
And we have North Korea, China, Iran, Venezuela, and a few other places, all friendly to each other, and none the true friend of the Western World possibly looking for ways to capitalize on the unrest. Certainly Hamas and Hezbollah are watching and will likely make a move if they feel that world attention is diverted from Israel.
Are we moving to the brink of World War III?
WEll there are similarities between the turn of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st...
For example...
European nations were very economically interdependent, yet they still managed to get themselves embroiled in a stipid STUPID war that ultimately detroyed the world's economy for nearly two decades.
And now, now that the economic interdependence includes most of the world, we find ourselves seemingly poised for another convulsion of stupid war.
Wars are often about TRADE.
WWI certainly was the battle between the British, French, Austo-Hapburg and Romanov Empires to dominate world's trade and colonialization.
It isn't too much of a stretch to see something like that happening again, since once again, we are seeing rising mercantile empires (Asian) at odds with better established Western mercantile empires.
I don;t see anything on the horizon, but the stage is set for hostilities if the respective masters of these empries get especially stupid.