Third World War contains a systems analysis of violent conflict within the dynamic context of societal-systems development and the diffusion of insecurity through complex societal networks. The "third world war" is the most recent of the global systemic wars of the twentieth century that have characterized the deconstruction and transformation of the Euro-centric "colonial" global system in the age of complex technological systems, mass communication and open information. The "third world war" plagues the newly independent states of the Third World as they struggle to establish modern, central authority and guide their societies - distorted by years, decades, and even centuries of foreign domination - through the enormous challenges and pressures of the Cold War and Globalization Eras. Wars in the Third World are largely domestic, "subsistence" conflicts fought primarily by poorly organized militants, extremists, and involuntary amateurs; sustainable societal-systems are the principal victim.

The book theorizes a syndrome of pervasive insecurity and arrested development; it documents and explains the spatial patterns of protracted political violence in the aftermath of the Second World War, a period of steadily increasing magnitudes of violence, state failures, and humanitarian crises leading to a crescendo that marks the collapse of the Cold War and the emergence of the Globalization Era.

An electronic copy of Third World War: System, Process and Conflict Dynamics, written by Monty G. Marshall and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in 1999, is available through the links below. The Adobe Acrobat files listed in the table provide exact reproductions of the original published text and can be cited as they appear.

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