Editing World war (section)

{{Short description|War involving major global states}}
{{other uses}}
[[File: M18 tank destroyer fires its 90mm gun point-blank at a Nazi pillbox emplacement to clear a path through a side street in Brest, France. September, 1944. (49811749312).jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|[[United States Army]] [[infantry]] supported by a [[M18 Hellcat|M18 tank destroyer]] advancing through a [[Nazi Germany|German]]-occupied [[Brest, France]] during [[World War II]], the most recent conflict to widely be considered a "world war"]]
{{War}}
A '''world war''' is an international [[War|conflict]] that involves most or all of the world's [[major powers]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/world%20war |title=World War |publisher=Merriam-Webster |access-date=11 November 2019 |archive-date=11 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191211050834/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/world%20war |url-status=live }}</ref> Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, [[World War I]] (1914–1918) and [[World War II]] (1939–1945), although some historians have also characterized other global conflicts as world wars, such as the [[Nine Years' War]], the [[War of the Spanish Succession]], the [[Seven Years' War]], the [[French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars]], the [[Cold War]], and the [[war on terror]].