What classifies a war as a 'World War'?

Question

What classifies a war as a 'World War'?

Answer 1

In general, historians looking back at it.  

There were other wars that could have been called "World Wars", such as those between England and France that spanned the world in the 1700's, but historians didnt call it a world war.

Answer 2

What makes a world war is exactly that, a world at war. When mutiple nations are invovled over multiple warzones then it is a world war.

Now if there is one warzone say Iraq with multiple countries fighting in that warzone then it is not a world war.  

Answer 3

This is an interesting question.

According to some historians, the US Revolution was the first "World War"

Why?

There was fighting in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, Central America and the far east.  Nations and peoples in all these areas, (not all to be sure) were involved.  

BTW although England lost hte revolution, they won the overall war.

Now to specifically answer your quesiton.  It is loosely defined by how mush of the world and how many nations are directly involved.  If countries from most of the 6 inhabited continents (Antarctica is not inhabited so I am not counting it here) are involved and/or a significant percentage of the world population is involved then it qualifies as a World War.

Examples (hypothetical)

A war between China and India would meet the significant portion of the world population but would not include enough of the planets landmass to qualify as a world war.  

A war between Nato and the Warsaw Pact (now defunct) had broken out, then all 6 contients and a large percentage of the world would ahve been ivolved.  Thus a World War.

While it has some definition, it is also partially subjective.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

May be if there are many participants in the war.

Answer 5

We only have two world wars to use as examples. Many people call the Cold War and War on Terror world wars, but history is very selective and discriminating. So what do the first world wars have in common? Some have stated it above: superpowers in opposite camps with the majority of the countries on one side or the other. Also the involvement of more than one continent and ocean. The Cold War falls short because it wasn't hot and the war on terror does not involve super powers in opposite camps....just a localized war among rumps states relegated to the heap of regional conflicts.

Answer 6

The fact that most countries are involved in said war.  

Answer 7

when the war is 5 against 1 or more countries we aren't in a world war now. the government won't even call it a war even tho it is!

Answer 8

A world war is a war fought by most of the planet's nations — across continents and for years. As a world war progresses, the combatants devote more, then most, of their resources to it, resulting in escalating destruction. As a term, world war usually is applied to the wars of (then) unprecedented scale fought in the 20th century: World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945).

Thus you would not classify the Korean War, The Vietnam War, the Iraqi wars (the war on terror) as world wars.

Answer 9

The dictionary definition of a world war is a war in which a majority the major nations of the world are involved and cause great death and destruction.

Over history few wars have involved  several of the major nations of the world.  While 2 or 3 maybe involved it was nothing like WWI and WWII where all the major nations were involved and the result was death and destruction not seen till that point.