To qualify that, I'm not necessarily predicting a world war, although that might happen in a window of more like 2-8 years. What I'm looking at is internal social instability in countries around the world as economies come under pressure and more people go hungry or see the hopelessness of their situation.

This, in turn, may lead to international war.

And proactive, powerful countries like China and the US, seeing this internal conflict on the radar, may invite an international conflict to deflect internal strife and incite nationalism in order to squelch voices of decent.