Maybe at a first glance, but I'm not so sure. WWII was fought by millions of trained troops equipped with what was state-of-the-art technology at the time. From 1941 to 1944, on the Eastern Front alone the fighting involved some 3 million Germans vs. 6 million Soviet troops at any given time. Major bombing campaigns involved many hundreds, even a thousand aircraft per single raid. Etc. etc. In terms of sheer manpower (and all the logistics to make it work in the field) no war fought by any Western power in the last 30 years comes anywhere close.

Compared to WWI and WWII, modern standing armies in most NATO countries are basically organized and trained to do the work of an expeditionary corps, no more and no less. At this point, no NATO member (the US included) has the numbers, equipment and logistical capabilities to fight a full-scale conventional war, which would clearly require the mobilization of all available national resources.

The last conflict resembling anything like an equal match between two reasonably well trained and modern Western armies was probably the Falklands campaign, which was highly specific on several levels. Iraq in 1991 was not even sided by any means, and in 2003 it was basically a joke. That said, despite the incredible technological gap the Western involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan was ultimately unsuccessful (to put it mildly). So much for the wonders of technology. The lesson is pretty clear, high-tech toys alone don't win wars and never will.

And how about the public perception of war and human costs? Fast forward to the number of casualties. In WWI, the Brits lost almost 60.000 men (KIA, MIA and WIA) in a single day at the Somme. The public barely flinched, it was just another day at the front. According to modern statistics, a French infantryman in WWI had at least a 50% chance of getting killed or severely wounded in combat. But the French army kept on going anyway, the first large-scale mutinies only took place in 1917 and failed to produce any real effect.

These days, the US had a little over 58.000 KIA in Vietnam over a period of 14 years. This number of casualties caused an extreme public outrage and triggered a widespread counterculture movement. In Iraq in Afghanistan, the US has lost about 6.000 KIA since 2001 - even this is considered an atrocious figure by most and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are widely seen as extremely costly political and military blunders. Do we even have the stomach to fight costly, bloody wars any more?

I do hope we never find out. Even though the odds are not looking great with Turkey downing a Russian Su-24 just a few hours ago. But anyway, it's not a pleasant subject to discuss and I doubt WWIII is something that one could prepare for in any rational manner.