World War 3 has been feared for most of 2014 ever since the Ukraine crisis started, but most believe the worst outcome is a new Cold War. But Noam Chomsky believes that nuclear war is a real possibility if the United States and NATO intervene against Russia.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, Charles Krathammer claims Vladimir Putin is like a “weaker” Adolf Hitler for sending Russian nuclear bombers over Europe. But Putin believes the real threat to world peace is the Islamic State, not Russia’s nuclear weapons.

Noam Chomsky questions whether NATO needs to exist, claiming that the United States has used the European organization to assert influence on the rest of the world.

“The official justification for NATO was that its purpose was to defend Western Europe from Russian hordes who might attack Western Europe,” says Chomsky. “Its mission changed. The official mission of NATO became to control the international, the global energy system, pipelines. That means, to control the world.”

The Ukraine crisis is assumed to be potential trigger point for World War 3. Russian tanks and troops were allegedly sighted invading eastern Ukraine, although these reports remain unconfirmed. Chomsky believes the situation is tense enough that nuclear war could happen quickly.

“There have been many cases, not that serious, but pretty close, where human intervention with a few-minutes choice has prevented a nuclear war. You can’t guarantee that’s going to continue,” Chomsky claims according to Reuters. “It may not be a high probability each time, but when you play a game like that, with low probability risks of disaster over and over again, you’re going to lose. And now, especially in the crisis over Ukraine, and so-called missile-defense systems near the borders of Russia, it’s a threatening situation.”

The potential for World War 3 has Noam Chomsky criticizing the U.S. reaction Russia, which has caused Vladimir Putin to forge a closer relationship with China. The Russian economic crisis started when global investors pulled about $850 million out of the country in 2014, and the Russian economy increased by only 1.3 percent instead of the previously projected 3.9 percent. Economists believe sanctions by the European Union and the United States could cost Russia $100 to $200 billion a year.

In response, Russia and China agreed to swap swap $25 billion in Chinese yuan for Russian rubles over three years. They also created economic treaties to benefit both countries. There’s also talk of creating a $250 billion high speed rail project that would connect Moscow to Beijing, which would allow China to greatly lower the cost of trade with Europe. China will also benefit from contracts to purchase new Russian submarine designs in addition to S-400 missile systems and Su-35 fighter jets.

Fortunately, despite all the talk about nuclear war, Moscow is hoping to avoid World War 3. According to RIA Novosti, Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak claims they’re open to discussing Russian nuclear disarmament with President Obama.

“We want negotiations to happen, that’s what [Russian President] Vladimir Putin said the other day… The problem is that we are only interested in talks that would genuinely take Russia’s defense interests into account, which means they should include not just nuclear arms, but also a complex of new armaments that are entering service with the US Armed Forces and that infringe Russian strategic defense interests.”

Recently, the United States announced that the number of Russia’s nuclear weapons had surpassed the United States for the first time in many years. Experts believe Vladimir Putin and President Obama both believe their respective country will “win” the next Cold War.

Coalition air strikes have targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders near Mosul in northern Iraq, the US says.

Friday's strikes destroyed a convoy of vehicles, a US defence official said, but could not confirm whether IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was present.

Baghdadi made a rare public appearance at a mosque in Mosul in July.

IS militants control large areas of Iraq and Syria but have been targeted by hundreds of air strikes by the US-led coalition since August.

The British Royal Air Force has also carried out air strikes against IS locations and vehicles in Iraq

The statement said that 10 armed IS trucks were destroyed in the air strikes, which "demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the IS terrorist network".

The US, Iraq and other Western and Arab countries have formed a coalition against the militant group.

The Pentagon announced on Saturday that 1,500 additional US troops will join the 1,600 military advisers that are already in Iraq to assist the country's army.

President Obama also plans to request $5.6 billion (£3.5bn) from Congress, including $1.6 billion to be used to train and arm Iraqi forces, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Meanwhile, a wave of car bombs killed dozens of people across Iraq on Saturday.

The funeral of a senior police officer was held on Saturday after he was killed in a suicide bombing attack on Friday

At least 33 people died in a series of bombings in the capital, Baghdad, with the deadliest attack killing more than 10 in the Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City.

Meanwhile a suicide bomber targeted an Iraqi military convoy in the northern town of Baiji, north of Baghdad.

Eight people were killed including top police officer Lt. Gen. Faisal Malik al-Zamel, the Associated Press reported.

The British Foreign Office has said that it is aware of and looking into reports of the death of a British citizen in Baiji.

Following the suicide bombing on Friday, reports on Twitter claimed that a Briton died in the attack, but the BBC is unable to verify this.

Car bombings occur on a near-daily basis in Baghdad, and a recent surge of attacks that appear to be targeting Shia Muslims has increased sectarian tension with Sunni communities.

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Artillery fire rocked east Ukraine's rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Sunday as separatists appeared to be reinforcing frontline flashpoints and fears grew of a return to all-out fighting.

The boom of shelling rumbled on mid-morning on the edge of Donetsk, where government forces are facing off against insurgent fighters, but was less intense than overnight when heavy mortar fire was heard close to the centre for around two hours, an AFP journalist reported.

It was the most intense combat in the region since a barely-observed ceasefire was signed in September.

An AFP crew saw a convoy of 20 military vehicles and 14 howitzer cannons without number plates or markings driving through the rebel town of Makiivka in the direction of the nearby frontline around Donetsk, where Ukrainian troops are struggling to maintain a scrap of control.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) voiced concern Saturday after its monitors witnessed unmarked columns of tanks and troop carriers moving through east Ukraine in territory held by pro-Russia separatists.

The OSCE report came a day after Ukraine's military said a large convoy of tanks and other heavy weapons entered the country from Russia across a section of border that has fallen under the control of rebel fighters.

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Pro-Russian separatists sit in a trench at a check point near the village of Frunze, eastern Ukraine …

Russia denies being involved in the fighting in the east.

However, it openly gives the rebels political and humanitarian backing and it is not clear how the insurgents could themselves have access to so much sophisticated and well-maintained weaponry.

Last March, Russian soldiers without identification markings took over the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea, and Moscow annexed the region shortly after.

The OSCE reports from the east came as fears mounted of a total breakdown in the ceasefire signed in September in a bid to end the war, which has killed some 4,000 people, according to UN figures.

Ukraine's military said Sunday that their positions across the region were shelled 21 times overnight, leaving two servicemen injured.

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Graves of Ukrainian soldiers are pictured at the Lychakiv cemetary in the western Ukrainian city of …

That follows a bloody day Saturday when Kiev reported eight of its soldiers killed within 24 hours. Seventeen other soldiers were wounded in shelling, the military said.

- Tanks, trucks, cannons, tankers -

Several military columns have been seen by foreign journalists in the east in recent weeks, and Ukrainian officials regularly accuse Russia of covertly deploying troops.

However, these reports are often dismissed by Moscow and by the separatist leaders as inaccurate or invented. The OSCE's statement was important because it is likely to carry more weight.

"More than 40 trucks and tankers" were seen driving on a highway on the eastern outskirts of Makiivka, said the OSCE representatives, who are in Ukraine to monitor the two-month ceasefire.

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Pro-Russian separatists ride on top of a tank near the town of Krasnyi Luch in the Lugansk region, e …

"Of these, 19 were large trucks –- Kamaz type, covered, and without markings or number plates –- each towing a 122mm howitzer and containing personnel in dark green uniforms without insignia. Fifteen were Kraz troop carriers," the report said.

Separately, the OSCE monitors said they had seen "a convoy of nine tanks moving west, also unmarked" just southwest of Donetsk.

The OSCE said all these forces were on territory controlled by the separatists' self-declared Donetsk People's Republic.

The Swiss foreign minister and OSCE chairperson-in-office, Didier Burkhalter, said he was "very concerned about a resurgence of violence in the eastern regions of Ukraine", and urged all sides to act responsibly.

- New Cold War? -

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Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev attends a symposium on security in Europe in …

The conflict has sent relations between Western backers of Ukraine and Russia to their lowest level in decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is gearing up for a fraught week of diplomacy with visits to the APEC summit in Beijing and Group of 20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, where he looks likely to face a hostile reception from Western leaders.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said the world "is on the brink of a new Cold War" sparked by Ukraine.

"Some are even saying that it has already begun," Gorbachev said at an event Saturday marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Russia's economy is suffering from European Union and US sanctions imposed in response to Moscow's support for the separatists.

With Russia welcoming last week's rebel elections, which were billed as boosting the separatists' claim to independence, the sanctions look set to remain in place -- and possibly be reinforced.

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Jurf al-Sakhr (Iraq) (AFP) - A column of grey smoke drifts up from a burning building in Jurf al-Sakhr, south of Baghdad, while the broken roofs of some houses slope down into piles of rubble.

Homes charred black by fires line a narrow dirt road scarred by gaping holes that mark places where buried bombs either exploded or were unearthed by demining teams.

Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi hailed the expulsion of Islamic State (IS) jihadist group fighters from Jurf al-Sakhr as a major victory, and state TV broadcast days of coverage from the area.

But it will take months if not years to restore the area, in a sign of the enormous challenges Iraq faces in its battle over IS, which has seized significant territory in the country since June.

"This area represented an important location for (IS)," Karim al-Nuri, an adviser to Badr militia commander Hadi al-Ameri, told AFP in Jurf al-Sakhr.

Badr and other Shiite militias played a key role alongside security forces in the fight to retake Jurf al-Sakhr.

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Iraqi pro-government forces brandish their weapons as they gather on a road near the town of Jurf al …

Located between Baghdad and the shrine city of Karbala, the area in IS hands was "a major danger and a real threat," Nuri said.

While retaking Jurf al-Sakhr lessens the threat to those cities, the area has paid a heavy price as the fighting left a trail of destruction and forced people from their homes.

It is the same story for towns and cities across Iraq as security forces and pro-government fighters to battle drive back the Islamic State group.

And the damage will disproportionately affect areas such as Jurf al-Sakhr that are populated by Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs, which may deepen the divide between them and the country's Shiite majority.

- 'There is nothing left' -

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Iraqi soldiers drive a tank in Jurf al-Sakhr on October 27, 2014 after Iraqi military forces retook …

"They hit us with aircraft and mortars and artillery and rockets. This is what made us leave," said Abu Ali, a 45-year-old farmer who fled the violence along with his mother, wife, and two children.

"It became a military area," he said. "We did not bring anything with us -- we escaped with our lives."

Houses and cars were blown up and orchards uprooted, he said.

"There is nothing left."

In Jurf al-Sakhr, dozens upon dozens of once-soaring palm trees have been toppled, laid out in rows in fields along the road, while abandoned goats, cows and other livestock wander loose.

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Members of Iraqi pro-government forces celebrate near the town of Jurf al-Sakhr, on October 30, 2014 …

Some of the roads winding through the palm trees and farms are navigable, but bombs planted by IS still make other parts impossible to pass.

The burned bodies of three militants lie decomposing in the sun next to the smashed remains of a Humvee armoured vehicle near one bomb-laden stretch of road.

While security forces were deployed in parts of the expansive district, Shiite militiamen, who in some cases have acquired US-made military equipment, made up the bulk of the forces.

An M113 armoured personnel carrier driving down one road had been spray-painted with the name of Shiite militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq, while another flew the flag of Ketaeb Hezbollah, a group on Washington's list of terrorist organisations.

- Bomb-rigged buildings -

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Iraqi special forces search a house in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, north of the Shiite shrine city of Ka …

In the town of Jurf al-Sakhr, which shares its name with the surrounding area, shops have been smashed in the fighting, windows shattered, metal roofs scarred by shrapnel.

Graffiti, much of it Shiite religious references, covers walls, buildings and even a mosque.

Before they were forced out, the jihadists rigged buildings in the town with bombs that have yet to be defused, militiamen said.

A building that may once have been the police station has been reduced to a pile of broken concrete.

It is not always clear who is responsible for the destruction, with all the combatants having played a role.

But at least some of the fires in the area have been set by militiamen, with one Ketaeb Hezbollah fighter saying that: "We burned those houses belonging to (IS)."

Abu Ahmed, a 55-year-old farmer who fled the area, was critical of the militiamen, who are viewed with suspicion by many Sunnis due to their involvement in sectarian violence in past years.

"What did (they) liberate? This militia killed us, bombed us, destroyed our houses," Abu Ahmed said.