My take is that Damascus is the oldest capital city in the world.
The internal communications error stifling creative activity (peace) is substituting ruach for neshemah. In my microcosm I have been experiencing this priestcraft. The Spiritual Leader protects the error that the Breath of Life God breathed into Adam's nostrils is ruach, not neshat chaim. This installs a fundamental sense of separateness instead of unity. Ergo comes fear and subsequently war. It makes sense that this conflict (finally the government created by the people can sustain a prolonged conflict with the people who created government) would begin in Damascus and spread, or at least threaten to spread to the Five Boroughs.
One might remember that the Patroon ancestor from my father's (bloodline heritage) side was Teunis Jansen Laenan VAN PELT who build a large wall around his Manhattan estate, the namesake for Wall Street. The representative allegory for WWIII as you put it would indeed be METRO v. People as you call it - Occupy Wall Street.