In the fallout storyline everyone but China and the US become so destitute the Europe goes as far as invading the middle east in an attempt to get the fossil fuels needed to restart their economies. In later years it was found that the middle east had long since run dry, and the US had the last remaining oil sources in the world (lol we're not drilling because polar bears).

Its implied that only China and the US were even capable of going to war. The rest of the world had become so impoverished that it had basically become a fallout world before the great war of 2077 even happened...

My question is as such: Could this actually end up happening? We already see thinly veiled wars for increasingly scare resources, and economies, for various reasons, breaking down. Could Fallout be a prediction of things to come?