Are we heading for World War Three?

Donald Trump’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro could provide the pretext and template for China to attack Taiwan or Russia to further undermine Ukraine and even move against Europe, security experts have warned.

Saturday’s stunning raid by US special forces “is the clearest evidence yet that geopolitics has reverted to the Cold War doctrine of spheres of influence”, said Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd. “For the US, their priority is the Western hemisphere. China’s sphere extends to Taiwan, and Russia’s to Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union” and all of this potential hotspots could quickly turn into a full-blown global conflagration.

“From Taiwan to Estonia and Latvia, the prospect of a Third World War feels closer than ever”, said The Telegraph – “unless you’re one of those people who thinks it’s already begun.”

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Russia

During the Cold War, there was “always potential for accidental conflict”, said UnHerd’s Munchau but “things are totally different now. On both sides of the Atlantic, in Russia and across Western Europe,” there is a “rhetorical readiness for armed conflict on a never before seen scale.”

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, recently said that the West “must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”, while the UK’s Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton said the situation was more dangerous than at any time during his career: “Sons and daughters. Colleagues. Veterans… will all have a role to play, to build, to serve, and if necessary, to fight,” he said.

As Vladimir Putin continues to stall on peace talks, he has also warned that he is ready to fight a war with Europe if necessary. Were this to happen, it would likely come through the provocation of Nato’s European allies at a “number of pinch points – especially in the Baltic, the North Atlantic and through the Balkans”, said The Independent.

In anticipation of this, Moscow has already begun testing Nato defences and resolve with a series of airspace incursions into Estonia, Romania and Poland.

In a sign of the growing fear that an attack could be imminent, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland and Finland, have announced they are withdrawing from a landmark landmine treaty as they seek to shore up their border defences with Russia. There have also been renewed efforts to revive a Baltic “bog belt” along Nato’s eastern flank to protect Europe from Russia.

While the Baltic states are the most likely target for a Russian invasion, Moscow has also begun ramping up production of hypersonic missiles. The intermediate-range weapons “are capable of striking targets up to 3,415 miles away, which puts locations across Europe and even the western US within their potential reach”, said The Economic Times.

The successful test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile in October – nicknamed the “Flying Chernobyl” because it emits radioactive exhaust from its unshielded reactor – marked yet another escalation. Tests of the missile show it can fly for 15 hours non-stop and cover a distance of 14,000 km (8,700 miles) but its true range could be “unlimited”, Putin said. The Russian president's claim to now have the “highest level” nuclear arsenal in the world is a “chilling World War Three warning”, said The Mirror.

Putin’s latest threats to expand the war into Europe “fit into a decades-long history of Russian – and Soviet – bluster towards the West”, said The i Paper. “But they also raise the question of whether the Russian president, who has turned his country into a de facto war economy, has the military and financial resources to pursue a wider conflict in Europe.”

The fear in Europe is that the Trump administration’s soft approach towards Moscow will “only embolden Russia’s military efforts in the region” and “encourage” Putin to “attack Nato next”, said Politico. European officials “do not think Putin’s ambitions end with Ukraine” and making territorial concessions would set a “concerning precedent” that other authoritarian regimes will follow.

If Russia takes military action against any Nato member state, it would force the military alliance into an all-out conflict. In that scenario, Russia could call on its allies to join in a global war. “Serious analysts express concern that Russia may escalate and the world, as it has done so many times in the era of mass warfare, may sleepwalk its way into an engulfing conflict,” said The New Statesman.

China

It has long been assumed that the greatest threat to geopolitical stability is rising tension between China and the US, with Taiwan expected to be at the centre of any future military confrontation.

Beijing sees the island nation as an integral part of a unified Chinese territory. It has, in recent years, adopted an increasingly aggressive stance towards the island. It has denounced Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which won an unprecedented third term last year, as dangerous separatists. At the same time, the US has ramped up its support – financially, militarily and rhetorically – for Taiwan’s continued independence.

Last year, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted live-fire military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, drills seen as a “dress rehearsal for a possible real blockade in an attempt to overthrow the government in Taipei in the future”, said the BBC.

China has also “held live-fire drills on the doorsteps of Australia, Taiwan and Vietnam”, tested new landing barges on ships that “could facilitate an amphibious assault on Taiwan”, and unveiled deep-sea cable cutters “with the ability to switch off another country’s internet access – a tool no other nation admits to having”, said The Guardian.

Many observers anticipate that China will look to invade Taiwan by 2027, which is seen as a “magical” year because it marks the centenary of what was to become the PLA, said Robert Fox in London’s The Standard. The idea that this anniversary could coincide with a serious military operation by Beijing has become a “fixation” in Washington, said Defense News.

If there’s one ally almost every Republican in Washington wants to defend, it’s Taiwan against China, said Time. Beijing knows a full-scale invasion of Taiwan would “risk direct war with the US”.

But with Donald Trump’s current obsession with regime change in Latin America, as well as his attempts to secure peace in Ukraine and maintain the ceasefire in Gaza, Xi Jinping might well calculate the US president is “too distracted” to “react in time, if China were to try a decisive move against Taiwan by overt or covert means”, said The Independent.

A “mistimed and botched” bid for Taiwan could “provoke a huge reaction in all the major regional players, including India and Japan, Australia and America” and “in a worst-case scenario, it risks a truly global confrontation”.

Politicians, military chiefs and industry leaders “can no longer afford to ignore the prospect of a full-scale invasion”, said the Daily Mail. In such a scenario, the US – Taiwan’s most powerful protector – may be forced to respond in its defence. It would “shake the foundations of the world as we know it and could well trigger a third world war”.

Middle East

Trump has renewed his threat of US intervention in Iran as the country continues to be rocked by a wave of protests over the failing economy.

Iran’s foreign ministry has already accused the US president of “escalating tensions in the region” with his response to the demonstrations against the regime. Trump has warned that Iranian authorities would face consequences if more protesters died.

“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” he told reporters.

Tensions between Iran and the US and Israel, whose leader Benjamin Netanyahu further stoked Tehran’s anger by expressing his government’s “solidarity with the struggle of the Iranian people”, are at the worst levels since the 12-day war last June.

For a few days in the summer, it looked as though fighting between Israel and Iran would explode into an all-out regional conflict, dragging in the US and Western allies on one side, and potentially Russia and China on the other.

While both sides backed down following a frantic 24 hours in which the US launched air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the threat from Tehran’s nascent nuclear programme remains “heightened”, said Paul Ingram, research affiliate for the Centre of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, told the The i Paper.

Claims by Trump to have eliminated the regime’s nuclear capabilities for the foreseeable future were quickly debunked by the Pentagon. And with Iran still holding 440kg of highly enriched uranium, “it all adds up to quite a dangerous situation where their capacity has been marginally degraded, but the incentives for Iran to go nuclear have gone through the roof”.

The weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the decommissioning of Hamas mean Iran has lost much of its proxy influence across the region. Now under pressure domestically, there is concern that a crackdown by the regime on protesters could draw a US response that destabilises the region once again.

North Korea

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles from its capital Pyongyang towards the sea off its east coast less than a day after its leader Kim Jong Un called on munitions factories to more than double their capacity to produce tactical guided weapons.

Kim has “made a series of visits to factories that build weapons, as well as to a nuclear-powered submarine, and has overseen missile tests”, said CNN, all ahead of this year’s Ninth Party Congress of the Workers’ Party where he is expected to “set out major policy goals”.

Since the start of 2024, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has slowly moved the hermit kingdom away from “the idea of a peaceful unification” with South Korea, said The Associated Press. South Korea has since scrapped a 2018 non-hostility pact aimed at lowering military tensions.

“Kim’s government has repeatedly dismissed calls by Seoul and Washington to restart long-stalled negotiations aimed at winding down his nuclear weapons and missiles programmes, as he continues to prioritise Russia as part of a foreign policy aimed at expanding ties with nations confronting the US,” said The Independent.

North Korea has sent thousands of troops and weapons to fight in Ukraine, a move that “has raised concerns Moscow could provide technology that strengthens Kim’s nuclear-armed military”.

Last spring, North Korea conducted the first test-firing of the weapons system of its new 5,000 tonne “Choe Hyon-class” destroyer, according to state media KCNA. The new warship can apparently launch nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and that, security and defence analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News, “shows the level of their ambition”.

Around the same time, South Korea said its soldiers had fired warning shots at North Korean troops who had crossed the demarcation line between the two nations – some of whom were armed.

Dr Sean Kenji Starrs, lecturer in international development at King’s College London, told the Daily Mail that “the more likely scenario” than North Korea invading South Korea would be China “encouraging or pressuring” it to do so “in order to expel US troops”. That would “open a new front against the US so that China could more easily take Taiwan”.