Are we getting close to World War Three?

Geopolitics has taken a back seat to economics as China and the US trade tit-for-tat tariffs that threaten to develop into a full-blown trade war.

Last month, Singapore's prime minister, Lawrence Wong, warned rising tensions between the world's two largest economies could have disastrous consequences. Splitting into two blocs and forcing other countries to align with either superpower risked pushing the globe "to the brink of a third world war", the Straits Times reported.

China

It has long been assumed that the greatest threat to geopolitical stability is the growing tension between China and the US.

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Both superpowers are currently "locked in a competition for global influence", said Newsweek, "with Washington emphasising security alliances and Beijing leveraging its economic dominance".

While the current focus is very much on Donald Trump's economic brinkmanship, most expect a future military confrontation to centre on Taiwan.

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 and its ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which it has denounced as dangerous separatists, but who won an unprecedented third term early last year. At the same time, the US has ramped up its support – financially, militarily and rhetorically – for Taiwan's continued independence.

Last year, the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific, Admiral John Aquilino, told the US House Armed Services Committee that China wants to build up its People's Liberation Army (PLA) "on a scale not seen" since the Second World War.

Beijing and Washington have become "desensitised" to the risk these circumstances pose, said Foreign Policy, and in the "militarisation of foreign policy and the failure to grasp the full significance of that militarisation, the pair are one accident and a bad decision removed from a catastrophic war".

Any invasion "would be one of the most dangerous and consequential events of the 21st century", said The Times in April 2023. It would "make the Russian attack on Ukraine look like a sideshow by comparison".

Human costs aside, any military conflict between the world's two largest economic powers would lead to "a severing of global supply chains, a blow to confidence and crashing asset prices", said The Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott in 2023. "It would have catastrophic economic consequences, up to and including a second Great Depression."

Russia

Vladimir Putin welcomed Trump's return to the White House by saying the two men share the goal of avoiding "World War Three", and that Russia is "open to dialogue with the new US administration on Ukraine and nuclear arms", reported The Standard.

Yet even as hopes of a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine grow, Eastern European members of Nato are dramatically ramping up defence spending as they look to protect their borders.

Nearly three years on from Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, "liberal-democratic" states across Europe "are in agreement", defence expert Francis Tusa said in The Independent: if Kyiv "loses its struggle against Russia, the latter may be emboldened to take military action against the Baltic states, Finland, or even Poland".

Many defence specialists agree the timeline for this is "within three to five years" and would force Nato into all-out conflict with Moscow, which could in turn call on allies from China, North Korea and Iran 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.

Middle East

After more than a year of instability that has seen the Middle East come perilously close to an all-out regional war, there are hopes the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will finally lead to a de-escalation of tensions.

Netanyahu is "under immense pressure" from his far-right government partners to abandon the deal, Al Jazeera reported, while Trump has given "mixed signals on the prospect of a permanent end to the war" but for now, at least, the truce appears to be holding.

The ceasefire hopefully marks a turning point for the region, following a tumultuous 15 months that started with Hamas' deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, followed by the invasion of Gaza, the significant weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

Perhaps most concerning is the effect these events have had on Iran. The Tehran regime's "growing vulnerability" has alarmed its government, said The Washington Post, "stirring fears that its steadily escalating conflict with Israel could soon enter a more dangerous phase".

Tensions are already running "high" over Iran's nuclear programme, said Al Jazeera, "which critics fear is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon – something Tehran has repeatedly denied".

The US and UK are "increasingly concerned" that Russia is sharing secret information and technology with Iran, which could "bring it closer to being able to build nuclear weapons, in exchange for Tehran providing Moscow with ballistic missiles for its war in Ukraine", said Bloomberg.

Due to the "complex web of alliances and rivalries" across the Middle East, conflicts between Iran and Israel could see the US brought directly into the fighting, said The Independent. Trump has been a vocal hawk against Iran, so his second presidency will do little to temper concerns.

North Korea

Since talks with Trump in 2019 broke down over disagreements about international sanctions on Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un has "focused on modernising his nuclear and missile arsenals", said Sky News.

In a symbolic yet nevertheless strategically important move, at the start of 2024 he announced that the hermit kingdom had abandoned "the existential goal of reconciling with rival South Korea", said The Associated Press.

The South has since scrapped a "2018 non-hostility pact aimed at lowering military tensions", The Independent said. This indicates the "psychological warfare" had "tipped over into real escalation".

In a further sign North Korea is increasingly willing to wield influence beyond its borders, its troops have been deployed against Ukraine to help Russia with its war effort. Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had captured two North Korean soldiers, with around 300 believed to have been killed in the war, according to Seoul's National Intelligence Service.

North Korean units have reportedly now been pulled from the frontlines after experiencing punishingly high casualty rates. But Ukraine's former military commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny said the involvement of North Korea in the conflict means, in a sense, the Third World War has already begun.