How close are we getting to World War Three?

Israeli air strikes on Gaza that have killed hundreds of people have sparked fears that the Middle East could be entering a new period of instability.

Escalating tensions in the region come as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin prepare to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine, which is part of a "concerted attack" by Russia against the West, "increasingly aided and abetted by Chinese President Xi Jinping", said the Daily Mail.

"Major wars in Europe and the Middle East, growing tensions between the US and China, and increasing cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran" all raise the prospect of another global conflict among great powers within the next 10 years, said the Atlantic Council.

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Middle East

The ceasefire agreed between Hamas and Israel in January marked a long hoped for reset for the region, following a tumultuous period that started with the militant group's 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.

Monday's "surprise attack" risks the prospect of a "full return to fighting in a 17-month war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and caused widespread destruction across Gaza", said The Guardian.

It also threatens to reignite tension across a region that "remains volatile", said The Spectator. Hezbollah has been under renewed attack in southern Lebanon and there is a growing fear Syria could descend into a full-blown civil war.

Over the weekend, the US launched a massive wave of air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, "key to a wider effort in the region against Iran and its proxies", said The Jerusalem Post.

Iran has "distanced itself from the Houthis", knowing that it is "playing with fire with the Trump administration". Washington has warned that Tehran could be held responsible for future attacks by the Yemeni rebel group.

The Iranian 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 long been a vocal hawk against Iran, so his return to the White House has done little to temper concerns.

Russia

With a ceasefire plan for Ukraine also "hanging in the balance", said Politico, there is much riding on a make-or-break phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

"We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I think we have a very good chance," the US president said, having warned on Friday that World War Three could "very easily" erupt if peace talks failed.

The "hot war" is largely contained to Ukraine and the Kursk region in Russia, said the Daily Mail, but it is "now threatening to engulf the entire European continent".

Finally alert to the threat posed by Russia, European leaders have rushed to increase defence spending, led by Poland, Finland and the Baltic States, who find themselves on the frontline of a new Cold War.

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.

China

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

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

At the end of January, 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.

The recent focus has been on an escalating trade war between the US and China, but most expect a future military confrontation to centre on Taiwan.

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 "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."

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. In January, 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.