Are we heading towards World War Three?

Against the backdrop of an escalating trade war between the US and China, Beijing has been testing the resolve of Taiwan and its allies.

In April, the People's Liberation Army 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. The Chinese military said they served as a practice run for a co-ordinated action that would "close in on Taiwan from all directions".

But 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".

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The growing tensions between the two superpowers, as well as "major wars in Europe and the Middle East" and "increasing cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea and Iran", all raise the prospect of a large-scale conflict within the next 10 years, said the Atlantic Council.

China

It has long been assumed that the greatest threat to geopolitical stability is rising tension between China and the US, which could force other countries to align with either superpower. This risked pushing the globe to "the brink of a third world war", the Straits Times reported.

While recent attention has been on an escalating US-China trade war, 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, 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.

This year China has "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.

China also "dramatically revealed" two new stealth warplane demonstrators, said The Telegraph, one of which is "unprecedented and without an unclassified equal anywhere in the world". Many observers anticipate that China will invade Taiwan by 2027 – and the Japanese air force is "getting ready for a war" in response.

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".

Russia

#Trump ran for re-election with a promise to bring about a quick end to the war in Ukraine, and since entering the White House has repeatedly used the threat of the conflict escalating into World War Three as a way to get both sides around the negotiating table. But months of diplomacy, bullying and flattery appear to have yielded little progress. Ukraine accused Russian troops of repeatedly violating the brief Easter ceasefire.

Now Vladimir Putin has declared a 72-hour ceasefire next week to mark Russia's "Victory Day", which marks Russia's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, on "humanitarian" grounds. The Kremlin said the truce would run from the start of 8 May to the end of 10 May. But Ukraine, which had previously agreed to the US proposal of a full 30-day ceasefire while Russia had not, "dismissed Putin's move as window dressing", said The Associated Press.

Putin also confirmed for the first time this week that North Korea had sent troops to Ukraine to fight for Russia. North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, highlighted the "firm militant friendship" between the two countries. Ukrainian officials say that North Korea has provided about 14,000 troops – suffering heavy casualties. Pyongyang has also provided Russia with "vast quantities of ammunition, artillery shells, ballistic missiles and other weapons", said The Guardian.

North Korea's entry into the Ukraine war has finally "globalised the conflict", said the Royal United Services Institute.

Zelenskyy has also claimed that hundreds of Chinese nationals are fighting in the Russian army, adding that the true number may be much higher. What's certain is that there are troops and mercenaries from multiple countries fighting in the region – and the worry is that the current, mostly geographically contained "hot war" is "threatening to engulf the entire European continent", said the Daily Mail.

Putin's propagandists this week declared that British blood "must be spilled", after they accused Britain of supplying the explosives that killed a top general in a Moscow car bomb last week. The Kremlin had initially blamed Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia, also warned that Nato's newest members, Sweden and Finland, are now potential targets of nuclear revenge, according to the TASS state news agency.

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 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

The ceasefire agreed between Hamas and Israel in January marked a reset for the Middle East, following a tumultuous period that started with the militant group's deadly 2023 attack on Israel, followed by the invasion of Gaza, the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

But what had been hoped would be the start of a long process of de-escalation in the Middle East turned out to be merely a short pause, before the resumption of fighting. The war in Gaza, which Israel restarted in March, "looks increasingly like it will lead to occupation for months or even years to come", said CNN. Israel now has troops in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. It has "vowed to demilitarise huge swaths of all three – backed by an unquestioning ally in the White House".

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

For the first time since Trump's return to the White House, the UK also launched strikes against Houthis in Yemen this week. Houthi leaders said the UK should "anticipate the consequences of its aggression", according to a statement published by Houthi-run Al Masirah TV.

Tensions are also 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.

North Korea

Since 2019, Kim Jong Un has "focused on modernising his nuclear and missile arsenals", said Sky News.

At the start of 2024 he announced that the hermit kingdom had eliminated "the idea of a peaceful unification between the war-divided countries", 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".

South Korea said this month 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".

This week North Korea conducted the first test-firing of the weapons system of "Choe Hyon-class", a 5,000-tonne warship it recently unveiled, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday. North Korea's navy may "accelerate nuclear armament for maritime sovereignty and for the sake of national defence", Reuters cites Kim as saying.

The new naval destroyer can apparently launch nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, which security and defence analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News "shows the level of their ambition".