Are we heading for World War Three?

Vladimir Putin is preparing to significantly escalate attacks on Ukraine, just days after the director of the CIA made a rare visit to Moscow to warn against attacking Nato countries.

Bloomberg is reporting that the Kremlin believes “negotiating frameworks have effectively collapsed and that the two sides are back at square one”. With peace talks at a “dead end”, Russia is “weighing an intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile strikes” on Kyiv, as well as “infrastructure targets in other cities”.

Moscow “increasingly views Ukraine’s strikes inside Russia as attacks by Nato countries because alliance members provide Kyiv with weapons and intelligence”, with people close to the Kremlin warning that the current fighting “has not yet reached its peak level of escalation”.

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“Connections between many of the world’s conflicts are multiplying”, Politico’s National Security Daily recently reported. The “trend is notable enough that officials, analysts and even investors are increasingly asking whether humanity is on the verge of a Third World War”. A Politico poll earlier this year found that many Western voters are also convinced a global conflict is imminent.

Russia

With peace talks over Ukraine stalled and Putin seemingly unwilling to end the war because of economic pressure from Western sanctions or Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and logistics networks, people close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg that Moscow “sees few alternatives to further escalation in pursuit of its war goals”.

Over the weekend, Putin accused Kyiv of opening “this Pandora’s box”, with Nato countries “increasingly concerned about the direction his thoughts might be taking”, said The Economist.

Putin has previously warned that he is ready to fight a war with Europe if necessary. Should this happen, it would probably 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.

The Kremlin has already begun testing Nato defences and resolve with a series of airspace incursions into Estonia, Romania and Poland. Last week, Finland requested Swedish help to monitor its border with Russia for incursions. Germany is expected to impose further sanctions for a drone attack at Leipzig airport in August, believed to have originated in Russia, while Slovakia last week foiled an arson attack on a drone factory.

Middle East

The fragile ceasefire between Iran and the US appears dead in the water, after both sides traded fire for the first time in a month.

On Sunday, US Central Command launched air strikes on Iran, after it detected Iranian efforts to deploy fresh mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has responded by targeting US military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

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. But Tehran’s ability to retaliate against Gulf states and Western bases in the region, and effectively block the strait, which before the war accounted for a fifth of the world’s seaborne energy supply, has surprised many and made the risk that a regional conflict could turn into a global one more – not less – likely.

There is a “sense in the Western military community” that, were tensions to escalate further, and “the US to get sucked into a ground war in the Middle East”, China and Russia would “waste no time” in exploiting the situation, said Richard Shirreff, former deputy supreme allied commander of Nato in Europe, in the Daily Mail.

Beijing could “seize the opportunity” to launch its “longed-for invasion of Taiwan”. That’s a Third World War “in anyone’s book”, with “all the major powers” going into the conflict “possessing weapons that could kill billions”.

Those who see “the spectre of a third world war are both right and wrong”, said Doug Stokes, head of the School of International Relations at Modul University Vienna, in The Spectator. They’re “wrong if they mean a singular, cataclysmic escalation”, but they’re “right” if they mean that a “structural contest between the United States and a loose Sino-Russian-Iranian axis” is “well under way”, and will be “fought through proxies, economic leverage, and the systematic contestation of strategic geography”.

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 in 2024, 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, in what was 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.

And in June, for the first time, Taipei reported mainland Chinese law enforcement vessels near an island it controls in the South China Sea, a “development experts say could form the basis of Beijing’s effective control in the waters”, said the South China Morning Post.

The Trump administration has long pursued a hawkish stance towards China and its ambitions on Taiwan. Yet its position has softened after starting its war with Iran, and seeing potential in leveraging Beijing’s influence with Tehran.

With Washington’s renewed focus on the Middle East, “what everyone’s looking at is whether China sees an opportunity” and goes for Taiwan sooner than expected, said The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Greenfield. “That would be how we got to a world war.” The Chinese “insist that’s not the case” but “it must be tempting for people in the Chinese government if they are intent on recapturing Taiwan”.

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 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”.

Invading Taiwan would “trigger Western sanctions far worse than anything imposed on Russia”, said Geoffrey Cain in The Spectator, and “after what happened to Khamenei”, Beijing “knows that escalation does not end with sanctions”. To “survive” any sanctions, China “needs countries willing to sell it oil off the books”, help it “move money past Western banks and provide political cover”, Iran and Russia were “supposed to be those countries”, so Xi may need to think again.

North Korea

North Korea has rejected US attempts to ease regional tensions and vowed to continue strengthening its nuclear force, in a major blow to the Trump administration.

Last month, the US president ordered a scaling-back of the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises between the US and South Korea, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong ⁠Un.

But in a statement carried by state media KCNA on Monday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Washington maintained its “invariable hostile policy to wantonly violate the sovereignty, political system and security interests” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea . Expecting any ‌easing ⁠of regional tensions was “pointless” and North Korea’s nuclear weapons were an “absolute guarantee for defending its sovereignty”.

Since the beginning of 2024, Kim 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 against Ukraine, a move that “has raised concerns Moscow could provide technology that strengthens Kim’s nuclear-armed military” in return.

In April, Kim hailed a “new history of friendship with Russia written in blood” as he presided over the opening of a memorial in Pyongyang built for his troops killed fighting in Europe. Moscow, in turn, pledged to sign a five-year plan for bilateral military cooperation.

The main concern, of course, remains the border with South Korea, one of the most highly militarised places on earth. Earlier this year, Kim called on top military officials to bolster front-line units and turn the border into an “impregnable fortress”. He has since overseen tests of a strategic, nuclear-capable cruise missile, as well as anti-ship, anti-submarine and air defence systems.