How close are we to World War Three?

Russia's foreign minister has warned that the nuclear Doomsday Clock "continues to tick toward midnight".

Speaking at Turkmenistan's ministry of foreign affairs, Sergey Lavrov said that while Russia was working to avoid nuclear confrontation, "global security is perhaps the most critical issue" facing the world today.

"It's become almost commonplace to talk about the possibility of World War Three," he said. "That's especially alarming given the resurgence of aggressive, belligerent attitudes across Europe. As if two world wars – and countless smaller conflicts over the centuries – weren't enough for today's EU leaders."

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While many will question this narrative, many have similar concerns. "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, a view backed by a growing number of US and European citizens, according to recent YouGov polling.

Middle East

Earlier this month, in the space of little more than 24 hours, the US launched air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, and Iran retaliated against an American airbase in Qatar. Just hours later Donald Trump announced a US-mediated ceasefire, which after an initial wobble has held so far.

It marks the latest flashpoint in a region that has been in a state of chaos ever since Hamas launched its surprise attack against Israel on 7 October 2023. The subsequent invasion of Gaza, weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria were all a prelude to the conflict with Iran.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu used his decades-long concern over the country's nuclear programme as the pretext to launch a massive pre-emptive attack against nuclear and military installations as well as leading members of the regime.

Iran called the attack a "declaration of war", and Israel's actions were condemned by Russia and China, although both shied away from offering anything other than strong words.

Yet while the ceasefire has pulled both sides back from the brink, "the region is far from at peace", said the Financial Times. "The truce – thrashed out in a couple of hours with terms not made public – is inherently fragile." Israel has vowed to respond "forcefully" to any violation, while Iran has said its forces were poised "with their fingers on the trigger" to retaliate.

"The current moment has an air of real instability," said Michael Wahid Hanna at Crisis Group. "We're in a much better place than where things might have headed if we got into a kind of full-blown escalatory spiral, but a lot of questions remain."

But for all the fears that this could have been the start of a global conflict, history would suggest otherwise, said Jason Pack, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and host of "The Disorder Podcast", in Metro.

"Arab-Israeli wars historically end when superpowers bring them to an end. Both the Suez War and the 1967 War were brought to an end by America," he said. Meanwhile, "two world wars have started in Europe."

Russia

Trump ran for re-election last year 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.

Having suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield, Vladimir Putin had been hoping an extended period of unrest in the Middle East would distract Western resources and attention away from Ukraine.

Even with a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, the most recent Nato summit failed to address key concerns in Kyiv about the West's long-term commitment to the war. In a communiqué released at the end of a truncated summit in The Hague, the military alliance confirmed its "ironclad commitment" to collective defence, but noticeably failed to condemn Russia's invasion.

At the same time, Putin has 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. Putin has previously boasted these were "impossible to intercept", and "could inflict damage on par with a nuclear weapon – a statement that military experts have questioned".

Even without the use of these missiles, "the structural elements of the world war come together" in Ukraine, said The Guardian.

China, North Korea and Iran are all supporting Russia, either with military hardware or actual troops on the ground. The worry is that the current, mostly geographically contained "hot war" is "threatening to engulf the entire European continent", said the Daily Mail.

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, 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.

In recent months, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has 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.

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.

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.

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".

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".

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 in April 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".

In April, North Korea conducted the first test-firing of the weapons system of a "Choe Hyon-class" 5,000-tonne warship it recently unveiled, according to state media KCNA. 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".

Where do the UK, US, and Nato stand?

"Russia could be ready to use military force against Nato within five years," said Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte in a speech at Chatham House in London in June. Rutte reminded Nato nations of the history lesson that "to preserve peace, we must prepare for war" and announced ambitions to increase defence spending across Nato. "In terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of Nato produces in a year," Rutte said. Much of that Russian production is being used against Ukraine; only after a ceasefire will Russia be able to start amassing significant stockpiles. So, although the cooperation between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea poses a growing threat to Nato countries, the continuation of the war in Ukraine is effectively protecting them from direct Russian aggression.

"The Wargame" is a new podcast that imagines how a conflict between Russia and the UK would play out and invites former British politicians, including Ben Wallace, Amber Rudd and Jack Straw, to simulate managing the situation from a fictional bunker. In reality, the likely threat from Russia is not a "full-scale invasion" but a "test: something ambiguous and tricky that will divide Nato, and thus discredit it", said Edward Lucas in The Times. With Russia's new supersonic missiles able to stretch from Moscow to any point in Europe, we are all "the eastern flank now".

For more than 50 years, America's nuclear umbrella has served its purpose as a global deterrent but that stability is now looking shaky. Allies of the US have watched President Trump pull much-needed military support from Ukraine and they are reacting by increasing their own neglected defence resources, including, in the case of South Korea, considering "homegrown nuclear weapons". Japan and Taiwan might follow suit, said W.J. Hennigan in The New York Times. The UK depends on US technical input for its ballistic missile systems but France has always had its own nuclear arsenal. If states from Europe – where the US is gradually reducing its military presence – to Asia and the Middle East begin nuclear proliferation, the prospect of a significant world war is greater and America's relative power to stop it will be diminished.