How close are we to World War Three?

Donald Trump’s back-to-back meetings in the Oval Office this week with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and then Benjamin Netanyahu showed the risks of regional wars escalating into a global conflict.

Stalled peace talks over the war in Ukraine and renewed US attacks against Iran are just some of the reasons why the majority of Western citizens polled by Politico earlier this year believe the world is becoming more dangerous. Increasing numbers of people think World War Three is likely to break out within the next five years.

The latest escalation in the Middle East in particular has “reignited the debate about the start of World War Three”, said Nickolay Kapitonenko, an associate professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, in the Brussels-based International Politics and Society journal.

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With the consequences of the Israeli and US actions “being felt to varying degrees far beyond the region” and the interests of various powers at stake, “opinions range widely, from the belief that there can be no Third World War because of the existence of nuclear weapons, to the conviction that it has already begun”.

Middle East

The fragile ceasefire agreed last month between Iran, the US and Israel appears to be in “tatters”, said CNN, and a return to all-out fighting is a growing possibility. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed again, both Iran and the US have ramped up strikes on targets across the region and claimed control over the strategically important waterway.

The US is continuing to carry out air attacks against key targets inside Iran, and there remains a “sense in the Western military community” that, were tensions to escalate again, 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”.

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 strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, has surprised many and made the risk that a regional conflict could turn into a global one more – not less – likely.

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”.

Russia

June marked a “sombre milestone” in Europe, The Economist reported. At 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months, on 11 June the war in Ukraine had lasted longer than the First World War.

But even as peace talks continue to stall, Western leaders have repeatedly warned of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s territorial demands.

Addressing the Munich Security Conference in February, Keir Starmer said Europe “must be ready to fight” Russia “if necessary” as the danger continues to grow. The then UK PM warned that “Russia’s rearmament would only accelerate” once a peace deal in Ukraine is agreed and that “we must answer this threat in full”. His comments echo those by Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, who said the West “must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”.

Putin has also 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.

In May, Russia held its largest military exercises in years, a rehearsal for what its defence ministry called the “preparation and use of nuclear forces in the event of a threat of aggression”. A total of 65,000 troops, more than 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 surface vessels and 13 submarines, including eight strategic nuclear submarines, took part in three days of drills across Russia and close ally Belarus.

Moscow has highlighted “broader European rearmament and debates surrounding nuclear sharing”, as well as statements by Lithuania’s foreign minister about a potential strike on the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, as “justifications” for its latest military exercises, said Defense News.

At the same time, the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Moscow is “intensifying its covert and overt attacks against Europe” in preparation “for a possible Nato-Russia war in the future”.

In a sign of growing fears at an imminent attack, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland and Finland, last year announced they are withdrawing from a landmark landmine treaty as they seek to shore up their defences on the border with Russia. There have also been renewed efforts to revive a Baltic “bog belt” along Nato’s eastern flank to protect Europe from Russia.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, few, if any, expected fighting to go on as long as it has. However, like the world wars that preceded it, the conflict has “transformed Europe’s geopolitics by reshaping military alliances and driving a defence build-up not seen in decades”, said The Irish Times.

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 last year, 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 the Trump administration’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 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.

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’s leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a cruise missile launch and the test of several other weapons aboard Pyongyang’s new 5,000-ton naval destroyer, state news agency KCNA reported earlier this month.

The tests of a strategic, nuclear-capable cruise missile, as well as anti-ship, anti-submarine and air defence systems, comes just a few weeks after Kim called on top military officials to bolster front-line units and turn the border with South Korea into an “impregnable fortress”.

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. Last spring, North Korea conducted the first test-firing of the weapons system of its new 5,000 tonne “Choe Hyon-class” destroyer, according to KCNA. The new warship can apparently launch nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and that, security and defence analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News, “shows the level of their ambition”.

Around the same time, South Korea said 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.

Rather than North Korea invading South Korea, “the more likely scenario”, Dr Sean Kenji Starrs, lecturer in international development at King’s College London, told the Daily Mail, 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”.