Are we heading for World War Three?

Russia is again raising the spectre of World War Three as tensions between the West and the Kremlin over the war in Ukraine continue to escalate.

Comments made by the former Russian president Dimitri Medvedev last week were described as "reckless" by Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine. Just days later, Vladimir Solovyov, "the Kremlin's most prominent TV propagandist", warned that Britain is facing a nuclear Armageddon, "the latest in a long line of threats against the UK from Vladimir Putin's mouthpieces", said the Irish Star.

"From Iran's nuclear ambitions, to China's threats to Taiwan, to Putin's designs on a Russian sphere of influence in Ukraine and beyond", said The Telegraph, many of Britain's biggest companies are increasingly alert to the prospect of a major global conflict, with 2027 viewed as the "moment of maximum danger".

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"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.

Russia

Donald 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 the 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, with the US president growing "increasingly frustrated" with his Russian counterpart, said Newsweek.

As peace talks continue to stall, attention has turned to the battlefield, after Sunday's mass drone attack by Ukraine – codenamed Operation Spider's Web – destroyed scores of Russian warplanes and bombers in one of Kyiv's most successful operations of the war so far.

The Kremlin has tried to play down the assault – Sky News described it as a "hugely embarrassing breach of Russia's defences" – but there are fears Putin could use it as the pretext to launch a massive retaliatory strike.

Speaking to Metro, Professor Stephen Hall from Bath University said the Russian leader might not try to justify the use of nuclear weapons. Citing the Kremlin's newly updated nuclear doctrine that states that any attacks on military infrastructure that "disrupt response actions by nuclear forces" could lead to nuclear retaliation, Hall said: "Technically, this fits inside what could lead Russia to engage in nuclear war", adding that "if they did use nuclear weapons, that would be game-changing".

Even without the use of nuclear weapons, "in Ukraine the structural elements of the world war come together", 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 their 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".

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. 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.

Iran is "on the brink" of rejecting US proposals on the future of its nuclear programme, said The Guardian, "after the US draft insisted that Tehran would have to suspend the enrichment of uranium inside Iran and set out no clear route map for lifting US economic sanctions".

A "complete breakdown in the talks would trigger European moves to impose heavier UN sanctions on Iran and a possible joint US-Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. That could see Iran in turn launch reprisals."

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".