Defence experts believe the world may be ‘edging towards a form of conflict that is already under way, even if not yet fully recognised’

By The Week UK

last updated 4 days ago

A majority of Brits do not believe the UK could fight and win a major war, according to new YouGov polling, revealing deep public unease about the state of global politics.

Nearly 55% of those polled have little or no confidence in Britain’s ability to define itself, and 53% think a third world war is likely within the next five to 10 years. Reflecting their fears, Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, told the Sunday Express that the UK could be “drinking in the last chance saloon” and running out of time to rearm.

From the Middle East to Ukraine to Taiwan, “crises are no longer isolated events” but “increasingly interconnected by allies and enemies sharing military capabilities, intelligence and motives”, said The i Paper. Rather than a world war sparked by “a sudden single trigger that would divide the world into opposing camps overnight”, defence experts now believe we may be “edging towards a form of conflict that is already under way, even if not yet fully recognised”.Article continues below You may lik

Middle East

Peace talks between the US and Iran suffered a setback over the weekend after Donald Trump cancelled his envoys’ trip to Pakistan, even though a ceasefire agreement appears to be holding.

The threat of an escalating conflict in which the US deploying ground troops in Iran has, for the time being at least, receded. But, with the ever-more erratic US president keen to secure a foreign policy win at any cost, it has not disappeared entirely. And there’s a “growing sense in the Western military community” that, were “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.

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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 “fought through proxies, economic leverage, and the systematic contestation of strategic geography”.

Russia

Russia was seen as the biggest threat to peace in Europe, according to Politico’s February poll of more than 2,000 people in the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany.

With peace talks seemingly stalled, Western leaders have repeatedly warned of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s territorial demands.What to read next

• Putin’s shadow war
• Why the UK is not ready for war
• Will increasing tensions with Iran boil over into war?

Addressing the Munich Security Conference, Keir Starmer said Europe “must be ready to fight” Russia “if necessary” as the danger continues to grow. The 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”. This echoed comments 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.

Moscow has already begun testing Nato defences and resolve with a series of airspace incursions into Estonia, Romania and Poland.

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 the growing fears that an attack could be imminent, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland and Finland, have 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.

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, 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.

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.

But, with the Trump administration concentrating 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

At the start of the year, North Korea fired several ballistic missiles from its capital Pyongyang towards the sea off its east coast. It followed calls by the country’s leader Kim Jong Un for munitions factories to more than double their capacity to produce tactical guided weapons.

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.

This week, 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 state media 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”.

source https://theweek.com/92967/are-we-heading-towards-world-war-3