On the Prospects of a Third World War

Frederick the Nice remarks someplace that diplomacy with out power is like music with out devices. He forgot so as to add: when the music is off-key, one should attend to the devices. In at the moment’s world, diplomacy has repeatedly faltered. Because of this, states have been compelled to sharpen the tip of their missiles, with humanity being lurched from one disaster to a different.

Regardless of repeated Russian warnings, the Ukrainians went together with their suicidal try to hitch the NATO: the Russia-Ukraine Warfare has continued to say lives ever since. With dwindling navy support, Zelenskyy refuses to give up, and armed with an incredible military-industrial complicated, Putin refuses to speak peace. Equally in West Asia, Israel’s Netanyahu is averse to let go of his invasion of Gaza after the October 2023 Hamas missile assaults. Not least, because the Israeli missile strike on the Iranian Embassy in Syria, and Iran’s retaliatory measures in opposition to Israel, the newspapers have been rife with ominous reminders of humanity always staring on the unwholesome countenance of a Third World Warfare.

Chilly Warfare 2.0

For the final decade or so, the world has steadily cut up up into two nice hostile camps straight going through each other—the liberal-democratic led by america and its international allies and the authoritarian beneath the management of the China-Russia-Iran axis. With this emergent bipolarity, humanity has witnessed the return of localised armed conflicts and ‘worldwide’ wars. As a response to America’s international hegemony, Russia, China and Iran have been claiming their respective neighbourhoods as their unique spheres of affect; whereas, america has continued to say international geopolitical predominance, regardless of a big lower in its affect and attraction.

The foremost powers are modernising their respective nuclear arsenals in worry of who will launch the ‘doomsday’ weapons first; newer ‘good’ weapons, and cyber capabilities are being developed; small arms are more and more proliferated in unstable continents and areas like Africa, South and West Asia. There have additionally been exchanges of threats involving using nuclear weapons because the starting of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Relations amongst key international gamers—like India and China—in addition to geopolitical challengers equivalent to Iran, Pakistan and North Korea are riddled with armed conflicts and threats of warfare.

Inside this divided world, the smaller states are being coerced into selecting between the emergent blocs for guaranteeing their very own survival. There have been civil wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen during which the US and Russia have supported rival warring factions. In West Asia, Israel continues to take pleasure in American assist, whereas China and Russia have been vocal in opposition to the Israeli genocide of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia are additionally repeatedly clashing over geopolitical points. In West Asian geopolitics, ethnicity, spiritual rivalries, oil, typical wars, insurgency and terrorism, covert nuclear functionality, and overseas affect make for an explosive concoction. As soon as a spark is launched to such a concoction—doubtlessly bringing the US, Russia and China into its vortex—the resultant conflagration can destroy humanity as we all know it. To make issues worse, disaster diplomacy amongst states has plummeted to an all-time low and the United Nations has as soon as once more proved itself to be fairly dysfunctional. Taken collectively, at the moment’s crises level to this: it will not be too lengthy earlier than the lights exit, endlessly.

Analysing Chance

Nonetheless, all will not be misplaced. The world has witnessed the scare of a Third World Warfare ever because the finish of the Second, however a number of elements previously have been instrumental in lowering its chance. For the reason that Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West has been instrumental in pushing the ‘Third World Warfare’ narrative, which has reached a fever pitch because the latest Iran-Israel skirmishes. The US has assumed these as oblique challenges to its international affect. Vested pursuits within the media have, subsequently, perpetuated the fears of localised or dyadic wars escalating right into a ‘World Warfare’—with predictions made by historical soothsayers as proof—since these crises are engendered by states which might be unanimous of their understanding of American energy being the first impediment to their geopolitical targets, and have thereby, striven to undermine the US, even at the price of competing with the opposite supporters of the liberal worldwide order. The worry psychosis engendered via media frenzy is thereby aimed toward preserving the self-same order from revisionist challengers.

It could be argued, within the obverse, that modern worldwide crises synthesizing right into a ‘World Warfare’ is sort of low for the relevance and affect of the next elements. 

First, in selections of warfare and peace, cause trumps blind animosity. Rational actors—state or non-state—rarely determine on waging wars within the absence of a political object or concomitant cost-benefit calculation. The current set of main powers haven’t any political object to be gained by becoming a member of coalitions that will snowball into a bigger conflagration. 

Second, as outright state-on-state warfare of the outdated form has develop into much less helpful and fewer reasonably priced—evinced by the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine—warfare has assumed an unprecedented hybridity ensuing from the symbiosis between its navy and financial features. Since globalisation the political object of warfare has been complemented with the financial motive, whereby main powers—regardless of pursuing low-level militarised conflicts that may be rapidly terminated—have largely resorted to the weaponization of financial devices for reaching geopolitical targets. Given the large-scale destruction that the subsequent World Warfare is more likely to engender, states have been cautious to compete over geopolitical points not on the battlefields however ‘not directly’—via mechanisms of commerce, investments, manufacturing, and financial sanctions. 

Third, the war-fighting weaponry presently on the disposal of states is more likely to carry warning and never the thirst for a ‘complete warfare’ that will result in the mutual annihilation of the attacker and the defender: it should be remembered that the continuing wars are being fought with restricted means on a restricted scale, with diplomatic channels always open, and for the last word goal of securing geopolitical positive aspects. Put into perspective, the comparability of Israeli and Iranian power buildings by the media is a misnomer, particularly since that disaster has de-escalated as abruptly as its escalation in early April 2024.

Lastly, states have develop into way more insular within the post-pandemic world. This basically negates the performance of collective safety alliances, augmenting as a substitute, the viability of issue-based strategic partnerships during which main powers aiding their minor companions in military-strategic affairs shall decline to stake their very own survival upon conflicts that don’t straight threaten the safety of their respective homelands. Briefly, chopping throughout the panic of doomsday, it could be surmised that the identical states locked in a scenario of everlasting disaster shall be unwilling to enunciate a bigger conflagration within the type of a Third World Warfare due to very geopolitical and geoeconomic causes impelling such crises.

[Header image: Ukrainian T-72AV with a white cross during the 2022 Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive. Credit: AFU StratCom, via Wikimedia Commons]

Dr. Souradeep Sen is Assistant Professor of Political Science, College of North Bengal, India. His present educational pursuits cowl geopolitics, strategic tradition, worldwide safety, and navy historical past. The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer.