The world does not realize that it is approaching World War III - FT

The number of armed conflicts has already reached its highest level since World War II. Russia’s war against Ukraine, the confrontation between the United States and Iran, and tensions surrounding Taiwan could escalate into a global clash. The Financial Times writes, reports UNN.

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As FT columnist Gideon Rachman writes, the wars in Iran and Ukraine dominate global news headlines, but the International Crisis Group recently counted 65 ongoing conflicts around the world—the highest number since the end of World War II.

The conflict in Sudan, fueled by external forces, is particularly bloody—it is punctuated by massacres of civilians and the displacement of more than 14 million people.

One important factor is the changing global balance of power, which is encouraging revisionist states to challenge the global dominance of the United States and its allies.

The relative decline in the power of the Western alliance has created opportunities for revisionist states dissatisfied with the current world order. So has the rise of anti-war sentiment in the United States, driven by disappointment with the outcomes of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This shift in the international balance of power has prompted Russia, Iran, and China to take greater risks. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not come out of nowhere; it was preceded by Russian military aggression against Georgia in 2008, as well as the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and military intervention in Syria in 2015. 

Meanwhile, China has built military bases on artificial islands that it created in the South China Sea and pushed the Philippines out of Scarborough Shoal, which is much closer to the Philippine coast than to China.

The emergence of a new generation of strongman leaders has contributed to this new atmosphere of international instability. Leaders such as Putin, Xi, Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu are nationalists and self-proclaimed men of destiny. 

However, there is a theory of peace underlying some of Trump’s proclamations, as well as Putin’s and Xi’s territorial ambitions. It is the idea that great powers should be allowed to dominate a "sphere of influence" over their immediate neighbors. Their smaller neighbors, such as Ukraine, Taiwan, Canada, or Cuba, should accept the dominance of a regional hegemon. Moreover, if all great powers respect one another’s spheres of influence, then global peace can be maintained.

According to this theory, this brutal realpolitik, rather than some imagined rules-based order, is the best guarantee of peace in the world. The idea may seem superficially plausible, but in reality it does not stand up to scrutiny. It ignores the views and interests of neighboring countries.

Previously

Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Budanov stated that World War III has been underway for a long time already and, in his view, began in Ukraine.