Are we in World War III, and just don’t know it?

When US President Donald Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of “gambling with World War III”, in a furious exchange in the White House in March last year, it was easy, perhaps, to write the statement off as overblown rhetoric.That’s just Trump, trying to strongarm Zelensky into giving up stolen land to Vladimir Putin, in exchange for peace. But in the 18 months since that explosive episode in the Oval Office, the world’s mood has shifted.Mastheads from around the globe – from Japan to the United States and Britain – have begun asking if we are perhaps already in World War III, and just don’t know it. (Or, as The Hill put it on August 11: “World War III is already here, and Trump must rise to the challenge”.) Dialogue, the invite-only social club co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, was reportedly planning to hold a session on “Prepping for WWIII” sometime last month until this year’s conference was cancelled.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump during their heated Oval Office meeting in February.Bloomberg“It’s a fair question, and a number of people are asking it,” says Professor Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science expert, of whether we’re in third world war now, and just don’t know it.“Because we have two major wars that are impacting big parts of the world happening at the same time [in Iran and Ukraine],” says Pape, whose popular substack, The Escalation Trap, has been monitoring the Iran war. And watchers of history, he says, know how unexpected events can suddenly spark a massive escalation, and unforseen devastation, within existing wars.We might spy Iran holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage – causing the price of oil, fertiliser and other goods to skyrocket around the world – while the US threatens “D-Day”-like sanctions on Iran and bond markets dive, and think back, worryingly, to earlier times. The impact of hyperinflation on the Weimar Republic in Germany and the rise of the Nazis, for example, or the bloodless, economic warfare that led Japan to bomb an American naval fleet in Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941.That event changed the course of World War Two, drawing in the United States, and leading, eventually, to then-president Harry S Truman’s fateful decision to unleash the nuclear bomb.Japan shared no fealty to the Nazi ideology, the motivating force behind Hitler’s reign of terror that saw him direct Germany’s forces to invade country after country across Europe. Rather, Japan decided to bomb Hawaii, only after the US, Britain and the Netherlands had imposed a total oil and raw material embargo on it.The US Battleship Arizona topples into the sea after the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941. AP“So they thought, ‘our survival and our standing as a great power requires going to war with another great power’,” says James Der Derian, director of the University of Sydney’s Centre for International Security Studies.“So, who’s Japan in this instance?” he says, of our current geopolitical climate. “I’d be stressed to say China. But if China feels like its economy is being threatened by failure to have sustained and predictable flow of not just oil and fertiliser, but other things related to oil, and 20 per cent [of that] coming out of the Hormuz Strait, would they become more involved? So far they don’t have that projection of power. But they certainly do have, increasingly, ways of influencing behaviour in this part of the world.”China is riding out the fuel crisis.BloombergSo far, China seems to have been meeting its energy needs and a notable feature of the economic sanctions announced by Scott Bessent, US treasury secretary, last month, was the caution the US exercised towards Chinese interests, declining to target Chinese banks as part of the sanctions regime.When the war in Iran began in February, Trump declared the conflict would be over in a matter of weeks. That has not come to pass. So we watch, as it drags on, with a new front opening up in the Red Sea, in early August, when the Houthi Rebels, an Iranian ally, began striking oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. This threatens yet another oil export pipeline. In the last few days they took control of a strategic island, giving them control of the sea.All the while, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent refusal to cave to Trump’s demands to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza and Lebanon, in a bid to broker the peace with Hamas and Hezbollah, further prolongs the conflict.The good news? This does not mean we are in – or on the precipice of – World War III. So says Graham Allison, who served as American president Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of defence for policy and plans, and was a special adviser to the secretary of defence under then-president Ronald Reagan.The category “world war”, he says, refers to a global conflict with extraordinarily devastating consequences: like the 25 million victims in World War I, and the approximately 60 million dead in World War II.US troops taking part in Normandy landings in June 1944.Reuters“So I reserve ‘World War III’ for the catastrophe that is catastrophic beyond imagination,” says Allison, a Harvard University professor. For many historians, this has meant the dangling fear of another nuclear conflict. Or at the very least, two great powers engaging in battlefield warfare, in which other, smaller nations, are then forced to choose a side.Nevertheless, in 2017 Allison wrote that the world was lurching towards conflict unseen since World War II, culminating in his book Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? Does he still feel that we’re lurching towards conflict unseen since World War II?“Yes,” he says, over the phone from Massachusetts.He refers to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who argued that when a rising power threatens to displace an established ruling power, the stress and mutual fear this brings often makes violent conflict inevitable. (Thucydides had observed during the Peloponnesian War that “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”.)A Chinese sailor aboard a warship in the East China Sea.AP“I think if Thucydides were assessing the situation [now], he would say the two rivals are pretty much right on script,” says Allison, referring to China, the power on the rise, and the US, the established power that is waning.“The rising power is continuing to rise and to feel its oats, and to become more assertive, and continue to complain about the international order ... saying, ‘I need more say and more sway’,” he says, referring to Chinese encroachments in the South-China Sea, and military threats in and around Taiwan, a sovereign territory that Chinese leader Xi Jinping says is an inseparable and integral part of China.“And the colossal ruling power, the US, you can see all of the insecurities that come from them thinking, ‘Wait a minute. What’s happening?’” He refers to Trump’s decision to impose a 145 per cent tariff on China last year, saying: “So, I was quite worried that things could get out of control in an economic confrontation.”US President Donald Trump displays the signed executive order after his first tariff announcement.BloombergAllison’s nerves calmed after Trump backed down on his tariffs. (This, only after Xi responded by cutting the US off from critical minerals, without which the American economy and military industry cannot function.)But he plays out the scenario that could have resulted, had Trump not dropped his tariffs on China.“Well, let’s imagine now, a month later, and the American economy is grinding to a halt,” says Allison. “The fellow that runs Ford Motor Company calls and said, ‘I’m closing the production line for these trucks next week’, if this continues. And the people making Tomahawk missiles and F35s said, ‘We can’t continue producing these’.“So now, what would the US do? … [Likely Trump might think] ‘I’m going to try to cause pain to you’. And as I do that, could one thing lead to another and with a little bit of miscalculation you get to a war? Well, the US and Japan did, in 1941. So that’s one path.”Taiwanese forces conducting an anti-invasion drill on a beach.Getty Given the structural factors at play, he estimates the chance of China and the US becoming embroiled in a full-fledged war at 75 per cent.“That still leaves 25 per cent for human agency,” he says.A war? Imminently? “No, over the [next] decade or more,” he says. “Not tomorrow. But it could happen anytime because something crazy could happen in Taiwan tomorrow.”The US skidded close to such a crazy moment two years ago, he recalls, when two senators co-sponsored a bill requesting that the US recognise Taiwan as a non-NATO ally.“And I said, ‘This is crazy’,” says Allison, of the bill, backed by Democrat Bob Menendez, and the late Lindsey Graham, a Republican, which would also have provided billions of dollars in security aid to Taiwan. “I actually said to Senator Menendez, ‘I love your bill, I’m going to subscribe to it entirely. You should simply add to it, Fast track to war with China’.” The bill was later scotched.The late US senator Lindsey Graham co-authored a bill that led to tensions with China.BloombergBut a fight over Taiwan – a scenario that could see the US military firing on Chinese ships or planes, with other, smaller countries, joining each side – is just one other possible trigger for another World War, in the current geopolitical climate, according to experts.“An act of terrorism [is another],” says the University of Sydney’s James Der Derian. “It would take a mass casualty attack.”So far, he says, both Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Ukraine, and Trump, in Iran, have been “fairly restrained”.The US, for instance, has avoided an attack on the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island – a likely trigger for an escalation in conflict, given that it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s economic lifeline, processing about 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports. The US has not put marines on Kharg Island.GettyAnd Putin has reduced his threats to launch tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, in the years since late2022, when the CIA put the odds of him conducting such a strike at 50-50.But were Iran, or another power, to hit a US warship, and were American soldiers killed by a drone, it could trigger a wider war, or a catastrophic war that involved multiple major powers, says Der Derian.So, too, could an accident, or an incident that causes a cascade of events that leaders – whether they’re in Iran, Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Israel, China, or elsewhere – are unlikely to anticipate.Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sofie, in Sarajevo shortly before their assassination in June 1914. Their violent deaths unclenched World War I.Alamy Stock Photo“I always tell people to go back and look at 1914, which is the most incredible story in the world,” says Allison, of the unlikely killing that sparked World War I. “How could an assassination of an archduke [Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austria-Hungarian empire] by a terrorist in Sarajevo, which was an event so inconsequential that it didn’t even make the front pages, within five weeks, spark a fire that produced a conflagration that burned down essentially the whole of Europe?”But what of the risk, now, of nuclear warfare?The closest the world has come to World War III is often cited as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, only four powers possessed nuclear weapons. It was the psychologically and politically stable American president John F. Kennedy, who had his finger on the proverbial nuclear button.Now, nine powers have nuclear weapons. And the unreliability of the United States has led countries like South Korea and even Japan to begin debating the need to acquire their own nuclear weapons, leading to global fears over another burgeoning arms race.US president John F. Kennedy with generals in the White House during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.Getty Images, digitally tintedAnd Trump, a famously tempestuous leader, is commander-in-chief of the US armed forces. Is he a risk factor for the start of nuclear war?“I would say that answer is yes and no,” says Allison, who advised Reagan during the years when the Cold War was still underway.“The bad news, is that he seems so erratic, and emotional and unpredictable that there’s hardly any statement you can make about which you’d say ‘He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t do that.’ The answer is, ‘Excuse me, I think he might, ok?’ Trump even, as he explains it, he likes chaos because in a chaotic situation, you can often push and get a little more of your way. So is he a risk factor? Yes.”But Trump’s disposition also leads to two positives, in terms of risk, says Allison.One, he is terrified of the prospect of nuclear warfare.And second, Trump is far from a hawk on China; to the contrary, he reveres Xi as a leader. “And he appreciates that China is a big strong country that the US is going to have to live with,” he says, an understanding that minimises the chance of escalation via the so-called Thucydides trap.At an event in Sydney last week, former prime minister Paul Keating argued that Trump’s engagement with Russia and, in particular, China was all about avoiding World War III. “That’s a big objective,” he told the audience.“This is why he’s friendly with Xi Jinping ... Trump does not want a military exchange with the Chinese, above all else.”Der Derian also finds reason for hope, noting that it’s been much smaller players during heart-stopping moments in previous conflicts who have made unexpectedly clear-eyed decisions. Which saved the world from possible nuclear armageddon.“Sometimes it’s just dumb luck,” says Der Derian, noting the event of October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.Deep in the ocean near Cuba, a US warship spotted a Soviet submarine, and dropped a non-lethal charge in the water nearby, in a bid to force the Soviet submarine to the surface.Inside the Soviet sub, not knowing if the war had begun or not, the captain and political officer wanted to launch its nuclear-tipped torpedo against the US fleet, in retaliation.“But the Soviet officer” – Vasili Arkhipov – “refused to launch, even though he thought he was under attack,” says Der Derian.And, he says, it may now be that civilians around the world might prove to be the necessary sanest minds in the geopolitical space.“You know, I can’t remember who said it, but every end is a beginning,” says Der Derian. “I think we’re coming out of the end of a crisis. I do feel that in general people can tolerate only so much disruption, chaos, disorder before they get rid of the leaders who they feel are responsible for it.”Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.