Russia warns Nato that Western support for Ukraine heightens risk of third global conflict
As tensions ramp up between the West and its various adversaries, increased support for Ukraine could escalate its war with Russia into a global conflict.
- SEE MORE How the Ukraine war started and how it could end
- SEE MORE A history of China and Taiwan
- SEE MORE North Korea and Japan’s difficult history
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, warned Nato member states gathered in Lithuania last month against pledging further military aid to Kyiv. “The completely crazy West could not come up with anything else,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram. “In fact, it’s a dead end. World War Three is getting closer.”
Critics then accused President Joe Biden of “wanting to start ‘World War 3’”, according to Newsweek, after he authorised the deployment of US “select reserve forces” to Europe. While the troops will not enter Ukraine, they would “augment Operation Atlantic Resolve, which began in 2014 in response to Russian actions in Ukraine”. It is “not yet clear” whether US defence secretary Lloyd Austin will deploy any troops.
Analysts at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute warned in June that the world was “drifting into one of the most dangerous periods in human history”, with the number of operational nuclear warheads owned by major military powers rising in the past year to an estimated 12,512.
China
China and the US are “locked in an increasingly intense rivalry”, said The New York Times in July, “with American leaders frequently identifying China as their greatest long-term challenger”. The “rapid growth and modernisation” of the country’s military has worried American onlookers, who now boast fewer military personnel and naval vessels.
Tensions “dramatically escalated” last year after the then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, said CNN. Joe Biden later met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but relations soured after China flew a giant balloon into US airspace.
In April Pelosi’s successor as House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, met Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen in California, spurring “a collective intake of breath across Asia-Pacific”, said Time.
The meeting prompted China to send warships into the waters around the self-governed island, which proved to be a “more muted” response compared to the “belligerent reaction” following Pelosi’s visit.
At the G7 summit in Japan in May, leaders “singled out China” on issues including human-rights abuses and nuclear arms, “underscoring the wide-ranging tensions between Beijing and the group of rich countries”, said Reuters.
Rishi Sunak has described China as the “biggest threat to global security”, and the “only country with both the means and intent to reshape the world order”. China staged diplomatic protests in response to his comments.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “long-anticipated trip to Beijing” in June “shows that the administration is keen to reignite diplomacy and inject some stability to its dealings with China”, said NPR.
However, analysts believe relations are so fraught that “re-establishing a semblance of stability and balance will take much more effort and political will”, which will be “tested” by presidential elections in the US and Taiwan. “Mutual trust is running thin.”
Russia
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has been described as “more dangerous than anything Europe has seen since the end of World War II”, said Politico.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s losses in Ukraine and the failed Wagner Group rebellion have “increased the chances that the Russian president will lash out and expand the 17-month-old conflict”, said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). “But World War III may not be what you expect.”
The US announced in early July that it would “supply Kyiv with cluster munitions”, said Al Jazeera, which “typically release large numbers of small bomblets over a wide area and are banned by many countries because of the danger they pose to civilians during and after conflicts”.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu responded that Moscow would use “similar” weapons in Ukraine. Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of already using cluster bombs.
Moscow’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Indonesian media in July that the war in Ukraine would “continue until the West gives up its plans to preserve its domination”, according to Russia’s state-run media, TASS.
North Korea
North Korea’s vows to expand its nuclear stockpile have also increased fears of a global conflict. Hours into the New Year, leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in his regime’s nuclear arsenal, in a sign of “deepening animosity” towards the US, South Korea and Japan, said The Guardian.
Earlier, Pyongyang had fired a ballistic missile off its east coast, “starting 2023 as it had ended the previous year, when it conducted a record number of weapons tests”, said The Guardian. This has included ballistic missiles over Japan.
“Security dynamics in Northeast Asia have become increasingly volatile with China’s growing military threats and in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said The Washington Post. Pyongyang has “drawn closer to Russia, while Japan’s relations with Russia have deteriorated”.
In July, North Korea detained a young US army soldier, Travis King, who crossed the border from South Korea without permission. The crisis came “during a particularly tense time with the North”, said BBC News.
The same month, the US sent a submarine with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to South Korea for the first time in decades, prompting North Korea’s defence minister to warn that this could meet its legal conditions for use of nuclear weapons.
Iran
Uncertainty also surrounds efforts to stop Iran from joining the nuclear club.
The US began talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal in 2022, three years after Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement. Iran responded to the withdrawal with “a public, step-by-step ramping up of the machinery used to enrich uranium – the nuclear fuel needed for a bomb”, said NPR.
After months of talks, “the US, France, Germany and the UK halted diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis” in September, said the Financial Times.
But as fear grows that Iran’s “aggressive expansion” of its nuclear programme “risks triggering a regional war”, leaders are once again broaching “how to engage” with the country.
In January, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) detected uranium particles enriched to around 84%, “almost weapons grade”, at the country’s underground Fordow facility, said the FT. But intelligence sources say “there have been no signs that Tehran is currently working on producing a bomb”, said Al Jazeera.
But the “current calm in the Iranian arena might be misleading”, said Haaretz. A simulated war game conducted last month by the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies showed that if Iran were to enrich uranium to 90%, “this could soon be followed by a clash with the US and Israel, even a regional war”.
In the simulation, the US decided to “adhere to the criterion” set out by Biden: that the country will “view uranium enrichment to 90% as an act toward the manufacture of a nuclear weapon – and it will respond accordingly”.
Artificial intelligence
Recent high-profile advances in artificial intelligence have led to increased fears that AI could accidentally cause a global conflict.
A leading academic at the University of Cambridge told the i news site in March that the technology could, in an extreme case, “mistake a bird as an incoming threat and trigger a nuclear launch if no human override is in place to assess alerts from an AI-assisted early-warning system”.
Although no state is openly attempting to automate its nuclear weapons systems, “integrating AI with command systems seems promising and even unavoidable”, said Peter Rautenbach from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
