Another world war in the offing?

 

Anyone who has the following what has been happening in the Eastern Europe, in the Middle East or in the South Pacific lately would of course find the sabre rattling tendencies rather worrying. Nevertheless, I cannot help but ask the question, is there a global conflict on the horizon? It seems insane right, why would anyone even think of such a thing, two world wars were already two more than anyone wanted, Yet as insane as it might be to speculate on, the world now doesn’t look so different from it how it did prior to the world wars. In fact anyone who studied that period of history will find some eerie similarities.

The first such comparison that will be drawn is the military buildup. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Britain and Germany were engaged in a fierce arms race with both sides constantly upgrading their arsenal to the latest technology available at the time. This culminated in the construction of the Dreadnought class battleship by the Royal Navy, which was later copied by its rivals with designs of their own. Similarly today, great powers constantly try to outdo each other to see who has the latest and most potent weapons and are certainly not afraid to show them off. This in and of itself should be worrying enough, but the parties in the arms race didn’t always operate in isolation but rather cooperated in strategic alliances to deter rivals. Is it any different now? Who can forget late last year, when the US, UK and Australia announce the formation of the tripartite pact known as AUKUS?  The whole idea behind this is that it should serve as a deterrent to Chinese ambitions in the South Pacific. This looks oddly similar to the Entente Cordiale that was signed shortly before the First World War to deter German ambition. The Chinese of course didn’t take very kindly to this and respond by calling the three states paranoid. Yet the actions of the PLA (Chinese military) might actually provide justification for such a show of force by AUKUS. China has been known to aggressively increase their naval presence in the South China Sea as of late while their Air Force has been conducting military drills in Taiwanese air space. The PLA has also been seen testing hypersonic missiles which circles the world in orbit, pointing to its deadly accuracy. 

The Western powers are not the only ones wary of China. Japan since World War Two has taken an official position of pacifism but given their geographical closeness to China their current stance is anything but. Japan’s Self Defence force has developed to an advanced stage with air and naval capabilities surpassing anything they have had since WW2. But what is worrying most of all, is the influence of Nippon Kaigi among the Japanese ruling elite which openly calls for Japan to remove article 9 and drop all pretence of pacifism, this would then make them an Asian military powerhouse once again, making the situation in East Asia more tenuous than it already is. Not to be left out, India has also has their own contingency plans for dealing with China as they have recently purchased a series of S-400 missile defence systems from Russia and set them in strategic points that pundits claim are meant to fend off any Chinese attempts at an incursion. 

And speaking of Russia, they are at present an even bigger problem for Western powers than China due to their actions in Ukraine. At present, the whole Eastern front of Europe is on a mere tipping point, with ever growing speculation as to whether or not Russia will invade Ukraine. This is something that the US and it’s allies in NATO are rather wary of as both sides are locked in a standoff. The best hope anyone can have is that all sides can reach a rapprochement before it gets to the point of no return. According to the Russians, NATO expanding into Ukraine would violate an agreement with the Soviet Union that NATO would never expand eastward after the fall of the Iron Curtain. NATO on the other hand contends that no such deal was ever made and that Ukraine is a sovereign state, free to join whatever alliance it likes. This sore point is what leads to the security dilemma we have today as neither side is willing to relent, both feeling threatened by the other. Russia for its part has responded with a massive military buildup on the Ukrainian border. NATO however is not standing idly by as Britain and several other member states are already sending arms to Ukraine while France is openly touting the possibility of a European Army to defend the continent. 

The ambitions of the EU and NATO have hit a major hurdle as unlike Russia, the West is comprised of different countries with competing interests. Whereas French President Emmanuel Macron is all for a common defence force for the continent, new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is of a much different mindset, unlike most of NATO, Germany is not inclined to go to war with Russia as they would have too much to lose if it ever did come to that given that they are one of the biggest recipients of Russian oil and natural gas, which means any stop to that supply would lead to major downturn in Germany’s lead as Europe’s major manufacturing giant. This case scenario, one must admit, would make it different from the two world wars as this time Germany would prefer the role of peacemaker rather than aggressor.

This then lead to the discussion regarding the economic comparisons between the war period and now. It is hardly a secret that following the end of the first war, the world fell into a great depression which was only ended when the second war came about.  The question of whether or not war is good or bad for the economy depends greatly on who is asking. The world economy as we know it now is a disaster, due primarily to the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused a downturn in many major economies with economists predicting that the current depression will hit the levels seen the Great Depression.  History tells us that in the US, while the federal government tried to restart the economy through the “New Deal”, what really got the economy moving again was the manufacturing capacity being expanded in the war and post-war period. The US as it stands now is in a bad place economically and unlike FDR’s “New Deal”, Biden’s “Build Back Better” programme to restart the economy has indefinitely stalled in Congress. It would not be completely far-fetched to state that nobody really wants war ...unless you were part of the Military-Industrial Complex, which some still think is mere conspiracy. Yet, Democratic congresswoman and former Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has stated point blank that this is exactly what is happening and has referred to some of her colleagues as warmongers for pushing the narrative regarding Russian aggression. The prospect of war profiteering is horrendous to think about and yet with everything going on there are clearly rumblings of a shift in economic and also political power on the global scale, which some say is but one stage in bringing about the new world order

The pandemic of the last two years, has paved the way for some changes in the system, yet the question still remains as to whether or not the world is unipolar or multipolar and where does the power really lie. The idealist in me tends to think that such a question can be settled peacefully but the realist in me would not dare be so naïve, after all as German Chancellor Bismarck once said “It is not through speeches and debates that the questions of the day will be decided but through Iron and Blood”.  The talk of a peaceful rise of China or resurgent Russia is all nice but as history tells us, it is only through war that the global order has been so drastically reset. The Napoleonic wars led to the rise of the concert of Europe and the congress system, the First World War led to fall of several century old empires and the redrawing of the maps of Europe and the Arab world, while World War Two cemented the dominance of US and the USSR, gave us the UN and Brettonwoods systems and most importantly led to decolonization which also redrew the world map. In all the halls of power, there is talk of a Great Reset, one that they say is influenced by COVID-19, but is it farfetched to surmise that this alone is not enough to justify such a reordering of the world system? Look back at World War Two, the economy was changed as much as the politics, yet the Brettonwoods economic system did not rise from anything in the war but from the depression that preceded it, a great reset that looks at changes in the entire geopolitical structure might take a similar approach.

Much of this sounds hyperbolic and I for one am hoping to be dead wrong on this, yet I cannot help but look at the similarities and wonder. At the start of 2022, the UN Security Council (including the P5) promised there would be no nuclear war yet within weeks of this, countries already started making aggressive moves that tips the world closer to the brink. China has continued its aggressive moves in the South Pacific, while Russia does the same at its border with Ukraine border even while France and Britain continue to openly arm Kiev’s government and the US stands in the middle of it all threatening sanctions but doing little else. This resembles what happened in the interwar period when the great powers signed the Briand-Kellog pact to limit armaments only for them to all turn around and violate said agreement. Nor is this aggression limited to P5 nations, North Korea has continued to test their own hypersonic missiles, ignoring UN sanctions,  Iran also continues to pursue it’s own nuclear agenda refusing to renegotiate the nuclear deal meanwhile Saudi Arabia continues to act as foil for Iran in their rivalry for regional domination.

With all this said, the question remains, is the world really heading for another war or is this sabre rattling, just that and nothing more?, US President Teddy Roosevelt once described deterrence as to “Speak softly and carry a big stick”, the problem is, this saying works best in a unipolar world when only one party has said big stick, in this case however, we are seeing the makings of multipolar or even nonpolar world, even that is unsettled and I’m cautiously looking at the world’s geopolitics as it is, wondering if another war is the means they will finally use to settle it.