Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?
In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer.
The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to Khan Younis, Hodeidah, Port Sudan and Kursk, the only sound is of explosions, and the only lesson is that the old rules no longer apply.
Indeed Fiona Hill, the policy analyst and adviser to the UK government on its imminent strategic defence review, argues the third world war has already started, if only we would recognise it.
The fear of a world in which no one, due to science or globalisation, is any longer in control is hardly new: the concept was the title of two Reith lectures, one in 1967 by the social anthropologist Edmund Leach and another in 1999 by the political philosopher Anthony Giddens. But rarely has been it so clear that the rules-based world order created in 1945 is in headlong retreat.
The former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband put it well this week at Chatham House, saying: “I know that people always say the world is changing, but this feels like a moment of genuine geopolitical flux, at least as significant as 1989-90 when the world transitioned from the cold war to a unipolar moment, and for me the Trump administration is both symptom and cause of the changes under way.
“The problem is that it’s much more clear what we are inflecting from – a world in which the US was the anchor of the global system – but it’s not clear what we’re inflecting to. I know there’s a lot of talk about the idea of a multipolar world reflecting a redistribution of the balance of power, but I find that concept conveying too much stability, too much security.”
His one-time mentor Tony Blair, in a talk in California, argued: “Everyone has been shaken out of their comfort zone. The noise you are hearing from the political undergrowth is the frantic foraging for options. People are rethinking their position in the world and their relationships. There is no doubt at all this is a major shock. This is the most significant geostrategic event I can remember in terms of America and the world.”
For the former US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Donald Trump’s indifference to alienating allies is an act of vandalism. He said diplomats around the world were asking: “What the fuck is going on?”
Blinken said America had spent 80 years building up trust, strong economic partnerships and military and political alliances, and if that was then taken down in a matter of 100 days it would be incredibly hard to rebuild.
“It means countries look for ways to work around us, to work together but without the US,” he said. “The possibility that what will be said today will be reversed tomorrow, and will be reversed again, means they simply cannot count on us. Joe Biden used to say it is never a good idea to bet against America. The problem we now have is people are no longer betting on America.” [Continue reading…]