Is World War Three on the cards?

UN chief warns that the world is ‘one misunderstanding’ away from ‘nuclear annihilation’

Ukrainian soldiers patrol on the frontline in Zolote, UkraineWolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The head of the UN has warned that the world is “just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”.

Speaking on Monday at a conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty (NPT) in New York, Antonio Guterres said: “We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions building over into nuclear conflict.”

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The warning comes days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened that his country was “ready to mobilise” its nuclear arsenal, and the UK’s national security adviser Stephen Lovegrove warned that a “breakdown of communication” is increasing the risk of nuclear warfare between the West and China or Russia.

With almost 13,000 nuclear weapons in state arsenals, Guterres warned: “The risks of proliferation are growing and guardrails to prevent escalation are weakening.”

Guterres said that the four-week NPT meeting offered countries a “chance to strengthen” their commitments to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, with the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament.

The UN chief will also travel to Hiroshima later this week to attend the 77th anniversary of the city being attacked by an atomic bomb.

Russia

Russian forces are thought to be using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in southern Ukraine, as a base to launch attacks, with reports of “shells being fired… towards Ukrainian forces”, France 24 reported last week. The power plant, which is the largest in Europe, has been under Russian control since March and “is the only working nuclear power plant in history to be occupied by an invading army”.

A local resident told the news channel that Ukrainian forces were unable to shoot back “in case they hit the plant”.

The latest assault comes weeks after Vladimir Putin threatened to deploy Russia’s new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles – capable of reaching Britain in three minutes – by the end of the year.

Also known as Satan II, the missile “has a range of 18,000 kilometres (11,000 miles) and can deliver between ten to 15 nuclear warheads at a hypersonic speed while bypassing most radar and missile defence systems,” reported The Telegraph.

Addressing military academy graduates at a ceremony at the Kremlin in late June, the Russian leader hailed his country’s troops for fighting “with courage, professionalism: like real heroes” during the “special military operation” in Ukraine. “We will continue to develop and strengthen our armed forces, taking into account potential military threats and risks,” said Putin.

Writing to the NPT conference on Monday, Russia’s president said “there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed”. But Russia was still “criticised” for “sabre-rattling” by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the BBC.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in April of a “real” danger of the Ukraine conflict turning into a third world war.

“Goodwill has its limits. But if it isn’t reciprocal, that doesn’t help the negotiation process,” Lavrov told Russian news agencies following attacks on Russian soil, apparently by Ukrainian forces, which resulted in fires raging at fuel facilities in the city of Bryansk.

Moscow was striving to prevent nuclear war, he said, but the danger was “serious” and “real”.

Some believe that a third global conflict may already be under way. Three weeks into the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News that Putin “may have already started” World War Three. “We’ve seen this 80 years ago, when the Second World War had started… nobody would be able to predict when the full-scale war would start,” the Ukrainian president said.

Kyiv-based journalist Veronika Melkorzervoa suggested a global conflict may have even been brewing for years. Ukrainians “did not believe that Putin would dare to launch a full-scale invasion. But he did. Because in Moldova, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, Russia got away with its crimes,“ she wrote in The Atlantic.

In the future, the invasion of Ukraine might not “be seen as the start, but as a key turning point”, she continued. And “maybe by saying ‘this is not our war,’ the world’s leading democratic countries are simply showing that they are in denial about what will happen next.”

Allied nations are “attempting to track a middle line between direct intervention and doing nothing”, said Sky News’ security and defence editor Deborah Haynes.

Sending defensive weapons to Ukraine is “not as effective as Nato directly protecting Ukraine's airspace”, but it is “clearly helping Ukraine do what amounts to the same thing”, she continued. And while the hope is that Russia will “appreciate the distinction”, what if “Moscow decides to view the downing of one of its aircraft by a missile gifted to the Ukrainians by America as akin to the US shooting it down directly?”

China

MI6 chief Richard Moore warned last November that the rise of China was the Secret Intelligence Service’s “single greatest priority” as Beijing continues to “conduct large scale espionage operations against the UK and our allies”.

Speaking at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies in his first public speech as MI6 boss, Moore said that Beijing’s “growing military strength” and desire for reunification with Taiwan, by force if necessary, “pose a serious challenge to global stability and peace”.

Analysts now feared that tensions involving the island have reached “their most dangerous point in decades” following media reports in June that US House of Representatives Speaker Pelosi was planning a trip to Taiwan, said The Guardian.

The White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that the visit, if it were to take place, could see China take “significant inflammatory actions in response”, said The Washington Post, and “urged” Beijing not to see the trip “as a pretext for provocation”.

The statement was made after a two-hour call between Biden and President Xi Jinping last Thursday, in which the US president “made very clear that Congress is an independent branch of government and Speaker Pelosi makes her own decisions”, said Kirby.

A report of the call published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Xi had emphasised the “historical ins and outs of the Taiwan questions are crystal clear”, adding: “those who play with fire will perish by it”.

Tensions also remain high in the South China Sea. Beijing views the expanse off the coast of East Asia as sovereign territory, while Washington regards “China’s militarisation of the area as a transparent rewriting of the international rules”, said The National Interest. “Neither side is backing down – nor does either country seem interested in a compromise,” the US magazine added.

Biden held virtual talks with Xi last year, in part, to ensure that the competition between them “didn’t drift into armed conflict due to a misunderstanding at a global hotspot”, said the BBC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonnell.

The conference seemed a “genuine attempt at a reset” and could “alter global geopolitical relations in a concrete way”, he continued.

But Pentagon officials remain wary that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other hotspots “sometime in the next decade”, said Michael Beckley, an associate professor at Tufts University, and Hal Brands, professor of global affairs at Johns Hopkins, in The Atlantic.

Beijing has “kept pressure on the democratic island” over the last few years, with “frequent warplane flights” into the country’s self-declared air defence identification zone (ADIZ), said CNN.

Iran

British intelligence is “actively focused” on Iran, said MI6 chief Moore in November. The Iranian leadership has “embraced an explicit doctrine of conflict with both Israel and the West” since the Islamic revolution in 1979, he told an audience at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Iran uses Hezbollah to stir up “political turmoil” in other countries, has built up a “substantial cyber capability” to use against its rivals, and continues to develop nuclear technology “which has no conceivable civilian use”, said Moore.

In a clear signal of increasing concern over Iran’s activities, Gulf states joined Israel for the first time in a joint military exercise organised by the US Navy last year. The move was “almost unthinkable” only three years ago, wrote BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, but followed the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020, when the UAE and Bahrain normalised their relations with Jerusalem.

Since then, there has been “an intense exchange of diplomatic, military and intelligence contacts between Israel and those Gulf states” as the region is increasingly anxious over Iran’s activities.

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Israel is “intensifying its campaign to thwart” Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes “with a series of covert operations” designed to target a broader range of key targets in the country.

It is part of the “latest evolution” of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s so-called “Octopus Doctrine”, which seeks to “bring Israel’s battle against Iran onto Iranian territory after years of targeting Iranian agents and Tehran’s proxies outside the country in places such as Syria”, explained the paper. Israel has “stepped up” its campaign in the past year, with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and an attack on an Iranian drone base.

Long-awaited talks to restore Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal began in Vienna late last year, three years after Donald Trump pulled the US 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.

Some security sources have raised doubts that the new deal would be as beneficial as Biden’s administration might have hoped, but US Secretary of State Blinken said in April that the agreement would be “the best way to address the nuclear challenge posed by Iran”.

After more than a year of “on-and-off talks” the European Union's foreign policy chief said on 26 July that he had proposed a new draft text to revive the deal, “saying there is no room left for further major compromises”.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri wrote in a tweet on Sunday that the nation’s “proposed ideas, both on substance and form” had been shared in response “to pave the way for a swift conclusion” to the negotiations.

In July, Putin travelled to Tehran to meet the nation's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his first international visit since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The trip sent “a strong message to the West about Moscow’s plans to forge closer ties with Iran, China and India”, said Reuters.

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