World War III – Here, Now, or Soon?

  A Tactical Nuclear Explosion

The list of nations directly involved in Putin’s war against Ukraine gets longer all the time. On the Russian side, Belarus is supplying launching sites and safe harbors to Putin’s military, Syria is sending volunteer forces and now it seems pretty clear that Iran has become a supplier of deadly suicide drones: “‘The whole night [17th of October], and the whole morning, the enemy terrorizes the civilian population,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post. ‘Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine.’…

“Zelensky, citing Ukrainian intelligence services, alleges Russia ordered 2,400 drones from Iran. Russia has rebranded them as Geran-2 drones — ‘geranium’ in Russian. A photo of debris from one of Monday’s strikes [10/17], posted by Klitschko, showed ‘Geran-2’ marked on a mangled tail fin… Iran has previously denied providing Russia with weapons, although its Revolutionary Guard chief has boasted of providing arms to the world’s top powers, without elaborating… The drones pack an explosive charge and can linger over targets before nosediving into them.” Associated Press, October 18th.

On Ukraine’s side, all thirty NATO nations, from Albania to the United States, are providing military and other support to Kyiv. Formerly non-aligned Sweden and Finland have applied for NATO membership, and their admission is all but certain. While a handful of nations in the United Nations General Assembly voted against censoring Russia, and a larger number abstained from the vote, the overwhelming majority of General Assembly countries voted against Russia. Still, Russia is still able actively to sell its fossil fuels to several major nations, including India and China, generating significant cashflow to fund Putin’s war. Atrocities are multiplying.

As Russia is now targeting its missiles to debilitate Ukraine’s electrical power generating capacity, which so far has taken out almost a third of the latter’s electricity, as winter approaches, the Russians want to impose a frigid misery on Ukrainians, hoping to crush their resistance to Putin’s ambitions. Those nasty Iranian drones seem to be focused on seemingly random attacks on mostly civilian targets, spreading even more fear among ordinary Ukrainians. But local Ukrainian resistance seems only to stiffen notwithstanding the Russian escalation.

There is little question that Putin’s war has impacted people far beyond the theater of conflict. Aside from the obvious dramatic global increase in the cost of fossil fuels, now a huge campaign issue in our own mid-term elections, the removal of major grain production from Ukraine has reduced supplies, significantly increased prices, to some of the most vulnerable people on earth, particularly in the most impoverished regions in the world.

As the pain of Russia’s naked territorial ambitions spreads itself all over the globe, many political scientists and economists are beginning to ask whether we already are or are about to be enmeshed in one more autocrat-caused world war. A Hitler redux. One that very much carries with it the threat of nuclear weapons, even total destruction. Still, simmering international violence is not relegated to great powers battling over Ukrainian independence.

In a recent interview in Yahoo!finance (October 17th), “[New York University business professor and] economist Nouriel Roubini says a nuclear escalation of that nearly eight-month conflict could mark just the start of a global battle… The world could also see nuclear conflict in Iran and, most worrying for the U.S., around China's fight for Taiwan, says Roubini, who was dubbed ‘Dr. Doom’ after the realization of his dire predictions including the 2008 housing crisis that sparked the Great Recession.

“[Roubani] contends a cold war already exists between the U.S. and China, and that it could escalate into a ‘hot war’ as President Xi Jinping aims to unite China and Taiwan… ‘In some sense, World War III has already started,’ Roubini said. ‘It started in Ukraine because this conflict has broader implications that go well beyond Russia and Ukraine. It’s the beginning of something else.’…

“Speaking to Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief on Monday [10/17], Roubini highlighted geopolitical threats and what he calls a new cold war that has emerged between the U.S. and China as well as between the West and ‘revisionist’ powers including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan… ‘They're essentially challenging the economic, social, and geopolitical order that the U.S., and Europe, and the West created after World War II,’ Roubini said, explaining this crisis could ensnare the U.S.

“In addition to Ukraine, another flash point could also be Iran, Roubini says… ‘The negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on the new nuclear deal are not going anywhere, and Israel is saying if [Iran is] going to become nuclear — and they're one step away from it — we're going to attack them,’ Roubini said.

“At the same time, the U.S. and China are on a collision course as the two countries continue to uncouple on fronts from trade to the movement of labor to technology… ‘I believe the next 5-10 years is going to be the time where there’s going to be a confrontation between the U.S. and China on the issue of Taiwan and that could be a trigger of this cold war becoming a hot war,’ he said. ‘That’s how we get to World War III… In some sense, World War III has already started'” Indeed, as further supported in my recent China, So Much Stronger… but So Much Weaker in the End blog, China has mounted a new super-aggressive posture vis-à-vis its global relationships, it has advanced a new willingness to use its newly upgraded military to risk confronting major US air and sea power and it has made its intentions to take Taiwan, one way or the other, a clear near-term probability.

In the end, there are so many flashpoints, too many weapons controlled by insecure but egotistical autocrats and too many divergent points of view blending and feeding on each other to make us believe that we will just settle down after a little fighting and return to a more peaceful time. And then we have climate change, with resultant natural disasters and food/water shortages, that mankind simply is unwilling to deal with sufficiently.

I’m Peter Dekom, and probably the only thing we can probably say with certainty is: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”