The next world war is already starting – to stop it, we must rediscover our courage to lead
4 min read
Dare to look up and the evidence is everywhere. We are already entering the foothills of the next global conflict.
Yet a combination of denial and our failure to grasp how profoundly the character of war has changed prevents us from recognising what is unfolding. We still picture world war through the grainy lens of the last one: armies crossing borders, declarations of war, cities bombed, populations mobilised. But the next global conflict will not begin with a single invasion, assassination or declaration of war. It is emerging incrementally, conflict by conflict, domain by domain, escalation by escalation.
The seeds of a world war fought across many fronts are already being sown. Ukraine. The Middle East. Taiwan. Cyber-attacks. Sabotage. Assassinations. Proxy warfare. Economic coercion. Disinformation. The weaponisation of energy, trade and technology. China is rising. Russian aggression is expanding. American isolationism is growing.
Inject into this toxic mix the advance of super artificial intelligence and its potential to cause harm, even – at the extreme – to turn against us and threaten humanity itself. While that remains a low-probability risk, AI is already being harnessed to sow deniable mayhem from abroad. Super AI and quantum computing could make today’s cyber-attacks, IP and data theft, disinformation campaigns and development of bioweapons look primitive by comparison.
This is the world today. Viewed separately, we face a variety of crises, each testing us in different realms of competition. Viewed together, they reveal something far more troubling: the contours of a world already at war. And where will we be five years from now? Today, perhaps too distracted by domestic politics. Yes, the world feels more uncertain, but life in the UK continues, we are ignoring the giant elephant in the room.
Our global order is gradually being abandoned. The next one has yet to be determined. And history shows that the transition from one to the other is usually characterised by war. This is where we find ourselves today – the rules restraining state behaviour are eroding. Adversarial powers are aligning. America is retreating. Europe is rearming. And every escalation removes another guardrail designed to prevent wider conflict.
Yes, the world feels more uncertain, but life in the UK continues, we are ignoring the giant elephant in the room
How did we get here? Where is our world heading? Most importantly, what must we now do?
It has long been in Britain’s DNA to step forward when other nations hesitate. Since the Napoleonic Wars, we have played a leading role in European security. Twice in the last century, we stood at the forefront of the fight against tyranny. Investment in both hard and soft power gave us the international reach, connectivity and reputation to act as a force for good, and to offer the statecraft demanded on the world stage.
In recent years, however, we have slowly neglected that role. We may be a middle power, but we still retain the thought leadership, convening power and international reach to bring like-minded nations together, and dare to address the dangerous trajectory we are all on. If not us – then who?
First, we have homework to do. Beginning with those fundamental questions: what do we stand for, what do we believe in and what are we willing to fight for? We need to better understand our adversaries, who never fully signed up to the post-1945 rules-based order in the first place. What lessons from history must we learn? How should we prepare for the new battlefields of 21st-century warfare, including upgrading our homeland resilience? How can we repair our own democracy and attract the best of us into public office? Then we can look at developing the off-ramps to prevent escalation, the new guardrails to limit war and the back channels to prevent miscalculation. Ultimately, we must rekindle the art of statecraft and rediscover the courage to lead.
Tobias Ellwood is the former defence minister and author of Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three
