Fears about World War III emerging have long captivated the dark, conspiracy theorist corners of cyberspace but have rarely entered the realm of official foreign policy communication. However, in recent months there has been an uptick in officials voicing concerns about the potential for World War III. Just last week, New Zealand’s foreign minister Winston Peters said, “We’re going through the pre-second world war experience, utterly unprepared, way out of time – disastrous”.
Part of the impetus for this growing fear of World War III erupting has been Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been using the threat of a global conflict as a rhetorical inflection point for some time to garner more support from the West for Ukraine’s fight against Russian expansionism. This has been abetted by the blossoming Sino-Russian partnership and Russia’s recent mutual defence agreement with North Korea, both of which illustrate the expanding divide that is emerging internationally.
However, the question as to whether these developments signal that we are on a path to World War III is difficult to answer, and the Manichean arguments put forth by officials so far do the complexity of the issue a disservice. Using history as an analytical framework to assess current issues is popular but also fraught with limitations. No two periods are exactly alike. The cases of World War I and World War II offer limited value when examining the current global crisis.
World War I, for example, showed the danger of rampant popular nationalism. While the leaders of the central powers have been much criticised, in reality, all parties involved were heavily constrained by the growing nationalistic fervour in their countries that made rapprochement politically untenable. In an exchange between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II in the days before their countries declared war on each other, both leaders expressed a desire for peace but by the end of the exchange the kaiser stated that he had “gone to the utmost limits of the possible in [his] efforts to save peace”.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said nations were caught in a “doomsday machine” at the onset of World War I, referring to the network of interlocking alliances and military mobilisation timetables.
World War II showed the danger of expansionist powers – in this case, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan – driven by messianic ideologies built on the back of racism. Both Nazi Germany and imperial Japan saw expansion as their divine right and they used this to justify the truly horrific means they employed in attempting to fulfil their perceived national destinies.
Protesters hold portraits of “comfort women” – women forced into sexual slavery by the imperial Japanese army during World War II – and their testimonies, in Seoul, South Korea, on August 14, 2022. Photo: Xinhua
World War II has recently become an allegory in the West as some point to the failure of appeasement towards Nazi Germany as a lesson that needs to be remembered in the context of Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. The dangers of appeasing revisionist powers was one of the main themes emanating from the 2024 Munich Security Conference.
However, in the current setting, there does not appear to be anywhere near the same levels of nationalism as was experienced in World War I and while Russia has been expansionist and China has been more assertive, neither appears to be anywhere near as blindly driven by ideology as Germany and Japan were in World War II.
It is also a massive leap of faith to figure that China would be willing to engage with Russia and others in a global conflict against the West, particularly when the West, as an aggregate, is superior in terms of power. The mutual benefit of the growing Sino-Russian relationship, at this stage, remains mostly geopolitical – a united front to challenge the Western-led international order.
02:20
Russia’s Vladimir Putin visits China’s ‘little Moscow’ Harbin as part of state visit
Russia’s Vladimir Putin visits China’s ‘little Moscow’ Harbin as part of state visit
This is not to say that recent trends are not concerning, because they are. The hope that economic interdependence would engender a peaceful and stable international environment has proved to be naive.
China, given its size, is undoubtedly the key actor at the heart of the growing World War III discourse. However, it is hard to identify what China wants. Perhaps the Communist Party does not even know. While China has a problem with growing nationalism at home, this is a far more defensive style of nationalism than the expansionist kind that defined previous world wars. Above all, China wants international respect and a world system which, in its eyes, is fairer and allows for a level of Chinese exceptionalism.
Equating China with Putin’s Russia or with any historical examples of rising, expansionist powers, is a slippery slope that leads to naturally sensationalist conclusions. A more fruitful starting point would be to treat China as its own entity with unique domestic and international constraints and opportunities.
Furthermore, buying into World War III rhetoric distracts leaders and officials from a far clearer global existential threat: climate change. The macro-securitisation of the threat of Russia and China has notably shifted the focus away from climate change and is precipitating the emergence of initiatives designed by countries to contain or counter each other.
The greatest threat to international politics is not the rise of revisionist powers but the growing belief on both sides that the other is evil and must be stopped. Such a twisted mirror image is hard to walk back from when it comes to dominate the views of leaders and officials. This is why we should be concerned about the growing use of World War III in leaders’ rhetoric.
Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand
