Published in Spanish by Tribuna Israelita: tribuna.org.mx / Medio Oriente. May 24.
In the last century we had two World wars and a Cold War; now the temperature is rising, and not only in the atmosphere, but specifically in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Wartime came back in this century with the global war on terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Arab Spring, civil wars around the world and the drug war in Mexico. Reaching a peak with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, the most recent battle of the war against Israel in 2023, and with the Hutie attacks on commercial ships through the Red Sea in its way to the Suez Canal.
The list of countries involved in the invasion of Ukraine and the Middle East war is World scale, and the alliances that are now facing each other in both scenarios are almost the same.
In its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has the support of Belarus, Chechnya, Syria, Iran, China, North Korea, Mali, and also Latin American and South African troops. India owes favors to Russia, which is one of its main arms suppliers, but we prefer not to know to what extent it is involved.
Ukraine has been able to stand the Russian invasion thanks to the support of the West, mainly from the United States, Germany and NATO. But from humanitarian aid to weapons, several other countries have contributed to the Ukrainian defense, including Austria, Iceland, Israel, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Pakistan, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, etc. Volunteers from approximately 60 countries have joined Ukraine's International Legion on their own: British, Americans, Mexicans, South Africans... and even Russians living in Ukraine and abroad.
With so many armed conflicts in the world, with so many nations fighting over Ukraine and Israel, and with France's determination to send troops into Ukraine, the world is currently wondering, quite rightly, if we are on the brink of the third world war.
The world wars of 1914 and 1939 were not spontaneous, they were preceded by several armed conflicts:
From 1904 to 1914 the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian and Mexican revolutions, the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, and the United States invasion of Veracruz. The Second World War was preceded, between 1926 and 1938, by the Cristero War in Mexico, the civil war in China - and between it, Russia, and Japan- by wars in South America, the Italo-Ethiopian wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi annexation of Austria – Anschluss – and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia.
These armed conflicts left behind a trail of polarization, political instability, anti-Semitism, economic depression, and large migrations that paved the way for the outbreak of World wars.
The problem nowadays is that the pre-existing patterns of that era appear to be repeating themselves now.
On the one hand, we have migration, which is natural consequence of any type of war, although it also occurs from dictatorial states where freedom is scarce and political persecution abounds, as well as from economically collapsed states or states with high criminality. Human beings do not like death, oppression nor hunger.
The first half of the 20th century witnessed several migrations, due to the war conflicts of that time, and in the decades between the wars in the 1920s and 1930s. Currently we also have a peak of migrations due to the wars underway in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, Haiti, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Mexico, among others, and the wave of migration from Venezuela due to economic collapse and hunger.
About economy, there was recession before and during the world wars: In 1907, 1908, 1914, and from 1917-21, during the Great War or World War I. Between the wars, recession started in 1929, 1938 and at the end of World War II, 1945-46. In this decade of the 2020s, the COVID 19 pandemic caused an estimated economic contraction of 6.2% in that year, and to date, the world economy has slowed and is expected to continue doing so until 2025.
Another very reliable indicator of the level of confrontation that the world is experiencing is anti-Semitism. In the last century it intensified before the World War I, reaching its peak with the arrival of nazism to power and its disastrous result. In this era of populist governments, and policies of social division and polarization, anti-Semitism is once again growing exponentially in the World. It is fueled by the dissemination of Islamist narrative and propaganda about the conflict in the Middle East, that is carried out in all languages in the major media. We are witnessing how Islam has entered European and American universities, marching through the streets calling for holy war against Israel and the Jewish people, as the nazi party did in Germany almost a century ago. In Switzerland anti-Semitism is on the rise, and in Austria it is estimated that it has grown by 400%. In the United States, the swastika is already marching through the streets; synagogues and members of the Jewish community are being attacked, some of them were hospitalized, some were killed.
Regarding the balance of powers in the world, how were they before the world wars?
At the beginning of the last century there was no dominant superpower, nor two of them, the balance of forces was not monopolar, like that of the United States after the Cold War, nor bipolar with two superpowers, like it was at the end of the WWII: United States and the USSR, but multipolar. This means that different military powers throughout the Earth exerted their own influence before World War I: United States, British Empire, Russian Empire, France, Italy, Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, and Ottoman Empire – Turkey. Between world wars, multipolarity was made up of almost the same countries, no longer as empires, but as republics and dictatorial states, except for two empires that prevailed after the war, the British and the Japanese.
In 1991 we became a post-Cold War monopolar World, with only one superpower, the USA. But ten years later, with the attacks of 9/11, the rearmament of Russia and Iran, the growth of China, and the decline and lack of leadership in the West, we now find ourselves again in a multipolar world – as in the times of the World wars - including the military forces of NATO, the Commonwealth, the Arab League, and Israel.
These variables in a similar state to what they were before, and between, World wars, plus the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the ascending rearmament in much of the World, are telling us that we are on the threshold of the next World war.
For this reason, Russia, China, and Iran modernized and multiplied their military arsenal. Iran is on the verge of manufacturing nuclear weapons, and NATO is rapidly rearming itself, urging its members to invest at least 2% of their GDP in armament, with the view to scale it up to 4% as Israel.
On the agreements side, in view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, have just joined NATO and Argentina requested entry too as a global partner, and Iran just signed agreements that include weapons with the Latin American dictatorships of Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. At the same time, a delegation from North Korea, Russia's missile supplier, visited Iran. In this way the Allies and the New Axis: Russia, China, and Iran, strengthen and expand their alliances.
In fact, we are already seeing the alliance in action in the Middle East. In the Gulf of Aden is the multinational Prosperity Guardian coalition of more than a dozen Western naval forces, coordinated by the United States and Great Britain to neutralize Hutie attacks on merchant ships going to the Suez Canal, through the Red Sea, where 14-15% of the World commerce flows. And in April we saw another part of the Allies - USA, GB, France, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia - helping Israel to intercept more than 300 missiles and drones launched by Iran, Hezbollah, and the Huties of Yemen, in Iran's first direct attack on Israeli territory.
USA has just allocated 95 billion dollars for the defense of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Two countries under attack, and the third under the menace of a Chinese invasion.
The trigger for the next world war could be the opening of one or more fronts that would force the Allies and the Axis leadership to confront each other directly, simultaneously and indiscriminately in different war zones. The opening of a new front could occur on Russia's border with a NATO member country, such as a Baltic state, Poland or Finland, or it can happen with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or with a terrorist attack on American soil as in 2001.
What would World War III look like?
The World has experienced devastation over the last century, including the use of two atomic bombs. The world's nuclear arsenal is spread across three continents. Several scenarios are possible: A long war of attrition where the allied powers uphold the attacked countries, Cold War type, as in Afghanistan in the 80s or as in today's Ukraine. A more strategic and tactical short war, the world version of the war of June 1967, focused, concentrated, at lightning speed, the best scenario. Or a 20th Century-type total war, the worst most undesirable scenario. The remaining options fluctuate between these three.
With the invasion of Ukraine by a nuclear power, and Iran concentrating enough uranium to assemble its first atomic weapons, the nuclear threat emerges again. But beyond the illegal use of these weapons, nuclear war it is not an option for the human species, global suicide must be avoided at all costs. We do not know if tactical nuclear weapons of 1.5 kilotons or 20 tons will be used -atomic charges a small fraction of that of a conventional nuclear weapon- capable of evaporating a one-hectare military installation in a single blow. Which could be a very dangerous - but probable – experiment, given the feasibility to escalate the conflict to nukes.
Information, as well as the propaganda, disinformation, manipulation, and indoctrination that occurred before and during World War II, is now on steroids. What was then disseminated through speeches, radio and newspapers now runs too by television, the world wide web, the Internet, social networks - where each user can become a reporter and a communication channel - and instant messaging. Now we can almost see the destruction and fighting in real time with operatives and troops equipped with video cameras, social networks and instant messaging accounts. On the other hand, we also see the effects of propaganda via social networks, where groups of young people are fed with misinformation that turns them into zombies, like the indoctrination in the 1930s Third Reich.
The encryption-decoding of messages and the creation of computing machines in Bletchley Park in the 1940s, today is going to be upgrade to the next generation of Alan Turing's descendants: Cyber warfare with military use of AI, artificial intelligence. We are also about to see the birth of the next generation of military robots and autonomous drones equipped with high-intensity lasers.
Missiles and air interception systems will be scaled up to the next generation too, and the anti-missile & drone interception laser developed by Israel will be added to that arsenal. Maybe the Electromagnetic Pulse attack, which renders all electronic equipment inoperative, could be used in the next world war.
We will not talk here about chemical, biological or radioactive isotopes weapons, but countries must be ready for this as well. As in any world war, new weapons will be created under competitive pressure.
We will see asymmetric warfare playing an important role – the warfare that is waged between two unequal forces such as an army against a small or medium armed group, a guerrilla or mercenary group, etc.
In the Second World War the Partisans and the French Resistance played a significant role, and in the Cold War the guerrilla and mercenary groups. In the next world war, terrorist groups will also do so, attacking Europe and America from within, as in 2001 in the USA, and the last year across Israel’s border, or as mercenary groups such as Wagner did in Ukraine and Africa. The terror moves through waves of migrants from the Middle East to Finland, across Russia, to Poland across Belarus, and to the United States from Venezuela, across Mexico.
Geographically strategic countries like Turkey and Mexico, how would they participate in a global conflict these days?
Turkey and Albania are the only Muslim members of NATO, on the European stage Turkey is expected to participate as a Western ally, as it has done so far in Ukraine. In the Middle East it is aligned with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and Iran and would play on the opposite side in that zone.
Mexico is a neutral country, in the last world war it supported the United States with an air squadron in the Pacific. Due to its enormous border with the United States, Mexico is always seen as a springboard to attack North American soil. On the one hand, it is the number one trading partner of the United States and contributes with 11.2% of that nation's population: Mexican-Americans. On the other hand, the Mexican government sympathizes with Islamist nations, with Russia and with Latin American dictatorships that have treaties with Iran. The Mexican drug cartels, that controls a significant portion of this nation, apparently has deals with terrorist groups for the construction of tunnels in Mexico and to the United States.
Despite currently having a citizen kidnapped in Gaza, and another in a Qatari prison, Mexico does not collaborate with Israel to make pressure for the release of its citizens, but rather participates in the legal war against that nation in the International Criminal Court, along with South Africa, Chile and other nations, in favor of the kidnappers, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
In a global war, Mexico would officially declare itself neutral.
This bipolar relationship between Turkey and Mexico with their allies is going to be worth watching.
In the First World War the empires fell, in the second one the fascist dictatorships did. Will the Islamist regimes would fall at the end of the Third World War?
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Sources:
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