A year ago, Hamas killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians. Israel reacted with ferocity. They bombed Gaza to rubble. Thousands of innocent Palestinians were killed, including predictably many children. I say predictably because more than 50 per cent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population are (were?) below the age of 18.
Both combatants have drawn wide condemnation but that has not contained the conflict. Israel has extended the fighting into Lebanon. They have detonated thousands of mobile devices, undertaken air strikes and are positioned to launch a ground invasion. Iran and its proxy, the “axis of resistance” (Hezbollah, Houthis and Hamas) have responded with missile attacks. The world is waiting with bated concern to see how far this step-by-step escalation will go.
This article is not another analysis of this conflict. Much has already been written about it. The article is simply my ruminations on the state of the world.
Decades on, when historians look back, they may well conclude that 2024 was the watershed year when geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geotechnical forces came together to create the “perfect storm” of World War 3.
Here are four reasons they might adduce to support that conclusion.
First, as is now obvious, the world is riven. Not only have the hostilities in the Middle East ratcheted up but the Russian-Ukraine conflict has also acquired a sharper edge with Ukraine opening up an offensive new front, and President Putin making clear that were NATO to approve the deployment of NATO-supplied weapons against Russian targets in Russian territory, he would deem it an act of war and contemplate crossing the nuclear Rubicon. There is also the “colder” conflict between the US and China. This has deepened with the US, in a volatile variant of the “Thucydides trap”, imposing swingeing taxes on a swathe of Chinese imports. The US is determined to prevent China from pushing it off the pedestal of technological and economic dominance.
Prima facie, these are unrelated occurrences. But one has to read Barbara Tuchman’s book Guns of August to know it was precisely such seemingly unconnected and localised actions based on narrow nationalisms and egotistic leadership that came together in the aftermath of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in June 1914 to set off World War 1. People who have studied history have reasons to feel nervous.
Two, jingoism makes for good politics. This is evident from the increasing focus by politicians on the “other”, the immigrant, that has disrupted the job market; the mercantilist that is dumping products; and the adversary that poses a threat to national security. The problem is this kind of politics especially when driven by short-term electoral and personal prospects exacerbates existing geopolitical rivalries. It leads to high walls to protect the national backyard (to paraphrase the US National Security Advisor) and hurts efforts to address global problems like climate change, fundamentalism and pandemics that do not respect national boundaries.
An illustrative example of this problem is the actions of the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Last year, he was arguably the most unpopular and polarising figure in Israeli politics. His Likud party had polled only 23.41 per cent of the votes in the general election and he led an extreme right-wing coalition. Protestors demonstrating on the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were calling for his resignation. He also faced charges of corruption. Today, apparently, he is in a much stronger political position because of the military successes achieved against Hezbollah.
Netanyahu may well have saved his job. But at what cost? The region is on the edge of a major conflagration. And those Israelis that will settle on the lands conquered by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) will be surrounded by Palestinian Arab refugees whose singular purpose may be to exact revenge and recover their forcibly occupied lands. Netanyahu’s actions remind me of Chancellor Bismarck’s riposte to his German Parliamentary colleagues when pressed to attack France in 1876. “Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death”.
Three, the global rules of engagement that defined the world order since World War 2 have collapsed. Nothing has replaced it yet. Therefore, every country is doing its own thing. Moreover, military and economic superiority has lost its “coercive” power. It is no longer the determinant of influence. Take, for example, Israel. It is dependent on the US but that has not deterred Netanyahu from ignoring President Joe Biden’s call for restraint. Sure, Israel has the support of the Jewish lobby and this does give the PM latitude. But his attitude is also influenced by the fact that international relations have lost their moorings.
Finally, technology. A few days after the pagers exploded in Lebanon, I read an article by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. It was captioned, “War in the age of AI demands new weaponry”. He wrote that the next batch of start-up “unicorns” would be built around the development of AI weapons. He suggested (implicitly) that investment should be directed towards “invent (ing), adapt(ing) and adopt(ing)” such weapons. The article was revealing. It reminded me that investors do not regard the human cost of war to be so high as to offset the profits that might accrue from leveraging AI technology to create cost-effective armaments and that governments will want to engage the best and brightest minds to equip their military to “fight wars in the age of AI with AI weapons”.
This is depressing.
But let me end on a note of hope as to why perhaps the world will not stumble over the edge. Power is pivoting away from the politicians and those who have a vested interest in perpetuating the cycle of violence and towards people who have wealth, leadership in technology and control over social media. Daron Acemoglu writes that these people have “persuasion power”. The hope is that such people will recognise the dangers ahead and use these powers to innovate for peace. If so, that might forestall the “perfect storm”.
The writer is Chairman and Distinguished Fellow, Center for Social and Economic Progress
