A World At War
August 16th, 2026
Perhaps a year ago one of my correspondents asked whether it’s possible that the next great power war - the next world war - has already started. It’s worth remembering that there was a great deal of fighting around the world in the years prior to both WWI and WWII which have since been pointed at as “indicators” that something was wrong, that the world was about to come off the rails, and in some cases were directly responsible for elements of what came to be called World War II. I’ve since answered that I think we might draw some analogies between the wars in the Balkans in 1912, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian war in Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War… but none of this is in any way dispositive. There are a long list of differences between now and those two periods.
But, at the same time, there are far more risks today. Not only are the economies of the US and its friends more dependent on external supply lines, many of those supply lines involve several of our would-be enemies. Not only does the US and many others import both finished goods and raw materials from China, consider that Europe is still buying LNG from Russia and will continue to do so until the last day of 2026. Add on top of that the presence of both cyber warfare and nuclear weapons and this is a far riskier world than in 1914 or 1939.
At the same time I’ve heard discussions of computer modeling of the world which suggests that there are indeed great generational shifts that occur and that we are entering the heart of one likely period some time in the next 12 - 24 months. Per the modeling, the great generational shift will revolve around a truly existential war.
But, these models aren’t exact, and my earlier estimate could easily have been off; perhaps we already missed the start. In short, has the world war already begun?
To provide some small measure of clarity, IF there is a world war in gestation, the bad guys are clear: Russia (only listed first as they have 5,000+ nuclear weapons), China, Iran and North Korea.
Have they formed a “Pact of Steel” as Germany and Italy did? No. But, arguably they wouldn’t want to. Better to keep everyone guessing. But two things are fairly clear:
They ARE cooperating, And China is the ring leader.
First, Chinese writing spells out that they’ve been waging Political Warfare aggressively for quite a few years. Per the Center for Strategic and International Studies; this is taking place literally cross the entire spectrum of political, economic and military activity’s and includes intelligence operations, cyber operations, information warfare, military operations (regular and irregular), economic coercion, etc.
As has been recently pointed out, a good deal of the negative Artificial Intelligence reporting in the West begins in China, even as China aggressively pursues AI. Chinese refineries have for years used various schemes to access sanctioned Iranian - and Russian - oil. Multiple reports suggest Chinese air defense systems are being sent into Iran. Chinese components are key elements of the various drones and missiles Russia is building launching at Ukraine.
It’s not difficult to see how a militarily exhausted US, and Europe, benefits China and Russia. Meanwhile China maintains a strong grip on the rare earths markets, which play a vital role in the various technologies found across our entire economy, not just our military and intelligence sectors.
The Chinese effort is pervasive. They’ve made every effort to touch every sector of our society and economy. The Chinese Communist Party’s fingers can be found trying to touch everything from missile seeker heads to new stories on social media.
There’s no doubt that the Chinese want to see us weakened, as do the Russians, and the Iranians want to see us destroyed. And certainly there are folks in each country smart enough to recognize an opportunity when presented with it. Perhaps it has already happened, perhaps they are already moving forward with some sort of coordinated effort.
The question is: What might we do?
There are some obvious points: reduce dependence on China, Russia and Iran; strengthen alliances, strengthen economies, rebuild our militaries.
All these things NEED to be done. In particular in Asia alliances need to address China directly. And the US needs to develop sources of rare earths and other items that are in friendly terrain. And there are other obvious points that have been well discussed by folks smarter than I.
But what if the war has already started, that is, the folks in Beijing and Moscow already consider that the war is on, but are waiting for some situation that they might exploit to strike hard at the west - politically, economically or militarily? Is there anything we can do to stop them before they take that action? Is there anything that we might do to deter them from progressing to, if you will, the next phase of the war?
There are two types of options I think that we might consider:
Full scale economic isolation, not applied gradually, but applied all at once, on Russian and China as well as Iran. This sounds satisfying but in fact the economies over lap so deeply that this would do a great deal of damage to the US and our allies.
And, it is the sort of thing that has lead to war before - see Japan, 1941…
The other option might be to “escalate to deescalate.” That is, do something very destructive, more than, arguably, anyone wants to address and cause everybody to pause, because no one would want the situation to escalate any further.
Consider for example a nuclear strike on several of the Iranian nuclear sites, Pickaxe mountain et al. Russia and China would not be directly affected, key sites are well away from population centers, and it would shock the entire world, which in this case is, arguably, what is needed.
There will be an immediate gasp that THAT can’t be the right answer. But… What is clear is that the war in Iran has demonstrated that Eisenhower’s thesis that you cannot deter a great power with conventional weapons is correct. Conventional forces of all kinds are needed so that we can, if necessary fight conventional (that is, non nuclear) warfare when and if needed. We need a means to deter a great power, and in particular, to convince a great power to stand down after a war has already begun…
