As the international system experiences a series of shocks and crises that challenge the foundations of the post-war order, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define the exact conditions of contemporary international affairs. While tensions may not have reached the point of outright global conflict, uncertainty and anarchy haunt our era in world politics. Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, ponders how to classify the friction, competition, and rivalries that came to characterise the modern world.
The protracted crisis in relations between Russia and the “collective West”, the military campaign by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the situation in Gaza, Yemen, and other global flashpoints naturally raise the question: what exactly is taking place in the contemporary world? Military conflicts are being compounded by a revolution in military affairs, the widespread use of various forms of so-called “hybrid warfare” in the informational and digital domains, as well as economic and financial restrictions. There is a strong temptation to characterise what is happening as a new world war that is already under way, and whose end is nowhere in sight. However, such an assessment appears premature. International relations remain in a familiar condition of anarchy—namely, competition among states in the absence of a stable and effective system of international law and a monopoly on the use of force. Anarchy may, in time, escalate into a world war, but it is by no means identical to one. An accurate classification of the present situation is essential for determining the appropriate foreign policy instruments.
The concept of a world war can be characterised in terms of its scale and methods of warfare, as well as the organisational structure of its participants. In terms of scale, it implies the involvement of all or a significant proportion of the leading powers, and the extension of conflict across all or most of the world’s geographical space. In terms of methods, it entails the use of a broad range of military and non-military instruments aimed at forcing the adversary into capitulation, or at radically exhausting it, and compelling a change in both its foreign and domestic political course. In organisational terms, it presupposes the existence of stable—or at least temporary—coalitions of states engaged in confrontation. One may also add the struggle of political ideologies and doctrines that bind such coalitions together, although this feature is far from universal. The principal driver of conflict appears to be the clash of concrete material interests of major states—their competition for resources, power, and dominance in specific regions and in international relations as a whole.
The twentieth century provides a rich record of world wars. The crucible of the First World War lay in the European theatre. Military operations in other regions were far less intense, yet the outcome of the war effectively shaped the prospects for the redistribution of the world among the leading colonial powers. All known military and non-military means of warfare were employed, including intensive propaganda and trade blockades. The conflict unfolded between two coalitions, which evolved over the course of the war, though their structure had taken shape long before it began. The Second World War assumed a far greater scale. In addition to the critically important European theatre, it encompassed battles in the Pacific and Africa. Its apotheosis was the combat use of nuclear weapons. The war concluded with the complete defeat of the Axis powers.
The Cold War did not escalate to the stage of employing all available types of weaponry. It was restrained by the balance of nuclear forces and the threat of unacceptable damage to the aggressor in the event of a retaliatory strike. Nevertheless, military confrontation persisted on the periphery of the leading powers—Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Stable coalitions formed around the two principal adversaries—the USSR and the United States—bound together by close military, economic, and ideological ties. The Cold War did not develop into a third world war in the same sense as its predecessors. Yet it was unmistakably global in character and ended in a major defeat for the Soviet bloc. The result was the dissolution of the coalition of socialist states, their integration into the Western model, and the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
The current situation clearly differs from this earlier experience. Armed conflicts in various parts of the world hardly share a unified logic of struggle among specific centres of power that underpinned the world wars of the past. The crisis in the Persian Gulf is only loosely connected to the Conflict in Ukraine. Both could be presented as part of the United States’ effort to preserve its hegemony. The difficulty, however, is that Washington lacks a consolidated adversary. For example, Iran and Russia have no mutual military obligations. Flare-ups along the Indo-Pakistani border scarcely fit into any overarching world war framework. The same applies to incidents along the Sino-Indian border, as well as to smaller yet instructive conflicts such as the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. No fundamental line of a global conflict underlies these developments.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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