According to Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia’s leading foreign policy expert, the Third World War is already underway. He believes that a world order that has been “unpleasant” but “manageable” is disintegrating, and that there currently appears to be no mechanism for conflict resolution, including the ongoing escalation between Israel and Hamas.
The remarks were made by Lukyanov, chairman of the praesidium at the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (SVOP) think tank and editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, in an interview published last week by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Lukyanov cited the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russia-Ukraine standoff, and the new escalation in the Middle East as examples of old, frozen conflicts being re-ignited.
The ongoing array of conflicts is effectively a new World War, which appears to significantly differ from the two global conflicts of the 20th century, Lukyanov, who is also a research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, suggested.
“We instinctively expect the war to begin similarly to the Great War or the [Second World War].” But such wars are unlikely to occur again – after all, nuclear weapons continue to hold many back,” the expert predicted.
The escalation in the Middle East is not the end of the conflict, with more hostilities expected to erupt globally soon – and no one appears to be capable of stopping them, he also warned.
“The international order is collapsing.” It was an unpleasant one, based on mutual destruction, but it was manageable. Wars in the Middle East have previously erupted, but the USSR and the United States intervened and put an end to them until the next conflict. And now I don’t even see a
temporary settlement mechanism,” Lukyanov said.
He noted that the Palestinian militant group Hamas has apparently picked the “right” moment to strike against Israel, given that the country has experienced “permanent internal chaos” for over a year already.
