We are drifting into another World War - on the international Day of Peace

 Drifting into World War IV?      Perhaps World War V?

Today is the International Day of Peace, and we are approaching one of the most dangerous transitions in modern history.

Unfortunately, "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 1776 Declaration that led to the creation of the now un-United States.

A new world war is not inevitable. But today’s conflicts are already appear to be one unified war given the daily news headline pattern.    it suggests our world is again moving toward a system in which regional wars become connected through competing alliances, military assistance, economic warfare, cyberattacks, drones, artificial intelligence, and nuclear deterrence.  History’s a pattern is worth remembering.

The American Revolutionary War was fought principally between Britain and the American colonies, but France, Spain and the Dutch Republic became involved, making it an unusually international conflict for its time.  Next, World War I demonstrated what could happen when alliances advanced regional disputes into a global catastrophe. Then, World War II went even more explicitly global. After that, the Cold War divided much of the world into competing blocs without producing a direct U.S.-Soviet war. But many proxy wars escalated. Then came what the US called GWOT, the “Global War Against Terror.”

Are we now entering another phase?  World War IV?  Not because the 20+ new conflicts are formally one war, but because multiple theaters are increasingly connected by countries choosing sides, supplying weapons, sharing intelligence and developing common strategic interests – and the rapid evolution of weaponry can spiral out of control at any time, with artificial intelligence being integral to warfare.   This could eventually deserve a more ominous description: World War V, the AI World War, or the “The War ending all wars”.   This sounds dramatic. But the underlying conditions are not imaginary.

The emerging alignment: 

Russia’s war against Ukraine is no longer simply a conflict between Russia and Ukraine. NATO describes an unprecedented level of military assistance to Ukraine, while European allies and Canada have increasingly assumed responsibility for financing that support. At the July 2026 NATO summit, allies pledged €70 billion in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine for 2026.

Russia’s side has received increasingly important assistance from China, Iran and North Korea. A recent CSIS assessment describes this triad of support as vital to Russia’s war effort, including Iranian drone technology, Chinese military components, and North Korean troops.

North Korea and Russia have also formalized a mutual-defense relationship, while North Korean forces are participating in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Reuter’s news service reports that North Korea has been simultaneously rebuilding its relationship with China.

And now Russia and China have increasingly coordinated their positions on Iran. In September 2026, the two countries jointly vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution extending independent monitoring of international sanctions on Iran.

None of this proves that a single opposing military bloc has been created. These countries have different interests, and their relationships are not identical to NATO’s formal alliance structure. But the trend is unmistakable: countries that share grievances or strategic interests with the United States and its allies are increasingly cooperating with one another.  As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy, is my friend” holds true.  

At the same time, the US, NATO, European countries, and their partners are strengthening their own military cooperation. 

That is how blocs form. From regional conflicts to interconnected conflicts and the danger isn’t that somebody announces “World War IV.”  The danger is that separate conflicts become connected.  Like the Axis vs the Allies did in World War II.

Now, Ukraine is connected to European security. The Middle East is connected to energy markets, shipping and Iranian-Israeli tensions. East Asia is connected to the future of Taiwan, China and the United States. North Korea is connected to both China and Russia. Cyberwarfare crosses every border. With cheap drones manufactured in mass and deployed thousands of miles away, with artificial intelligence accelerating this equation.

At the 2026 NATO summit, NATO explicitly identified artificial intelligence, uncrewed systems, cyber capabilities, space and precision weapons as components of modern military power.  This changes the equation exponentially.

This conflict may not begin with armies crossing borders, but could begin with a cyberattack on electrical infrastructure, autonomous drones attacking military installations, satellites being disabled, financial systems being disrupted or AI-assisted weapons making decisions faster than humans can respond. 

Thus, our old distinction between war and peace is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

This brings to me back a potential turning point after September 11. The mass murders during those attacks were an extraordinary opportunity for the world to recognize violent extremism terrorizing civilian populations not merely as an American problem but as an assault on the international UN system itself.

President George W. Bush initially emphasized that the world had come together against international terrorism describing September 11 as an attack on the civilized world.  Then his administration constructed a worldwide coalition against terrorism instead of a civilized approach of global law enforcement against mass murdering criminals based on non-national ideologies.  Remember the Korean War.  A police operation never ended, but the war did.   US reactionary strategic response of a Global War on Terror, was actually a tactic of ‘peace through strength’, a delusional tactic that ignored the fundamental concepts of global justice and the protection of inalienable human rights.   The war against the tactic of terrorism only accelerated the human terror of war globally, encompassing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as worldwide intelligence, financial and diplomatic campaigns to accept horrifying collateral damage as the cost of ‘freedom’ from terror.

As Issues Director of the World Federalist Association in 2001 was that the world chose the wrong framework of “peace through strength” ignoring the wisdom of maximizing our domestic freedom and security by prioritizing the global Rule of Law using justice and the protection of human rights and nature to maximins global freedom, security, health, and sustainability.  The US framework ignored international law against mass murder and terrorism, which could have become a truly sane and sustainable global coalition.  It was the perfect time to transition the UN founded on the delusion of independence into a rational governing system based on the irreversible reality of humanities global interdependence.

The distinction matters as profoundly as the 1776 declaration that created the United States and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, intended to address the root causes of war, genocide and the use of weapons of mass destruction.  The US enjoys freedom of speech. Freedom always comes with consequences.  Our power didn’t match our responsibility to abide by the golden rule ordained within “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” within that 1776 declaration.  A document Abraham Lincoln asserted was for ‘everyone, everywhere, for all time’.

The perpetrators of September 11 were not a nation-state. They were criminals who deliberately killed thousands of civilians. Even many who were not born in the US or US citizen. Their weapons were civilian aircraft turned into instruments of mass murder.

Even the George W. Bush White House Archives documented his administration recognizing the possibility of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, then described the September 11 casualties as demonstrating the potential for exponentially greater destruction.  Seven months prior to 9/11 a three year bipartisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (known as the Hart-Rudman commission) warned that ‘Americans should prepare to die on American soil in mass numbers.’  It was ignored as the Bush administration prepared their case for attacking Iran due to its interest and use of chemical WMD, plus its suspected possession of small pox as a bio weapon and elements of nuclear WMD.

Imagine if the world now if the US response had been built primarily around a strengthened international rule of law: identifying the perpetrators, pursuing them globally, disrupting their financing, sharing intelligence, prosecuting accomplices and strengthening international mechanisms for dealing with their terrorizing system of mass murder.

Instead, we got the dominant metaphor of war which tends to create more enemies.

‘Peace through strength’ vs ‘security through cooperation’.  Military strength has a legitimate role in preventing aggression. Deterrence matters.  But preempting mass murder requires a different approach when civilians are put at risk.  Citizens and nations cannot simply wish away threats without global cooperation to solve or resolve problems that are fundamentally transnational.

No country can independently control climate change, pandemics, cyberwarfare, terrorism, artificial intelligence, nuclear proliferation, financial instability or international organized crime.  These are collective-action problems.

This is why the great lesson of the 21st century may be the same lesson we repeatedly failed to learn in the 20^th.  Another bi-partisan Presidential Commission warned of this in 1980.  President Carter’s commission on World Hunger as ~42,000 children were dying every day from easily preventable malnutrition and infectious disease.   Its commissioners specifically warned ...“The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair, and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order… Neither the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”

They also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

Today’s world is experiencing the consequences of ignoring this commission’s warnings of increases in “diseases”, “international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human rights problems” (refugees, genocide, human trafficking…).  Combined, these global pressures have fueled the anti-democratic populist movements now thriving.  Dozens of other prestigious, bipartisan studies and academic reports have followed since that 1980 report. Each clearly documents the direct and indirect links between world hunger, human rights violations, global instability, and the growing array of other threats to our freedoms, nation’s security, economy, and political stability.

Fortunately, an affordable and achievable plan created in 2015 exists now: the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030.  No organization has yet taken a leadership role in building the ‘Movement of Movements’ needed to bring all progress-focused organizations and movements together.   

Time is not on our side. The evolution of pathogens, weapons, war, corruption, environmental distresses, debt. and growing economic disparities are outpacing our will to voluntarily change our governing systems here and globally. This is literally…globally unsustainable.  Leadership on this is urgently needed.    But vital Presidential commissions and other wise global warning reports continue collecting dust.

Security ultimately depends upon cooperation.  The world does not need one government. It needs a stronger rule of law capable of dealing with problems that no nation can solve alone.  Or we should prepare for accelerating and costly global chaos.  

If the world really is moving toward another great-power war, the weapons available today make the consequences potentially unlike anything humanity has experienced.

Nuclear weapons remain. Hypersonic missiles are advancing. Autonomous systems are proliferating. Cyberwarfare can cross borders invisibly. Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in military decision-making. The next major war could be extraordinarily destructive.   This is precisely why we are at a perilous turning point.

World War I led to World War II.  WW II led to the Cold War.  And it lead to GWAT – the permanent war, a tactic, that can never be defeated.  We do not that we need a stronger version of the last war or a more powerful military.  We need a different conception of security altogether.

Instead, we should ask how humanity can prevent conflicts.  And keep them from becoming larger wars in the first place.  Instead of organizing the world primarily around competing military blocs, we should strengthen the institutions and rules that allow countries to resolve disputes without killing one another. 

Instead of waiting for World War IV—or World War V—to teach us that lesson again, perhaps we should wise up.  Because now, with today’s weapons, winning the next world war will be indistinguishable from losing it.  The real victory would be preventing it.