This was the question a friend of mine in his late 20s
asked me when we woke up on April 14 to the news that
Iran had launched over 300 drones and missiles towards
Israel.
Apart from video war games, the young man has not
seen any wars. Nigeria’s civil war ended nearly two and a
half decades before he was born. Of course, you don’t
have to experience war to feel it. There’s a sense, for
example, in which the more recent wars in the West
African subregion or the more distant ones in
Northeastern Africa or Europe tend to reach us,
wherever we are.
Our televisions and phones bring the horrors of war right
into our living rooms. A generation for which these smart
devices have become a playground is right to be
concerned that the flare-up in the Middle East could lead
to something more serious.
Apart from the war in Ukraine and the underreported
conflicts in South Sudan and Central Africa, no other war
in recent times has riveted the world like the one in
Gaza. For all the talk about the potential escalation into a
wider regional conflict, it didn’t seem likely that the
Israeli-Palestinian war would spread beyond shadow
attacks by Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies,
until Israeli air strike killed seven Iranians in the Iranian
Embassy in Damascus and six Syrians.
An unusual response
That was when the threat of escalation became real. Not
even during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, did Iran, a
regional power, take a direct aim at Israel the way it did
in its revenge attack on April 14. If half the drones and
missiles aimed at Israel had hit their target, Israel would
be reeling from a devastation worse than anything that
happened on October 7. The world might have been a
different place today.
It may be convenient to dismiss concerns about a
possible outbreak of a Third World War as far-fetched,
and perhaps even childish. Yet, remembering a few of
the things that led to two world wars might help us not
to take too much for granted.
The immediate cause of WW1, for example, was the
murder in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a
Serbian nationalist, prompting the Austro-Hungarian
empire, supported by Germany, to declare war on Serbia.
Russia, Serbia’s ally, joined. It wasn’t long before
Germany declared war on Russia and invaded France,
drawing Britain into the war.
Of course, the murder of the Archduke may have been
the tipping point, but a web of other factors also
contributed, from the competition for territories and
economic rivalries to militarism, and from the unstable
alliances to the crisis in the Balkans. The Sarajevo murder
was only the last straw.
Rules-based system
God knows just how many more straws before we reach
another breaking point. We like to think that we have a
rules-based system; that the world is wiser today,
restrained as much by competing interests as it is by the
assurance of mutual destruction.
The two world wars claimed the lives of a population
nearly the size of Ethiopia’s 120m and left millions more
ruined forever. And yet, since the last two years we have
seen, starting from the Russia-Ukraine war, traces that
the world is going mad again.
If by the death of one man – the Archduke – the world
descended into chaos, was it irrational to fear that
Israel’s killing of 13 people, including seven Iranians in
Iran’s embassy in Damascus and the destruction of the
embassy was sufficient to spark a wider regional conflict?
Has anything really changed or the world learnt anything
new 110 years after WWI?
Fewer warmongers?
Some studies suggest so. One interesting study, for
example, points to demographics as a good predictor of
civil conflicts. The study, famously called the “youth
bulge” suggests a strong correlation between countries
prone to civil conflicts and those with fast-growing youth
populations. So, the older the population, the theory
goes, the less likely its appetite for a hot war.
It suggests that in spite of the sabre-rattling in the
world’s former war-mongering capitals – Washington,
Berlin, London, Paris, Tokyo and Moscow – the
dominance of older, wealthier populations in these
countries combined with concerns about managing their
ageing populations have reduced their appetite for war.
A few like the US, Britain and France, may press the
world to the edge of a frenzy with the sort of disgraceful
complicity seen in the Middle East. But just before
madness finally takes over, the theory argues that the
leadership in countries with older, wiser populations
would dial back and make the kind of last-minute call to
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that saves the world
for another day.
There have also been those, like foreign affairs
columnist, Jonathan Power, who argue that in spite of
the Russia-Ukraine war, the war in Gaza, and the under-
reported deadly conflicts in South Sudan and Yemen, the
world has never been at greater peace with itself than it
is.
Although Ukraine is not too far from becoming a meat
grinder and the death toll in Gaza has topped 32,000
(minus hundreds unaccounted for) studies suggest that,
thanks to the better angels of our nature, there has been
a reduction in battle deaths per 100,000 in state-based
conflicts since the Second World War.
Spells of peace
War historians say that outside the Pax Romana, and the
Golden Age of Islam, the post-World War II era is
probably the most peaceful time in world history.
A number of other reasons have also been given why a
Third World War is improbable. It’s believed that the end
of colonialism, the prioritisation of human rights, the
general rise in global prosperity/literacy, and particularly
the establishment of the United Nations, have accounted
for the longest spell of peace in human history and might
yet keep the world from descending into another
catastrophic war.
Maybe – and that’s a big maybe. The safeguards of our
sanity are already fraying at the edges and we may just
have entered a violent new era.
If after 77 years, Israel would still not accept the UN’s
two-state solution to the problem in Palestine, preferring
instead to kill over 30,000 Palestinians in pursuit of the
last Hamas; if recourse to the International Criminal
Court (ICC) cannot restrain Israel from the widespread
carnage in Gaza; if the US, Britain and France will veto
the UN’s condemnation of the attack on the Iranian
Embassy in spite of the significant casualties – a crime
they would not accept if it had been done to them; if the
US keeps showing by its conduct that might is right, then
the world is not too far from another world war.
Global institutions expected to keep the fragile balance
for peace have almost all broken down, and all five veto-
wielding members of the UN have gone rogue: Russia in
Ukraine; China in Taiwan; and the US, Britain and France
in the Middle East, and indeed anywhere else they please
in pursuit of their strategic interests.
To continue to ignore the impotence of and disdain for
the global institutions supposed to preserve peace and
still believe that nothing would happen, is foolish and
dangerous.
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP