Is This Already World War III? The New Conflicts Don't Look Like the Old Ones
Gideon Rachman: Global conflict is one of the main elements of world leaders' strategic thinking. Should we be ready for a new axis of evil?
By Mateusz Mazzini and Gideon Rachman
Mateusz Mazzini: You're about to publish a book on the risk of a new global war. But what exactly is war? Mark Galeotti, the British expert on Russia, believes it is... everything.
Gideon Rachman: The problem with defining war is that several wars are being fought at once today. Some look very conventional, if not traditional. Ukraine's war with Russia is a clash fought in trenches, and the frontline barely moves — in that respect, you can draw parallels with the war of 1914–1918. The one new variable is that the positions of both sides are largely determined by drone activity — that really is a complete novelty, and it emerged in the course of the war, not before it broke out.
That's an important observation. As a rule, wars start out being fought with the tactics and technologies of previous conflicts. But then, under enormous pressure and changing circumstances, people innovate. Western military officers are hugely impressed by the speed with which the Ukrainians bring new technological solutions onto the battlefield — it often takes only a few weeks from idea to frontline use.
