Wars often begin with single events – flashpoints. The Great War – World War I – began with the assassination of a minor Eastern European noble, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, by a Bosnian Serb student. The second chapter of that conflict, World War II, began arguably with the invasion of Manchuria by Japan in 1931, while the European theater of that war began after a long series of provocations with Hitler’s and Stalin’s invasion of Poland.
The flashpoint that brought the United States into that latter conflict was, of course, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
What flashpoint might start a third world war? On Fox Business, retired General Jack Keane recently voiced some thoughts.
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The U.S. is treading on ground not seen since World War II, according to Fox News senior strategic analyst and retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane, who warned that “we’re on a pathway” to a third world war.
His comments come amid conflicts in the Middle East and Europe and growing tension in the Pacific, and echoes former President Trump’s warning that the U.S. is “heading into World War III territory.”
Keane told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney that he does not “react to candidates’ comments because I don’t want to influence voters,” but stated that a recent congressional commission on the Biden administration’s national defense strategy that he took part in revealed that the threat of another major war is very real.
What’s interesting here is Gen. Keane’s views on how American leadership is viewed abroad, and he’s certainly not alone in his concern that the leadership of the United States is broadly viewed by the rest of the world as weak and ineffective – probably because it is weak and ineffective. And bad actors around the world are taking advantage of it:
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Keane pointed out that there was a change in the behavior of U.S. adversaries that occurred between the Biden and Trump administrations.
“What has fundamentally changed from one administration to the other is Russia, China, Iran and North Korea working together, collaborating, coordinating, and truly helping each other,” he stressed. “And the fact that they perceive the United States as being weak, and they’re going to take advantage of it, so they have been incentivized by their perception of us.”
General Keane has some valid concerns:
“It’s no isolated event that there’s war in Europe for the first time since World War II on a major scale, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” he said. [It’s] “no accident that, or isolated event, that what’s taking place in the Middle East where Iran has operationalized all of their proxies to stranglehold Israel into making people stop living there and destroy the state of Israel and push the United States out of the region.”
“And President Xi’s aggression has increased dramatically,” he added of the Chinese leader.
Keane reiterated the commission’s conclusion that the U.S. has “not seen a period of time like this since World War II” and warned of what may be to come.
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So, what might the flashpoint be that starts another global war?
The correlation of forces has already likely been defined: Russia, China, Iran, and possibly (likely) North Korea against the United States, and, perhaps, the remaining NATO powers. That means, in effect, the United States. In the Pacific, Japan and Australia would be U.S. allies, as would the Philippines, although they would be a minor player. But what would be the flashpoint that starts a global conflict?
Rash acts are most often committed by the most irrational actors. My money’s on Iran doing something reckless and stupid. North Korea is also not the most stable of regimes, but their involvement on the international scene so far has been as an arms broker. I don’t see Russia or China launching any full-blown, Pearl Harbor-style attacks. Russia has its hands full dealing with Ukraine at the moment, and China’s military isn’t all they claim it is; they have a lot of ships but cannot really project power. Their navy is limited in range to how far they can go before having to return for fuel – and they have no effective aircraft carriers.
But Iran? If Iran were to obtain a nuke, either by building their own or just buying one from North Korea or Pakistan, that might very well be the flashpoint. This is a line that has not been crossed since 1945, and was Iran to torch off a nuke in Haifa – or New York – that would almost certainly plunge the world into conflict.
Watch Iran. Watch the least stable players. Hopefully, reason will prevail, but as von Clausewitz famously said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
