The surge in a global conflict that marred the year 2023 has set alarm bells ringing in the halls of European defense establishments.
Not three weeks of 2024 have passed, and the governments of Estonia, Sweden and now the UK have already warned their respective nations that the prospect of large-scale war is on the horizon.
Leaked German intelligence documents suggest Berlin expects Russia to launch another wave of attacks to overwhelm Ukraine and is scrambling to come up with contingency plans in the event Russian troops march westward from Belarus.
The Israel-Hamas conflict threatens to spread violence across the Middle East, with Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ – including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels – increasing their attacks on Israel and commercial shipping routes, prompting the UK and US to launch a series of devastating strikes by air and sea.
Further East, Taiwan’s election of a new democracy-loving president has angered Beijing even further, with a Chinese invasion of the island nation in the coming years looking ever more likely.
And all the while, Kim Jong Un stands by with his fist clenching the keys to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, ready to plunge his foes into radioactive winter.
In a stark warning speech this week, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps sought to encapsulate the grave threats facing Britain and beyond.
‘In five years we could be looking at multiple theatres including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number will grow or reduce?
‘I suspect we all know the answer.’
Now, with international security experts in cacophonous agreement that we are closer to World War III now than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, MailOnline examines the global ‘fault lines’ that could drag Europe into a massive armed conflict.
