Trump is not wrong to remind the world that a third world war is a risk
Conflicts imposed on Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan are intensifying rather than breaking out in peace. The assumption that they aren’t central to Australia’s interests is dead wrong.
The seven-front war against Israel is heating up once again and the intensity of fighting in Ukraine shows we are a long way away from a sustainable peace.
China meanwhile, in the words of Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, is not only exercising its military forces but also engaging in rehearsals for war. To win a war over Taiwan, China thinks about projecting power everywhere – space, cyberspace, the central Pacific and underwater.
There are people who think Australia has little or no interests in any of these conflicts. Ukraine, a democracy of 33 million brave souls, can be bargained away in a deal with Vladimir Putin.
Israel, the Middle East’s only genuine democracy, bizarrely is condemned by the green left as a “colonial settler society”, one that must fall so rough Palestinian justice can reign. In thought and deed the Albanese government has sided with the anti-Israel position.
Democratic, liberal, pluralist Taiwan is far from us and close to China. The Taiwanese are (mostly) ethnically Han Chinese. Does Australia even need to take an interest? So many of our elites are looking for the escape hatch from our own region.
Beyond token military aid for Ukraine – remember the Australian Army burying helicopters rather than handing them to Kyiv? – under Australia’s increasingly narrowed foreign policy the Albanese government has opted out of any attempt to influence the world’s three big military-strategic flashpoints.
The underlying assumption is that Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan aren’t central to our interests but somehow the rest of the world has Australia’s back in our collective defence.
I doubt it. We are the energy-rich country that’s running out of power; the AUKUS industrial giant that can’t repair its Collins-class submarines; the sub-2 per cent of GDP defence budgeter with a military much smaller than an MCG crowd, one that still faces a “workforce crisis”.
None of those measures will incline a transactional Trump administration to defend Australia to the last American. And why should Donald Trump be expected to take more interest in our security than we do ourselves?
Look at the direction of the two current wars and the third in its rehearsal stage. What’s happening is that the conflicts are spreading in inverse proportion to talk of peace.
Across the remainder of 2025 there is a strong chance that international conflicts will grow.
Peace will not break out, not before a lot more violence, and the edges of conflict will broaden to take in other regions, nations and interests.
That’s the geopolitical context for the Australian federal election. If you are worried about the cost of living, remember that the cost of dying is always higher.
In the Ukraine war, Russia is intensifying its military ground offensives along the entire east and southeast front. This is a severely hard-fought conflict with high casualty rates similar to fighting that took place here during WWII.
The trend is that Russia is slowly taking ground. Ukrainian forces have achieved notable success but right now they are struggling to hold on to Russian territory taken in the Kursk Oblast. Putin wants to regain Russian ground and not leave Kyiv with a small bargaining point in negotiations.
Notwithstanding Putin’s phone call with Trump, Moscow is putting a major effort into attacking Ukrainian population centres with missiles and drones – many of the latter from Iran. Most are shot down but a few always hit their targets.
Putin will use the cover of negotiations to aggressively pursue his war effort. I cannot see Kyiv or the Europeans agreeing to Russia’s demand that Ukraine disarms, is not supplied with weapons and has no security guarantee. Why would Putin make these demands unless he wanted to attack Ukraine later?
My hope is that the deeper the Trump administration engages in real negotiations (as opposed to Oval Office press conferences), the more it will conclude Putin can’t be trusted. A strong Ukraine is a bulwark that suits American interests – keep Kyiv strong if you don’t want doughboys fighting and dying on Europe’s central plains.
If Trump opts for a fake peace while leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russia, then Putin will have won a Pyrrhic victory, but he will have a “forever war” insurgency on his hands that will make South Vietnam look like a minor police emergency.
Russia is arming itself in ways that convince many Europeans they will be attacked. The excellent Institute for the Study of War notes: “The Russian military is reportedly increasing the number of its information and psychological operations units … to intensify its informational war against Ukraine, Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia.”
Trump is not wrong to remind the world that a third world war is a risk. Like the last two, it could start with aggressive authoritarian military manoeuvres in central and northern Europe. And like the last two world wars, appeasement rather than strength is what leads to conflict.
In the Middle East, Israel is intensifying strike operations in Gaza because it is inescapable that Hamas must be destroyed as a political force to avoid further terrorist attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to reduce Hamas to the point that the Israel Defence Forces can reconstitute for wider, heavier and deeper strike operations against Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and proxy forces.
Watch what Israel does with its ground forces in Gaza. They have retaken part of the Netzarim Corridor that splits the strip into north and south zones. Is the aim to bring part of the strip back under Israeli control? Jerusalem made a big mistake by leaving Gaza in September 2005.
Israeli strategic thinking has changed in a way that has broad domestic support – there is no future in just “cutting the grass” in Gaza – that is, using airstrikes to hit terrorist cells and missile stockpiles. The need is to destroy Hamas once and for all.
It’s often said that one can’t kill an ideology. I’m not so sure. The Allies did that quite effectively with fascism in 1945. Israel will try its hardest to eliminate Hamas. It’s in the interests of humanity and civilisation that it succeeds.
Netanyahu must have an understanding with Trump about the next steps for Gaza, and for a military campaign after that to reduce the Iranian nuclear threat.
Netanyahu can make such a deal with Trump because Israel is strong enough to prosecute major military campaigns with its own power. Australia should take note: this is the difference between a strong ally and a free-riding security rent-seeker.
I have written in these pages that Iran with nuclear weapons threatens global security. Tehran is literally weeks away from realising the capability. The regime sees value in being ambiguous about when it might take that final step to weaponise a nuclear bomb. The second half of 2025 is the moment.
Israel has the air power and long-range strike assets to severely reduce Iran’s nuclear program. Its actions in the past few months to destroy Iranian air defence, Syrian airpower and many of Hezbollah’s missiles create a brief opening for Israel to take strikes deeper into Iranian territory.
American intelligence, weapons supplied to the IDF and a strong presence of aircraft carrier battle groups in the eastern Mediterranean will enable an Israeli strike.
How will Russia and China react? Moscow needs Tehran’s drones. Tehran wants Russian missiles, and needs Chinese funding and weapons technology from both countries.
Note in the Middle East that the US is striking Houthi facilities in Yemen. Trump is not an isolationist. He wants a powerful America and will use force when he sees US interests attacked.
Beijing’s rehearsal for war in the Pacific is massive, covers numerous areas and is being done in the bright light of publicity to inspire and direct Chinese nationalism towards aggressive militaristic ends.
Just in the past few weeks we have seen the People’s Liberation Army-Navy doing live-fire operations in the Tasman Sea, in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam, in the Yellow Sea near the Korean Peninsula and near Taiwan.
A fifth aircraft carrier is under construction, this one large enough to operate four catapult aircraft launchers.
There is a massive program to build amphibious landing vessels with a focus on Taiwan, along with the capacity for massed airborne assault forces to attack in a way similar to the 2022 Russian paratrooper assault north of Kyiv.
China has just concluded manoeuvres in space to move satellites tactically in ways that could destroy US military and communication satellites.
In the Pacific China’s recently concluded strategic co-operation agreement with the Cook Islands – the content of which remains secret – shows that Beijing puts a high priority on establishing and maintaining a political, diplomatic and military presence throughout the region.
Xi Jinping’s speeches to the military identify 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA, as the time the military should be ready to undertake military operations against Taiwan. In practice the time is so close, and the PLA has made such significant advances, that Beijing has the option to launch an assault at will.
In a strange logic inversion some think that it is “hawkish” merely to write about Chinese military power, but the developments are happening. Ignorance is not bliss.
It is certainly true that Xi would prefer to win without fighting. Much of the PLA’s military posturing is, I suggest, a way of testing Trump’s resolve and regional responses. Weakness or uninterest or disarray will be read by Xi as a sign that he can advance China’s strategic aims at minimal cost.
Speaking at the Lowy Institute on Thursday, Peter Dutton foreshadowed a need to lift defence spending. He said: “You can’t sign up to AUKUS without putting new money into defence.” That is exactly what the Morrison and Albanese governments did.
The Opposition Leader said a priority was to stop a flood of people leaving the Australian Defence Force. He also wants to expand Australian industry, making drones, missiles, uncrewed ships and underwater vessels. That takes defence money.
Interestingly, Dutton suggested that Australia could use shipbuilding and sustainment industries in South Australia and Western Australia to lift the viability of US Navy and other navies’ operations in the region.
Dutton declined to put a dollar figure on the additional investment he plans for defence. It all comes down to money – money and leadership – at the end of the day.
Xi has said to Putin in recent meetings that Russia and China working together will bring about “changes the world has not seen in a century”. Their most recent phone call discussion (that we know of) happened on February 24. The leaders affirmed their “no limits” partnership, signed just before Russia’s 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine, stressing their “long-term” alliance.
What’s at stake in the current two big wars and the war in rehearsal is an authoritarian challenge to the Western world order. All the pieces are connected, drawing in Australian interests.
After decades of underperformance, we must quickly and substantially lift our defence effort. Along with the US and allies, that effort might build a form of deterrence to keep the Asia-Pacific peaceful. We are almost out of time.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-12).
More Coverage
