Giv­en the head­lines in 2026, it would be rea­son­able to ask, “Have we en­tered World War 3?” Mil­i­tary con­flicts have touched the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca with Venezuela, Eu­rope, with Ukraine and the Mid­dle East with the Iran con­flict. There is al­so the fur­ther threat of an es­ca­la­tion with Cu­ba and a pos­si­ble at­tack on Tai­wan by Chi­na in the fu­ture.

The mech­a­nisms of the Unit­ed Na­tions used to me­di­ate and pre­vent con­flicts have been ren­dered fu­tile. The UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al’s calls for a cease­fire and de-es­ca­la­tion have large­ly been in­ef­fec­tive in both Ukraine and Iran.

In an ar­ti­cle by Tyler Mcbrien for Law­fare.com, it was stat­ed: “US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions Am­bas­sador Mike Waltz sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil lay­ing out its in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for launch­ing Op­er­a­tion Epic Fury. The let­ter de­scribes the joint US-Is­raeli at­tacks on Iran that be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 28 as “nec­es­sary and pro­por­tion­ate ac­tions in ex­er­cise of the in­her­ent right of self-de­fence as re­flect­ed in Ar­ti­cle 51 of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

A World War is de­fined as a con­flict in­volv­ing most of the world’s ma­jor mil­i­tary pow­ers, char­ac­terised by such a large-scale mo­bil­i­sa­tion of re­sources that na­tions of­ten go in­to debt for decades to fund mil­i­tary bud­gets. It took 61 years for the UK to pay off its World War 2 debt to the US and Cana­da, with the last pay­ment be­ing made in 2006.

One may coun­ter­ar­gue that the scale of hor­ror seen in pre­vi­ous world wars has not yet been reached. Due to ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy, we are un­like­ly to see the death tolls of WWI and WWII, as trench war­fare and car­pet bomb­ing of cities are no longer nec­es­sary due to pre­ci­sion stand­off weapons and drones be­ing the pre­ferred method of at­tack.

WWI saw 15-22 mil­lion deaths, with at least six mil­lion civil­ians killed. World War II saw 50-85 mil­lion killed, over 45 mil­lion of whom were civil­ians.

Armies to­day are thank­ful­ly small­er due to ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, with Rus­sia’s (So­vi­et Union’s) WWII army stand­ing at over 11 mil­lion per­son­nel com­pared to 1.5 mil­lion to­day. Death tolls on civil­ians are al­so thank­ful­ly small­er in mod­ern times since pre­ci­sion bombs lim­it col­lat­er­al dam­age, as com­pared to the car­pet bomb­ing of cities in WWII.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of nu­clear weapons among the ma­jor pow­ers has al­so caused na­tions to pre­fer proxy wars against non-nu­clear states such as Ukraine and Iran. Hence, WWI­II may look like a se­ries of dev­as­tat­ing proxy wars in third-par­ty na­tions rather than di­rect at­tacks.

The US has al­ready land­ed troops in Venezuela to ar­rest Nicolás Maduro af­ter neu­tral­is­ing the Venezue­lan air de­fence net­work. The on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine has killed more than 400,000 peo­ple on both sides and near­ly two mil­lion were wound­ed.

The en­tire NA­TO al­liance is ac­tive­ly fund­ing and arm­ing Ukraine to fight Rus­sia, while Rus­sia is be­ing sup­port­ed by North Ko­rea and Chi­na. North Ko­rea has at least 11,000 troops sta­tioned in Rus­sia sup­port­ing the Ukraine war.

The con­flict be­tween Is­rael, the US and Iran, dubbed “Op­er­a­tion Epic Fury,” has killed over 4,000 Ira­ni­ans, 13 US ser­vice mem­bers and over 30 Is­raelis. By the time this ar­ti­cle is pub­lished, US Marines may have al­ready land­ed on is­lands in the Strait of Hor­muz, bring­ing the death toll even high­er.

The eco­nom­ic im­pact of clos­ing the Strait of Hor­muz has even caused Japan to vol­un­teer its navy to help clear the Strait of mines if a cease­fire is reached. Most of Asia re­lies on oil and nat­ur­al gas flow­ing through the Strait of Hor­muz, and fac­to­ries may be­gin shut­ting down if en­er­gy sup­plies run out in the com­ing months.

In my view, the present glob­al sit­u­a­tion falls just short of qual­i­fy­ing for “WWI­II”, as Chi­na is not ac­tive­ly in a ki­net­ic con­flict.

Im­pact on T&T

The im­pact of the glob­al sit­u­a­tion on T&T is a mixed bag. On the pos­i­tive side, in­sta­bil­i­ty in the Mid­dle East will make T&T’s oil and gas in­dus­try more at­trac­tive to in­vestors look­ing for a haven.

How­ev­er, high­er food prices will in­evitably re­sult from the con­flict in the Mid­dle East. The Rus­sia-Ukraine war has al­ready im­pact­ed food prices neg­a­tive­ly world­wide, and things are on­ly go­ing to get worse.

T&T im­ports many goods from Asia. I have no­ticed that some canned fish from Chi­na have been ap­pear­ing on our gro­cery shelves. We will not es­cape the eco­nom­ic im­pact of a pro­tract­ed war in the Mid­dle East, and I en­cour­age read­ers to turn to agri­cul­ture and plant veg­etable gar­dens.

Com­mu­ni­ties should be­gin work­ing to­geth­er to share agri­cul­tur­al knowl­edge and plant crops. The shar­ing of seedlings and re­pur­pos­ing of com­mon spaces for veg­etable gar­dens could pro­vide vi­tal calo­ries to the un­der­priv­i­leged.

If food prices are not man­aged, the in­creased pres­sure may push more in­di­vid­u­als to com­mit pet­ty crimes in or­der to eat. While we may not be liv­ing in WWI­II, the present glob­al cli­mate presents se­ri­ous risks that must be man­aged care­ful­ly by both the Gov­ern­ment and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens.