World wars

Ukraine. Sudan. Gaza. Iran. This may not seem like a world war, but we are getting dangerously close to one. 

Here in Nepal, we may think we are far removed from it all, but there are about 2 million Nepalis in Israel and the Gulf states, and an escalation would devastate our remittance-driven economy. 

The Israeli attacks on Bandar Abbas and Iran’s threat to mine the Strait of Hormuz, set off some panic buying at petrol stations in Kathmandu this week. Petroleum makes up a quarter of Nepal’s import bill.

Ten Nepalis were killed in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, and one is still held hostage in Gaza. Nepali soldiers in the Russian Army are fighting and getting killed on the Ukraine front. 

There are Nepali green card holders enlisted in the US military, and some of them took part in the Pyongyang-style military parade in Washington DC on 14 June. While the DPRK tries to deter enemies with military might, Trump’s parade was a warning to his own citizens not to step out of line.

In the background are warlike warnings on ‘Truth Social’ from the leader of a global superpower about joining Israel to bomb Iran.

Meanwhile, the other superpower is hitting apartments in Kyiv with guided missiles. Tv talk show guests in Moscow talk flippantly about nuking London. 

Ukraine’s audacious drone attacks on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet proved what had been obvious for some time —  the nature and scope of warfare has changed.

India and Pakistan in May also used UAVs and missiles against each other. And in a new twist, Pakistani J-10 fighters are said to have  shot down two Indian aircraft, at least one of them a French-built Rafale jet.

Even if those reports are not true, air forces around the world are reassessing the capability of Chinese weaponry.

In both the India-Pakistan aerial combat in May and the ongoing Israeli raids on Iran, some of the targets were nuclear installations. We have to see if President Trump follows through on his warning to evacuate Tehran, but analysts see the US possibly deploying bunker buster bombs on underground Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

Iran’s leaders have warned of retaliation, and US bases in Bahrain, Qatar and UAE could be targets. If that happens, all hell will break loose. While hoping that saner voices prevail, the world has to prepare for the three flashpoints that carry the danger of crossing the nuclear threshold: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Iran and closer to home, India-Pakistan. 

Nuclear deterrence may have prevented New Delhi and Islamabad from incinerating each other’s cities with atomic weapons, it also showed how a small miscalculation could have led to such escalation.

Both countries had primed their populations through propaganda and mass media to bay for blood. On social media Indians and Pakistanis were already nuking each other with hate speech, exhorting their leaders to press launch buttons.

In all three conflicts, that is where the danger lies: public so consumed by manufactured hatred magnified by the social web that the notion of nuclear deterrence has become meaningless. 

Ukraine’s drone attacks deep within Russia and India’s use of loitering munitions have changed conventional warfare. Expensive stealth bombers, main battle tanks, surface-to-air missile launch sites are all obsolete because these legacy weapons can be destroyed by drones which can be ordered online on Amazon. 

The way these three world wars are being waged, and the loss of America’s nuclear umbrella have also triggered a rearmament race. Money has been diverted from development, climate mitigation (and in a tragic irony) famines unleashed by wars.

We in Nepal worry about radioactive fallout from a limited or all-out nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. But there is also the danger of a showdown between a wounded Iran and nuclear-armed Israel, or even Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. There are also the ever-present danger of nuclear terrorism by non-state actors.

And if all that was not worrying enough, here is another danger: the spread of millions of drones equipped with AI targeting. 

As Stuart Russel at the University of California Berkeley warns in his film Slaughterbots, the world may need another disarmament treaty to control weapons that are not controlled by humans. 

Kunda Dixit