WW3 DEBATE: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” - #1144

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
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There's a lot to pay attention to right now, given how many global conflicts are happening, shifting political powers, populist uprisings. What do you think is the biggest threat to global peace at the moment?

**Robert Pape** (0:39)
The biggest threat to global peace, we're about to see in our midterm elections. It's the internal divisions in the United States.
Those internal divisions have been building for the last five years. They've been normalizing political violence in the United States.
They've led to the rise of leaders in the United States that find the use of political violence increasingly normal. That's how we got to the Iran War. And so that, a lot of the specifics that we see, Chris, around the world, I think it's very important to understand that there is a hub. The United States is the most important, the most powerful country on the planet. And what happens internally in the United States can have ripple effects around the world. And so I think it's really important to not just talk about all the other issues, but to see the United States is at the center of many, maybe not all, but many of those issues. And what's happening internally in the United States, this is increasingly becoming a house divided.

**Jiang Xueqin** (1:43)
What do you think? I think the United States right now is the greatest threat to global peace. Because for the past 30 years, the impacts of America and has been dominant.
And now with the rise of other powers, the United States refuses to seed its global hegemony. And this is why we're seeing conflicts all around the world, specifically in the Middle East.

**George Friedman** (2:03)
I don't see a global conflict coming. Many regional conflicts are coming, because the global system is restructuring itself. There is not really a global system at this point, as there was during the European imperial age or during the period of after World War II.
So rather than looking at a confrontation like nuclear war between the United States and Russia, we're looking at various smaller elements. Sometimes the United States gets involved.
But as to the international conflict, I lived through the 1970s. It was intense in the United States, but it was intense over a very small war. So the idea that there's a global system at this point, it's emerging. But because it's not emerged yet, many of the wars are going to be regional.

**Chris Williamson** (2:56)
Right, so you still see, is it right in thinking that Ukraine, Iran, whatever happens, Taiwan, China, that these things are separate conflicts rather than part of a single global conflict?

**Robert Pape** (3:08)
Well, I think that we may, the three of us, disagree about whether or not there will be a World War III, a true unified global war. I just want to point out that right now we're experiencing multiple regional conflicts. They are linked in some ways, but together they are wrecking the global economy. They're having a major effect on the global economy of what's happening in Russia, the Russian-Ukraine War, what's happening in the Iran conflict.
If we had a conflict with Taiwan and China on top of that, even if those remain three separate arenas, Chris, we might be heading to something far worse than the 1930s depression for the world.
This would have blowback effects on Africa, even though they wouldn't even be involved. We can usefully talk about whether we should expect a true World War III scenario, but we are already seeing global consequences in ways we haven't seen since World War II. We did not see these global consequences in the Vietnam War, for example. We did not see these global consequences with the two what we called forever wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. We're seeing them now, and that, even if it doesn't become army on army, Chinese army on American, that kind of force on force, this is already amazingly consequential for our lives.

**Jiang Xueqin** (4:46)
I think what's really important to appreciate is that, yes, these conflicts are regional, but there's a power orchestrating these conflicts, and that is the United States. So it is United States that unilaterally, without any reason, decided to attack Iran, which started the war in the Middle East, which is right now threatening to destroy the global economy. The war in Ukraine can also be blamed on United States because at the onset of the war, in 2022, Putin and Zelensky would have come to an agreement, but Boris Johnson flew into Kiev and convinced Zelensky to fight this war.