For decades, the prevailing assumption was that nuclear weapons had made a Third World War almost unthinkable. Yet an increasing number of serious strategists, historians and commentators are now asking whether that confidence is still justified.
While Donald Trump’s temperament has undoubtedly heightened concerns about miscalculation, it is too simplistic to blame one man for the world’s growing instability.
The deeper story is the steady erosion of the post-Cold War international order, the return of great-power rivalry, and the convergence of multiple geopolitical flashpoints stretching from Ukraine and the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula.
Nuclear deterrence continues to impose powerful constraints on the major powers, just as it has for much of the past eight decades. The real risk is not that world leaders deliberately seek global conflict, but that separate crises begin to reinforce one another in ways that even experienced statesmen struggle to contain.
For more, read Tom Switzer’s essay “The Guns of August: Are We on the Brink of World War III?” in The Spectator magazine:
https://spectator.com/article/brink-world-war-three-guns-august/
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Tom Switzer is a journalist and broadcaster who has been a prolific commentator on politics and international affairs. His writing and commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (international), The Australian, and across ABC and News24 (formerly Sky News), where he has been a regular presenter and panellist. For 30 years, since 1995, he has worked at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, the Australian Financial Review, The Australian, the London-based Spectator magazine, and the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies, which he headed from 2017 to 2025. He is the host of Switzerland, a long-form interview series exploring global politics, modern history, and the ideas shaping the world.
