A World At War: Survey of the Contemporary Decade

Representative Image Generated by Gemini AI

The trend of use of force to achieve political objectives defines the current decade from Rusia [2022 onwards] to Israel [2023 onwards]  and the United States [2025-25] followed by Iran’s retaliation, yet none of these states have been able to achieve their war goals, will diplomacy return to the centre stage, here is a perspective.

The World is at war. Some analysts have called it World War 3; others have used a term just short of that. The kinetic spread of the Gulf War 2026 may be limited to the Middle East, extending from Israel in the West to Oman in the East. Still, the impact of the war is reverberating across the world, particularly in South Asia, with extensive linkages in energy, the economy, and migration to this rich belt of sheikhdoms, many of whom have moved beyond dependence on oil and gas sales to resilient business and economic hubs. With a well-developed civil aerospace infrastructure, the region is also a transport hub connecting Asia with the rest of the world, including the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. An intense disruption due to war is catastrophic for the Gulf and disastrous for the developing World.

As a deterrence, the Gulf states had acquired considerable Western arms, and some had secured the shield of American bases. The ostensible threat was Iran – a Shia, clerical, revolutionary regime with which there had been legacy contestations. Iran lacking the military wherewithal created an Axis of Resistance –proxies to threaten potential rivals – the Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria as a counter to Isreal, the Houthis in Yemen to keep Saudi Arabia and UAE engaged and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) for influence in Iraq as well as to counter the United States post Operation Iraqi Freedom and beyond the withdrawal from that country.

This, in some ways, was seen as a forward defence providing security for Iran, though it lacked modern military hardware due to multiple rounds of US and UN sanctions. Another element of the Iranian military structure was the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) – a large armed group parallel to the military, whose primary task was regime survival. The IRGC’s strength was in the asymmetric potential of missiles and later drones with stocks extending to thousands, which were also supplied to Hezbollah and Houthis, along with manufacturing potential. Iran believed that this would not only secure state survival but also domination of the regional universe with global ambitions. Post-1979 Iranian Revolution, one of the defining features of the regime in Tehran was an existential antipathy to Israel. Having faced multiple challenges to the formation of a Jewish state amidst hostile Arab rivals, Israel has attained high-technology military deterrence with the support of the United States and a covert nuclear capability.   For Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran was seen as an existential threat and denial of the same was the raison d’etre of governments, as that led by the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That a military force could be employed to achieve national objectives was first demonstrated by Russia when it launched the so-called Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The grounds for the same were being prepared since 2008 when Russian troops first invaded Georgia, but a full force offensive was not anticipated by the world, which was taken by shock. The main impact was in Europe with a sudden disruption of the post-Second World War peace dividend.  This war is ongoing with many iterations and remains a no-win situation for both sides – Russia and Ukraine. NATO support to Ukraine, seen as a front-line state against Russia, was seen as inevitable until the arrival of Mr Donald Trump as the President in January 2025 – his second presidency with a clear agenda for Making America Great Again or MAGA. One of the principal agendas of the Trump administration was neutralisation of Iran as a threat to America.

The massive terrorist attacks by Hamas and its ilk on October 7 2023, shook up the Israeli establishment. The response was a massive military campaign in Gaza, Southern Lebanon and now Iran. The Israeli objective was security from Iranian proxies, neutralisation of Iran’s nuclear threat and then, with the active alliance with the United States under Mr Trump, the Iranian state itself. Just as Russia in 2022, the US and Israel saw the collapse of Iran as a short and swift campaign of decapitation of leadership and pulverisation of the population through air and missile strikes.

Mr Trump, fresh from the triumph against the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela, the decapitation of the Iranian Supreme Authority Ayatollah Khamenei on February 28 was seen as a trigger for the collapse of the Iranian regime. Alas! This was a serious misreading of Iran’s complex, where armed groups, such as the IRGC, held sway over the population, ruthlessly preventing an uprising. And we see a long war scenario unfolding, as an undefeated Iranian regime will only see the current conflict extended in spurts. The impact would be on the Middle East, a hub of prosperity, while for the hapless people of Iran held hostage by the IRGC, doom remains a perennial outcome in the years and decades ahead. And for Israel's failure of an attempt at absolute security, and the US's continued Iranian revolutionary regime would imply more armed engagements ahead. A militarised world will continue to seek war as a solution to the vexing polity of our times. In the interregnum of a possible break in fighting in Iran or in Ukraine, whether diplomacy will emerge as an alternative remains to be seen.