Discussion on the potential for global conflict

“That still leaves 25 per cent for human agency,” he says.

A war? Imminently? “No, over the [next] decade or more,” he says. “Not tomorrow. But it could happen anytime because something crazy could happen in Taiwan tomorrow.”

The US skidded close to such a crazy moment two years ago, he recalls, when two senators co-sponsored a bill requesting that the US recognise Taiwan as a non-NATO ally.

“And I said, ‘This is crazy’,” says Allison, of the bill, backed by Democrat Bob Menendez, and the late Lindsey Graham, a Republican, which would also have provided billions of dollars in security aid to Taiwan. “I actually said to Senator Menendez, ‘I love your bill, I’m going to subscribe to it entirely. You should simply add to it, Fast track to war with China’.” The bill was later scotched.

But a fight over Taiwan – a scenario that could see the US military firing on Chinese ships or planes, with other, smaller countries, joining each side – is just one other possible trigger for another World War, in the current geopolitical climate, according to experts.

“An act of terrorism [is another],” says the University of Sydney’s James Der Derian. “It would take a mass casualty attack.”

So far, he says, both Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Ukraine, and Trump, in Iran, have been “fairly restrained”.

The US, for instance, has avoided an attack on the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island – a likely trigger for an escalation in conflict, given that it is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s economic lifeline, processing about 90 per cent of Iran’s crude oil exports.

And Putin has reduced his threats to launch tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, in the years since late2022, when the CIA put the odds of him conducting such a strike at 50-50.

But were Iran, or another power, to hit a US warship, and were American soldiers killed by a drone, it could trigger a wider war, or a catastrophic war that involved multiple major powers, says Der Derian.

So, too, could an accident, or an incident that causes a cascade of events that leaders – whether they’re in Iran, Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Israel, China, or elsewhere – are unlikely to anticipate.

“I always tell people to go back and look at 1914, which is the most incredible story in the world,” says Allison, of the unlikely killing that sparked World War I. “How could an assassination of an archduke [Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austria-Hungarian empire] by a terrorist in Sarajevo, which was an event so inconsequential that it didn’t even make the front pages, within five weeks, spark a fire that produced a conflagration that burned down essentially the whole of Europe?”

But what of the risk, now, of nuclear warfare?

The closest the world has come to World War III is often cited as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, only four powers possessed nuclear weapons. It was the psychologically and politically stable American president John F. Kennedy, who had his finger on the proverbial nuclear button.

Now, nine powers have nuclear weapons. And the unreliability of the United States has led countries like South Korea and even Japan to begin debating the need to acquire their own nuclear weapons, leading to global fears over another burgeoning arms race.

And Trump, a famously tempestuous leader, is commander-in-chief of the US armed forces. Is he a risk factor for the start of nuclear war?

“I would say that answer is yes and no,” says Allison, who advised Reagan during the years when the Cold War was still underway.

“The bad news, is that he seems so erratic, and emotional and unpredictable that there’s hardly any statement you can make about which you’d say ‘He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t do that.’ The answer is, ‘Excuse me, I think he might, ok?’ Trump even, as he explains it, he likes chaos because in a chaotic situation, you can often push and get a little more of your way. So is he a risk factor? Yes.”

But Trump’s disposition also leads to two positives, in terms of risk, says Allison.

One, he is terrified of the prospect of nuclear warfare.

And second, Trump is far from a hawk on China; to the contrary, he reveres Xi as a leader. “And he appreciates that China is a big strong country that the US is going to have to live with,” he says, an understanding that minimises the chance of escalation via the so-called Thucydides trap.

At an event in Sydney last week, former prime minister Paul Keating argued that Trump’s engagement with Russia and, in particular, China was all about avoiding World War III. “That’s a big objective,” he told the audience.

“This is why he’s friendly with Xi Jinping ... Trump does not want a military exchange with the Chinese, above all else.”

Der Derian also finds reason for hope, noting that it’s been much smaller players during heart-stopping moments in previous conflicts who have made unexpectedly clear-eyed decisions. Which saved the world from possible nuclear armageddon.

“Sometimes it’s just dumb luck,” says Der Derian, noting the event of October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Deep in the ocean near Cuba, a US warship spotted a Soviet submarine, and dropped a non-lethal charge in the water nearby, in a bid to force the Soviet submarine to the surface.

Inside the Soviet sub, not knowing if the war had begun or not, the captain and political officer wanted to launch its nuclear-tipped torpedo against the US fleet, in retaliation.

“But the Soviet officer” – Vasili Arkhipov – “refused to launch, even though he thought he was under attack,” says Der Derian.

And, he says, it may now be that civilians around the world might prove to be the necessary sanest minds in the geopolitical space.

“You know, I can’t remember who said it, but every end is a beginning,” says Der Derian. “I think we’re coming out of the end of a crisis. I do feel that in general people can tolerate only so much disruption, chaos, disorder before they get rid of the leaders who they feel are responsible for it.”

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