Former UK Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood has a new book called 10 Steps to Prevent World War III and shares how it's not as far away as we might hope.
With a number of countries currently at war around the world, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to hear so many people discussing the potential for a third World War.
During The Pat Kenny Show, he spoke to former UK Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood, who has released a book called 10 Steps to Prevent World War III and discussed some of the warning signs we're already seeing.
The book opens with a fantasy sequence from 2040, in the midst of World War III and it's Mr Ellwood's perspective of where our world could slide to unless we do something about it. The world in that time is a dystopia and highlights how there's a sense of urgency to where our world is heading.
He explained: "Today's headlines remind us constantly we've entered a darker, more dangerous chapter. Nations are rearming, new alliances are forming.
"It's understandable that we're now making increasingly more parallels with 1937, with authoritarianism on the rise, aggressive powers rearming, and a West which is risk averse.
"America is now going back to more of an isolationist approach. And those international institutions, back then in 1937, it was the League of Nations. Today, it's the United Nations, powerless to hold these errant nations to account.
"But for much of the world, life seems to go on. We're in denial. And this is a big call to say, wake up, look where this could go."
A line he uses in the book is that we are "sleepwalking" into a World War III, but also highlights how this will be a very different war to that of World Wars I and II.
World War III will likely be a war on many fronts, and while many people might immediately think of nuclear war, there's also "economic war", "grey zone warfare" and potentially in space.
"The world definitely is splintering between the West and the East," he continues, "with many now looking towards China for stability, for some form of security, even though there are questions about how they actually operate.
"But they're not getting the leadership that we'd expect from the United States and indeed from Europe. So a World War III would be a war on multiple fronts, not just in the conventional space."
He also highlighted how many countries are trying to figure out who their friends are, who their enemies are and how to survive, which complicates things.
Other challenges include climate change and the fragility of our planet, and all of these factors combined shows how there could be "so many trigger points towards sending us to a world at war".
"We need to wake up and start repairing not just alliances, not just our commitment, but even understanding what our enemies are actually up to. [Otherwise] you will end up with one of these flashpoints taking us over the top," he added.
Tobias Ellwood's book 10 Steps to Prevent World War III is available now.
Main image: Russian tank shoots during the International Army Games in 2020 Picture by Mihail Tokmakov/SOPA Images/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News
