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As global leaders increasingly sidestep the United Nations’ advice and the stability of military alliances like NATO wavers, the viability of post-war peace strategies is under intense scrutiny.
Nevertheless, assessing whether we are on the brink of another world war is a complex issue that demands careful consideration.
Interestingly, there is no universally accepted definition for what exactly constitutes a world war.
Although the United Nations lacks an official definition, various dictionaries offer their interpretations:
- Oxford: “A war involving many nations of the world”
- Cambridge: “A war in which large forces from many countries fight”
- Merriam-Webster: “A war engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world”
David Kilcullen, a veteran of 22 years in the Australian army and a seasoned diplomat with nearly three decades of experience with both the Australian and US governments, describes a world war as involving interlinked conflicts across multiple nations.
“When you get multiple campaigns, usually in different continents, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and you have all the same combatants fighting in multiple campaigns at the same time in different continents, that’s definitely a world war,” he said.
How close are we to another world war?
But he noted that we usually don’t know we’re in a world war until after the fact.
“It’s been in the eye of the beholder,” he said.
“If you think of World War II in retrospect, that looks to us like a world war, but at the time… it was really just a European war.
“It was only when Hitler invaded Russia and then the Japanese attacked the US that suddenly it went from being a European war to being a world war.”
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who said he has spent the last 50 years studying global events that affect markets, laid out his 13 steps to a WW3 in his latest newsletter.
He said the world is alreadt at step nine, which is when several multi-theatre conflicts happen simultaneously.
Step nine is followed by countries demanding internal support for war, direct military combat between major powers, a big increase in taxes and debt with some markets shutting down, and finally one side winning the war against another.
What would a world war mean for Australia? 
Australia has deployed military assets in the Middle East to defend citizens and civilians.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week signed off on keeping the E-7A Wedgetail in the region “a period of time”, but reiterated that Australia was not involved in any offensive capacity.
While Australia is geographically placed away from the global conflicts, Kilcullen said it would be unable to distance itself fully from a world war due to its dependencies on global trade.
“And that’s the reason we’ve always tried to have a big ally, originally the British and then the Americans,” he said.
“That would be even worse, because we would definitely be in that war one way or another,” he said. 
“The timeline that most people think is likely for a Chinese move on Taiwan could be as soon as next April, so we could be in the last 12 months before a really, really major conflict.”
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