World War III!

Is the very concept of world war still measured by the standards of the wars of the last century, given that all the tools, boundaries, and even objectives of warfare have changed? Armies, artillery, trenches, and sieges were the primary tools of World War I, which spanned across continents. During World War II, military aircraft entered the battlefield, and aerial bombing became a decisive factor in the victories or defeats of armies. We witnessed how the American nuclear bombing of Japan served as the curtain that closed the scene of World War II. Today, the situation is vastly different. Any state capable of inflicting significant strategic damage on another without losing a single soldier outside its own borders. Economic sanctions, cyberattacks, and disinformation, alongside missiles and drones, have become new modern tools that have entered the military landscape as we know it today. The objectives of new wars may extend to communications, transportation networks, banks, and ports. Today’s wars do not always require territorial occupation or the capture of a capital; controlling information, causing economic failure, disrupting airports, cutting communications, and halting vital infrastructure can be enough to bring down states. The repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war have extended to global energy, food, and arms markets, reaching the economies of countries far from the battlefields. As for the Middle East, its conflicts are no longer merely local confrontations; they are now linked to the security of sea lanes, which in turn have affected energy prices, particularly oil, drawing international alliances and major powers into their orbit. In the two previous world wars, states entered the conflict, and their peoples bore the consequences. Today, however, peoples may bear the consequences of conflicts their own states did not even enter. Oil and its products, shipping, transportation, and food prices have risen globally, even though the actual war, in its military sense, was primarily between the United States and Iran. Are we in Kuwait and the Gulf region prepared for any impact from distant wars that could affect our food, economic, and digital security, even if we remain outside the battlefields? Diversifying food sources, protecting infrastructure, securing energy and water supplies, enhancing cyber security, and strengthening resilience during crises are among the most important pillars for confronting such impacts. Iqbal Al-Ahmad