Global war fears rising among security experts: Survey
The poll, released Wednesday by the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, found that 40.5 percent of security experts across more than 60 countries think that by 2035, there will be a multi-front war among the most powerful nations. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed, however, said the opposite.
If another world war breaks out, the use of nuclear weapons seems likely, the respondents said. Around 48 percent of experts say they expect nuclear weapons to be utilized in the coming 10 years by at least one nation if a larger conflict breaks out, per the poll.
The potential fighting could also take place in space. Roughly 45 percent of the survey's respondents expect a war that could, at least in some capacity, take place in space within the next decade.
The conflict will also likely have devastating consequences for the global economy. Around 28 percent of experts said a war between major military nations would be the biggest 'threat to global prosperity over the next ten years.' The only other threat that ranked higher was climate change at nearly 30 percent, according to the survey.
Most of the experts, 65 percent, 'somewhat or strongly' agreed that China will attempt to take over Taiwan within the next decade. Around 24 percent disagreed with that assessment. In last year's poll, 50 percent said Beijing would attempt a takeover the Taiwan while 30 percent had the opposite opinion at the time, The Atlantic Council noted.
'This growing awakening on the part of the United States and its allies can become the basis for a call to action for the populations, governments, and militaries of these countries,' Markus Garlauskas, the Sowcroft Center's director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, said in a statement.
'The United States has typically waited until war was thrust upon it before preparing comprehensively,' he added. 'Now is the time to act, to prepare, ideally to deter such aggression, and to be ready to hold firm if deterrence fails and we face either a short, sharp war or a protracted one.'
Another 45 percent of security experts 'somewhat or strongly' agreed that Russia and NATO countries could be in direct military combat within the next decade, an uptick from last year's iteration of the survey, when 29 percent said the same thing.
The Sowcroft Center poll was conducted in November and early December 2024 among 357 respondents. The survey does not list a margin of error.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
a day ago
- CNBC
Germany's Merz strikes sharp tone with Europe as he cozies up to Trump
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is looking to redefine Germany's voice in Europe and build a relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump — who many of Merz's European colleagues do not see eye to eye with. The historically EU-friendly Merz, a former member of the European Parliament, now has a long list of complaints about the bloc. This has included objections to an increase in the EU's new long-term budget that was proposed last month, as well as calling the bloc out for sluggishness and complex bureaucracy. Germany was also among the louder critics of the EU-U.S. trade agreement. Merz's sharp tone is noticeable — especially in comparison to his predecessor Olaf Scholz, who generally struck a more mellow approach. But it does not necessarily mean that the German Chancellor's overall position on Europe has changed, Jörn Fleck, senior director at the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, told CNBC. "Merz's political vita is a pro-European one, and that hasn't changed. But Merz's pro-EU politics have always been informed by and in creative tension with his traditional conservative values — a fiscal, small government, big on security conservatism," he said. The chancellor's jabs towards the EU reflect this political tension, as well as the domestic political issues Merz is battling with, Fleck said. The German leader's grievances, particularly with EU red tape, often echoes domestic voter sentiment. It's Merz' way of being sensitive to industry leaders who are advocating for less Brussels-bureaucracy, according to Sudha David-Wilp, vice president of external relations and senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States. In July, Merz told reporters during a press conference that the EU had become "too regulation-intensive" and at times "too slow to react," according to a CNBC translation. His tone will also be informed by his electorate which is "not fundamentally critical of Europe but is nevertheless conservative," said Henning Vöpel, CEO of the Centres for European Policy Network. A new German style? Merz is likely also trying to establish a "new" German tone and tweak the country's position within the EU, experts told CNBC. "After the last German government, which often abstained on important European policy issues - often referred to as the 'German vote' - he wants to claim a new leadership role for Germany and therefore take a more brisk and critical stance," Vöpel said. The Atlantic Council's Fleck shared a similar view, saying Merz is under pressure to stand his ground in instances where EU issues like fiscal plans could impact German domestic politics or become a risk to his agenda at home. "Beyond that, Merz promised a new clarity when it comes to communicating Germany's positions in Europe," he added. "For most, that clarity will be a welcome change of tone." However, while Berlin is now coming to Brussels with a new communication style, Germany's view on the bloc has not fundamentally changed according to Fleck. "His statements, the makeup of his new team, and the reportedly close dialogue with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hardly suggest a major shift," he said. German-U.S. relationship building The sharper tone may also be serving a transatlantic purpose, according to Vöpel. "By adopting a critical tone towards the EU, Merz can appease Trump, who sees the EU as an attack on the USA," he said. Merz and Trump appear to be building a solid relationship, setting the German Chancellor apart from many of his counterparts in the EU which have not yet been able to do so. June's Merz-Trump meeting in the Oval Office was broadly seen as a quiet win for the German leader, and more recently he was one of the key instigators of U.S.-European talks ahead of Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The German Marshall Fund's David-Wilp explained that "Merz is under no illusion that Germany and Europe need the United States, because a smooth working relationship with the White House is important for the continent's stability and prosperity." Instead of looking nostalgically to the past, his priority is to continue open communication and keep the transatlantic relationship constructive, she said. Importantly, Merz also does not appear to see any conflicts or trade-offs in his pro-EU and pro-Atlanticist positions, Fleck added. "Merz seems to have found the right balance in standing his ground on priority issues and leveraging European coordination while not getting drawn into unnecessary rhetorical skirmishes with the US president," he said.
2 days ago
Ukraine, left out in Trump-Putin summit, fears setbacks on key peace issues
LONDON -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin "will not achieve anything" if peace talks exclude Ukraine. Decisions taken without Kyiv's input will be "stillborn decisions," Zelenskyy continued. "They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," the president said in an address to the nation last weekend. Ukrainian expectations for the summit in Alaska are low, amid fears in Kyiv that the American and Russian leaders will seek to dictate Ukraine's future without its participation. Zelenskyy's talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday, though, did appear to find consensus on key Ukrainian demands according to subsequent statements from Zelenskyy and his European counterparts, including that Kyiv will be the one to decide on any territorial concessions and that no such concessions can occur without binding security guarantees. "We must learn from the experience of Ukraine, [and] our partners, to prevent deception by Russia," Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday. "There is no sign now that the Russians are preparing to end the war," he added. "Our coordinated efforts and joint steps -- of Ukraine, the United States, Europe, all countries that want peace -- can definitely force Russia to make peace." Trump said Wednesday after the virtual meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders that there will be "severe consequences" against Russia if Putin did not agree to stop his war on Ukraine. Oleksandr Merezhko -- a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body's foreign affairs committee -- likened the coming Alaska summit to the 1938 Munich Agreement -- a pre-World War II accord by which European powers allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia without Prague's consent. "Putin secured a one-on-one meeting with Trump, providing an opportunity to influence U.S. policy and push for abandonment of Ukraine and European allies," Merezhko told ABC News. "Putin would like to use the summit to persuade Trump to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress on a ceasefire and give him a pretext to walk away from the negotiations," Merezhko said. "Putin is a very masterful manipulator and he will go into Friday's meeting well prepared," Merezhko added. "He will go in with well-prepared, planned and rehearsed talking points." John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now working at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, said Putin "wants a deal with Trump that will be presented to Kyiv and other European capitals as a fait accompli." The Kremlin's goals remain the "elimination of Ukraine as a state and as a culture, elimination of NATO and undermining of the U.S. global positions," Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. There are several key -- and thorny -- issues for the two leaders to discuss. Territory Territory has been a main source of conflict between the two countries since Russia's annexation of Crimea and fomentation of separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Putin has remained firm in his demands. Any peace settlement, Moscow has said, must include "international legal recognition" of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and four regions it has occupied to varying degrees since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia demanded that Ukrainian troops withdraw entirely from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions -- including areas that Russian troops do not control. The Kremlin claimed to have annexed all four regions in September 2022. Moscow also wants Kyiv to give up on any designs on taking back occupied Crimea. Ahead of Friday's meeting, Trump suggested that a "swapping of territories" could lead to a peace deal. However, Ukrainian officials quickly rejected that idea. Zelenskyy held that the country would not give up any of its land, saying in a Saturday statement, "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers." The president has since said that any decisions on territorial concessions must be made by Ukraine, and that no such concessions can occur without Ukraine receiving binding security guarantees that include the U.S. NATO ambitions Russian officials are also looking for their own "security guarantees" regarding NATO, by which Ukraine would be permanently excluded from the alliance, which has a mutual defense agreement among members. Putin has regularly expressed concern over NATO's eastward expansion, framing the alliance's growth as an existential security threat to Russia. He has repeatedly warned the alliance against accepting Ukraine as a member, accusing the organization of trying to turn the country into a launch pad for aggression. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, said in March that Moscow is seeking "the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance." Ukrainian officials have continued in their bid to join NATO -- an ambition that has the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians and is enshrined in the national constitution. During a news conference earlier this year, Zelenskyy offered to step down from the presidency in exchange for admission to NATO. "If to achieve peace you really need me to give up my post -- I'm ready. I can trade it for NATO membership, if there are such conditions." NATO nations, while backing Ukraine in its defensive war, have refused to allow Kyiv's accession to the alliance. The alliance agreed at a 2008 summit that Ukraine "will become a member of NATO," but the leaders of key allied nations -- including the U.S. -- have said Kyiv cannot accede while it is at war. Limits to Ukraine's military Russian officials have demanded limits to the size of Ukraine's military, which Moscow has framed as necessary to ensure its own security -- a claim dismissed by Kyiv as false. During peace negotiations in the opening days of the full-scale invasion, Moscow demanded that Ukraine reduce its military size to 50,000. Zelenskyy, however, has expressed concern that any reductions to Ukraine's military could allow Russia to secure more Ukrainian land, even with Western support. "The best thing is a strong army, a large army, the largest army in Europe. We simply have no right to limit the strength of our army in any case," he said in December. Russia is also demanding limits on Ukraine's weapons arsenals and the sophistication of its military technology. In the days leading up to Friday's meeting between Trump and Putin, Ukraine has increased its long-range drone strikes into Russia. Ukrainian officials have said such attacks are part of its strategy to force the Kremlin into genuine peace talks. Sanctions The lifting of international sanctions on Russia may also be discussed during Friday's meeting. Russia is currently the world's most sanctioned country with "50,000 or so measures," according to The Center for European Policy Analysis. Russian officials have stated that a peace treaty should include lifting sanctions imposed since 2022. The European Union has refused requests to reduce sanctions against Russia before a peace deal is secured, and Zelenskyy has called Putin's suggestion that reductions could lead to lasting peace "manipulative." Trump has threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia and its top trading partners if Putin fails to commit to a ceasefire. Earlier this month, the U.S. announced additional tariffs on India related to its purchases of Russian oil. "Everyone sees that there has been no real step from Russia toward peace, no action on the ground or in the air that could save lives," Zelenskyy said earlier this week. "That is why sanctions are needed, pressure is needed."
CNBC
3 days ago
- CNBC
Ukraine-Russia peace talks take place on Friday. Here's what you can expect
Fred Kempe, Atlantic Council president and CEO, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss what's at stake in negotiations between the Ukraine, Russia and Europe in upcoming peace talks, what Trump will try to convince Putin of and much more.
