The Coming Storm issues an alarming twofold warning. First, we are in an era of multiple Great Powers, some led by unpredictable autocratic leaders, making the risk of cataclysmic war extremely high. Second, the consequences of Great-Power war differ by orders of magnitude from the wars we have become accustomed to such as Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza.
Great Wars, Westad points out, are global, quickly escalate out of control and result in casualties far beyond anything we have seen since the second World War.
Decades ago, at the height of the cold war, scientist Carl Sagan warned that the destructive power of a single thermonuclear weapon today is equal to all the armaments unleashed during the entirety of the second World War. A Great Power war, Sagan said, would be “a World War 2, every second, for the length of a lazy afternoon”.
Given this terrifying prospect, Sagan asked, shouldn’t we be doing everything possible to avoid such a catastrophe? Shouldn’t we be actively, collectively, reimagining our politics, our economics, our technologies, our religions and our cultures to avoid such an outcome? Instead, as The Coming Storm tragically documents, we have been moving, for decades, in precisely the opposite direction.
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The cause of our peril lies in what should be, in a more rational and empathetic world, a cause for great celebration. Countries around the world with huge, previously impoverished populations, including China, India, Brazil and Indonesia, are developing to standards of living comparable to those of the already rich nations, predominantly the United States and Europe.
For the first time in human history, we have a very real possibility of creating a world without abject poverty, colonial domination, racist global ordering, and the violence necessary to sustain such deep and unjust inequalities. Instead, we have the mind-boggling increased military build-ups, resurgent nationalisms, a renewed nuclear arms race, and the very real possibility of yet another paroxysm of global destruction.
Westad guides us expertly through this current global disorder and its dangers. First, he explains how today’s multipolar world has come about, with a particular focus on China’s rise. The statistics are mind-boggling. Today, China’s GDP has overtaken that of the United States, $33 trillion to $28 trillion. China is the world’s largest trading economy, largest exporter, and the main trading partner of more than 120 countries. China is also the world’s leading manufacturing Great Power, accounting for 31 per cent of global manufacturing output, more than the next four powers put together. Its military is now also the largest in the world, with the world’s biggest navy, and is the leader in many areas of advanced military technology.
Westad explores how the emergence of our multipolar world, and particularly China’s rise, has generated deep fears and antagonisms, above all within the US. This is reflected, for example, in Trump’s blaming of China for US domestic ills and his claims that “China is raping this country” and is responsible for “the greatest theft in the history of the world”.
The book’s third section recalls how Sarajevo served as the trigger for the first World War and asks what potential flashpoints in today’s world might ignite global war. Westad’s list is alarmingly long. It includes North Korea, the Himalayas, Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Middle East, and Ukraine and eastern Europe.
“Even the globalising world in the early 20th century or the ideologised worlds of the interwar or cold war years do not come close to the number of conflict points we see today,” Westad warns. “This is a warning to all of us, not just about the possibility of Great Power war but about the difficulties we may be facing in averting one if a process of intense conflict gets under way.”
Westad concludes with a plea for Great Power peace. He does not sound hopeful. The acute danger the world now finds itself in is not primarily because we are in a multipolar Great Power world, but rather because we are in an era of dangerously deluded autocrats. As Westad warns, men with big egos and mercurial personalities may be attractive to many in times of great uncertainty, but “their temperament means they are overwhelmed by that combination of hubris and fear that has so often produced war in the past.
“Without parliaments or international organisations to hold them back,” he continues, “personal rulers often fail at the critical moments of war or peace because they fear the perception of weakness more than they fear the consequences of war.” On the febrile personalities of a small number of old, deluded and powerful men rests the future of world peace and of generations to come.
- Ian Hughes is author of Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities are Destroying Democracy and a Senior Research Fellow at the MaREI Centre, Sustainability Institute at UCC
