Watch Former Deputy National Security Advisor Answers Geopolitics Questions | Tech Support
Watch Former Deputy National Security Advisor Answers Geopolitics Questions | Tech Support
Publish Date: 2026-03-24 12:10:00
Source Domain: www.wired.com
I’m Ben Rhodes.
For eight years, I was a deputy national security advisor
for Barack Obama.
I’m here to answer your questions from the internet.
This is Geopolitics Support.
[upbeat music]
@Sean17Henley asks, So in your opinion,
just how close are we to World War III?
I think we are uncomfortably close to it.
First of all, look at where the current wars are
that are being fought.
So we already have a major land war in Europe,
the biggest one that we’ve had since World War II,
with the Russian invasion of Ukraine
that has killed probably hundreds of thousands of people
and has not ended.
We’ve already seen a major conflict in the Middle East
with the Gaza War and Israel taking action
in seven or eight countries,
and we see this state of war between the United States
and Iran that could lead to state collapse in Iran,
could lead to major refugee flows.
So we’re 2/3 of the way there,
if you look at the map of World War II.
And now, the third piece of this could be the Taiwan Strait.
China has made very clear
that it doesn’t see Taiwan as separate from China.
They want to reunify Taiwan no matter what they have to do,
and the Taiwanese increasingly do not wanna be
a part of China.
If China were to try to militarily take control of Taiwan,
then we’d really be in a situation where that entire map
of World War II, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, East Asia,
suddenly, you do have conflict along those fault lines.
I think the bigger reason
that I’m worried about this is look at the collection
of people who are in charge of the most powerful countries
in the world today, Donald Trump in the United States,
Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China,
you can throw in Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel,
Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
These are older men, they are nationalists,
they are strongmen.
These are the kind of leaders that can get into conflict.
Now, you might say, it seems
like Trump wants to avoid the war,
doesn’t seem like the Chinese are looking for a world war,
but that’s always the case.
The problem is when you…
