ESCALATION: HOW REGIONAL CONFLICTS CAN DEGENERATE INTO GLOBAL WAR

Twelve years ago, when Russia seized Crimea and pro-Russian separatists supported by “little green men” began the war in Donbas, the question facing the participants in the so-called “Minsk” process came down to a relatively limited issue: whether or not the Donbas region should have federal status within Ukraine and, beyond that, the status of Ukrainian neutrality outside NATO — a Russian obsession ever since Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

Following the failure of the negotiations and the invasion ordered by Putin on February 24, 2022, the regional dispute turned into a global conflict, one that has fortunately remained latent so far.
American and European aid to Ukraine, beginning in April 2022, developed into an undeclared proxy conflict between NATO and Russia. The Europeans now entirely finance the Ukrainian war effort;

In response, Russia and China concluded a “no limits” alliance, joined by two particularly toxic states: North Korea and Iran. I have called this axis “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”;

China claims not to supply weapons to Russia, but provides all the electronic components the Russian army needs, while importing Russian hydrocarbons in defiance of international sanctions;
North Korea sends tens of thousands of its soldiers to fight alongside the Russians in Donbas;
As for Iran, the Mullahs’ regime has supplied hundreds of Shaheed drones which Moscow, now producing them under licence, uses every night against the Ukrainian population;

The war in Ukraine, which has now lasted longer than either of the two world wars, has already left two and a half million dead and wounded on both sides. On the battlefield, the advent of drones has literally frozen the front line, while Ukrainian long-range drones, supported by American and French space-based intelligence, have paralysed Crimea and destroyed 45% of Russia’s refining capacity, creating the country’s worst energy crisis since 1945;
Buoyed by its successes on the European battlefield, Ukraine is exporting its drones to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. It crossed a new threshold last week by attacking an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, thereby demonstrating to Trump its usefulness as an ally;

The fact is that, following the horrific pogrom of October 7, 2023, the war in Ukraine metastasized into the Middle East. This time, Iranian Shaheed drones and ballistic missiles, guided by Russian and Chinese space-based intelligence, are striking not only Israel, but also its Arab neighbours and American bases in the region; the war is spreading to Iraq, where Americans and Saudis are bombing Shiite militias in response to strikes against Saudi Arabia and American bases; it is also spreading to the Houthis, who are blocking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In all, twelve states in the region are now involved…

The seizure of the Strait of Hormuz by the Revolutionary Guards, which the Americans failed to anticipate, has transformed the conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme — the reason initially given for the American-Israeli attack of February 28 — into a global energy war depriving humanity of a quarter of its daily energy needs.
The Hormuz precedent threatens to be followed by China, which is beginning preparations for a total blockade of Taiwan.

Finally, the prospect of an Iranian atomic bomb is reviving nuclear proliferation in Saudi Arabia, but also in Turkey and Egypt, while in the Far East Japan is rearming and the two Koreas are engaged in a race for nuclear submarines.

Faced with this deadly chain reaction, Trump and Putin are trapped. Neither of them knows how to end his war. One bellows, “We’re going to beat the fucking hell out of them” (on Fox News, referring to the Iranians); the other remains silent. Europe does too, preoccupied with its wildfires. But it is the entire house that now threatens to burn down…

Pierre Lellouche
30 July 2026