COUNTLESS seasoned experts and commentators are worried about a world war erupting between the United States-led Western alliance plus Japan and India, and the Eurasian bloc of China, Russia, Iran, and their allies. But for some, like former US Marines intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, World War III has already broken out.
Indeed, the West’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been waging a proxy war against Russia by providing arms, aid, intelligence, satellite navigation and targeting data, and secret troops to Ukraine, whose armed forces the alliance also built up between the 2014 and 2022 Russian invasions.
The West has also imposed crippling trade and financial sanctions on Moscow. Then-US defense secretary Lloyd Austin made clear that scrapping the near-final March 2022 Kyiv-Moscow peace accord and continuing hostilities with NATO arms and aid was explicitly designed to weaken Russia.
In the Middle East, two Israel-US wars on Iran — in June last year and February this year — have spurred Russian and Chinese support for Iran, including weaponry and, very crucially, technology and satellite data to help Iranian missiles and drones attack US and Israeli facilities while countering their defensive and offensive systems.
With the latest push to isolate Iran economically through sanction threats against its trading partners, Moscow and Beijing are expected to maintain or even intensify economic ties and support for Tehran.
The conflict has also spread across the world’s oceans, with the West moving to interdict shadow fleets transporting petroleum, armaments, and other products sanctioned by NATO. In sum and across military and nonmilitary fronts, the American alliance is already at war with the Eurasian bloc.
Battle for billions of souls
Even as the world braces for escalating conflict, military or otherwise, from heaven’s perspective, the real world war is happening inside our souls, as the Divine and the diabolical contend for what each of us has faith and hope in and what we worship and serve.
This spiritual battle determines the outcome that truly matters for God, Satan, and humanity: where we go after death. If we heed heaven’s call, ringing out since Creation and most clearly and powerfully expressed by Jesus Christ and his loyal disciples across millennia, then we live with faith, hope and love toward God and no other. This is the end-state that opens for us His saving grace and the path to eternal happiness with Him.
However, the adversary aims to derail that redeeming plan by luring us to worship and rely on earthly idols, which, since time immemorial, have been imperial might and military prowess — symbolized by the first two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Chapter 6 of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
These age-old temptations captivate the greatest number of souls today, with powerful nations having lorded it over the world for half a millennium, starting with European colonizers, then Russian and American superpowers, and recently rising China. Armies and armaments have reached unprecedented ferocity and technological capabilities, bankrolled by a record $2.5 trillion-plus in annual global military spending.
The Ukraine and Iran wars and fears of new or wider conflicts tempt many a soul to seek security in superpower protection and mammoth arsenals. Russia, China, and Iran are strengthening their alliance, while Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye have formed a new one.
NATO members are boosting defense outlays, buying new advanced weaponry, including nuclear arms, and considering conscription. Russia and China will, no doubt, match the military buildup, and weapons research and development is accelerating with reports of cutting-edge technologies coming fast and furious.
Yet, the wisdom of seeking shelter in superpower allies and mammoth armies has taken serious hits in the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts. Despite NATO support, Ukraine has lost heavily, with one-fifth of its territory taken by Russia, more than a million Ukrainians — mostly soldiers — killed, millions more forced to flee, and cities and infrastructure devastated.
All that because President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went along with American and British prodding to scrap a March 2022 peace deal with Russia in favor of continued fighting.
In the US-Israel war on Iran, the world’s most powerful military has failed to defeat Iran, which now exercises control over the Strait of Hormuz, has negotiated concessions from the US, and has obliterated American bases in the region — gains that Tehran never had before the war. Thus, analysts conclude America has lost the war and can’t even counter Iranian attacks with defensive missiles running perilously low.
In the geopolitical arena, the US has lost immense standing through its Iran debacle, its support for Israel’s globally unpopular and allegedly genocidal campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, and Washington’s trade policies hurtful even to allies. Rivals have formed alternative commerce and monetary arrangements, further eroding US clout.
Meanwhile, China has gained international support as a reliable, responsible nation. For Ukraine and America’s Arab allies, the West has brought colossal destruction, with even more devastation looming if the West doubles down and escalates its battle with Russia and Iran. Thus, the idols of superpower clout and military might have proved anything but dependable and invincible.
Doubling down in denial
But the West and its generals are far from calling it quits. Leaders have upped the ante with economic campaigns to pressure Iran’s trading partners to cut ties, a move Russia and China will almost surely reject. And NATO still believes that with more advanced and expanded forces, it can ultimately win.
In the Sunday Mass Gospel readings, Jesus admonishes Saint Peter for “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” That same riposte applies today. The fall of past empires and the defeat of what was once considered unbeatable Western weaponry demonstrate the folly of worshiping earthly powers and arms. Instead, the world is called to seek God’s peace.
But hostilities stoke the very fear and hatred, making us turn to superpower armies. And world war may be the tragic folly that teaches us Whom we should bow to in faith, hope and love.
