The question might have at one point sounded sensationalist. But senior government and military officials are now unfazed when it comes up.
A senior official from a country on NATO’s Eastern flank, when asked if a third world war is under way, did not rule out the possibility.
“I believe it’s for the historians to say, because, as we know, history is never made, but history is always written,” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s minister of defense, told National Review on Saturday during an interview on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum.
North Korea’s deployment of forces to the Russian region of Kursk was a major topic of conversation at the forum on Canada’s Atlantic coast, which convenes officials from Western democracies every year for publicly broadcast conversations, and off-the-record consultations, about international threats.
The Estonian defense official referred to World War II, observing that neither Hitler nor Stalin said, from their respective bunkers, that they had started a second world war: “They had other intentions, and afterwards it was basically named as a second world war.”
Pevkur said that he would “let the historians do their work.”
“I cannot change what other people and historians will tell or write afterwards, so I’m trying to concentrate on how to help Ukraine win this war.”
His comments follow weeks of discussion in Western countries about whether North Korea’s entry into the conflict indicates that Ukraine is one front in an expanding world war.
For the most part, officials, including defense secretary Lloyd Austin, have acknowledged the increasingly global nature of the war, while rebuffing the idea that it is sufficiently large to be called a world war. Last week, though, Ukraine’s former top general, Valery Zaluzhny, delivered a considerably less cautious assessment during a function in London, where he is now Kyiv’s ambassador: “In 2024 we can absolutely believe that the third world war has begun.”
Whereas the question might have at one point sounded sensationalist, senior government and military officials at Halifax last weekend seemed unfazed when it came up.
“We are not in a world war III scenario at this moment. But the war is global,” General Onno Eichelsheim, the chief of defense of the Netherlands, said, telling NR that he understands why the question is being posed. “It has always been global because the partners were already involved globally,” he said, referring to China’s delivery of matériel to Russia, and the involvement of Iran and North Korea, prior to Pyongyang’s latest troop movements.
During a panel at the forum this weekend, Admiral Samuel Paparo, the top U.S. commander in the Indo-Pacific, said that he expects Russia will provide submarine technology to China and both missile and submarine technology to North Korea.
Paparo also invoked open-source reports that North Korea intends to eventually send hundreds of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
This is a “mutually beneficial” arrangement that brings the war to a “new level,” Pevkur told NR, though he demurred on the precise number of North Korean troops this will ultimately involve. “North Korea will get more information about the missile programs of Russia, and Russia will get not only the manpower but also equipment, as we see artillery, weapons, ammunition,” in addition to an understanding of how modern warfare works, he said.
“Unfortunately, it is a bit difficult to understand how we ended up in the situation that in the 21st century, Ukrainians are fighting on Russian soil in Kursk with North Korea. But this is the reality. This brings the war to a new level.”