Has the world entered an era of endless wars?
last updated: 54m ago
The rise of large-scale war in the 2026 Global Risk Report is not merely a shift in priorities. Analysts say it reflects a genuine change in the nature of the international environment.اضافة اعلان
In just two years, the risk of war climbed 16 places in the report's rankings, against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions and eroding rule of law. At the same time, according to respondents to the report, international institutions have become less capable of managing risks even as those risks grow more complex.
The report - prepared by the United Nations on the basis of a study drawing on responses from 1,300 representatives of governments, international organisations, civil society, the private sector and academic institutions worldwide - does not predict the outbreak of war. It measures expert perceptions of risk and the degree to which the world is prepared to address it.
Analysis by political and strategic specialists speaking to Al Ghad suggests, however, that what has changed goes beyond the way risk is measured. War, they argue, is no longer a discrete military event but has come to intersect with the economy, energy, technology, information and trade. It may begin with sanctions, cyberattacks or the disruption of maritime corridors before escalating into open confrontation.
This is where the most dangerous paradox lies: rising risks are coinciding with a diminishing capacity to contain them. Weak international coordination, declining political consensus and funding shortfalls mean the question is no longer simply whether war can break out, but who has the ability to stop it once it does.
According to expert analysis, the greatest danger is no longer the existence of separate wars, but their interconnectedness - a crisis in one arena can reshape the calculations of another, and a security escalation can become a cross-border economic crisis.
Military and strategic analyst Dr Nidal Abu Zaid told Al Ghad that the shift reflected in global risk indicators is not simply about changes in measurement methods. It reflects, at its core, a change in the international strategic environment and in how states calculate the use of force and engagement in open conflict.
Abu Zaid said one factor currently limiting the risk of broader conflict is a reduced appetite for risk among several key parties. The United States is entering a political phase tied to midterm elections, he noted, while Israel is also approaching an electoral test - both of which make military adventurism more sensitive for decision-makers.
Iran, he added, faces its own constraints, stemming from the attrition it has suffered at the level of leadership and armaments, which limits its capacity to absorb additional risk.
Yet this diminished appetite for risk does not necessarily mean risk itself is declining, Abu Zaid said. It may instead mean that risk is migrating into more complex and less controllable forms.
He said the world is in a phase in which wars 'open and begin but do not end and are not closed,' as international institutions lose their capacity either to contain conflicts or to impose clear paths toward resolving them.
Abu Zaid pointed to the declining leading role of international institutions as one of the most significant shifts in the current security environment, saying the United Nations and the Security Council no longer hold the same influence over the conduct of conflict, particularly in protracted crises where regional and international interests overlap.
He added that this gap in conflict-management capacity has contributed to the rise of what he described as 'radical minds' within several parties to ongoing disputes - including the Iran-Israel-United States conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war - where confrontation continues to be sustained by the interplay of military calculations, political interests and international alliances.
The core problem, Abu Zaid said, is not simply the higher level of risk, but the absence of any international body capable of converting those risks into manageable and containable trajectories - making conflicts more likely to persist and to cascade from one crisis to the next.
He said the most significant current manifestation of this shift is in the Middle East, where a set of security and geopolitical developments have become more deeply interconnected, particularly concerning strategic waterways.
Developments at the Bab al-Mandab strait, he said, occurring alongside tensions linked to the Strait of Hormuz, are opening the way for what he described as a 'strategic geographic arc' stretching between the two passages. 'The purpose of this geographic arc is to control the strategic maritime corridors that put pressure on major supply chains,' he said.
Abu Zaid stressed that the implications of this dynamic should not be reduced to the oil and energy file, since the potential impact extends to supply chains in the broadest sense, encompassing goods, food, medicine and other essential needs.
Any prolonged disruption to these corridors would not remain a regional security problem, he said, but could become an economic and logistical crisis with international reach, given the deep integration between global trade flows and vital maritime routes.
Abu Zaid also connected these developments to US engagement in the region, suggesting that Washington may have an interest in reshaping regional balances in ways that open space for new security arrangements. In this context, he said, the trajectory may move toward a restructuring of security relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as one potential gateway to reconfiguring the regional security architecture and broadening the scope of agreements begun with the Abraham Accords.
He said the United States may prefer, at certain stages of this process, not to engage directly in addressing some security threats, thereby pushing regional parties to seek direct security arrangements among themselves.
Abu Zaid warned that the danger of the current picture lies not in any single waterway but in simultaneous pressure on more than one strategic point in the region. The wider the circle of threats around Bab al-Mandab or the Strait of Hormuz becomes, the more tightly their impact is bound to global trade, energy and supply chains.
The shift in the nature of Middle Eastern risks, on his reading, involves a transition from geographically limited conflicts to an interconnected network of strategic pressure points - one in which a security development in any one corridor can produce economic and security consequences extending well beyond the region.
The danger of this type of crisis, Abu Zaid said, is that managing it no longer means only preventing direct military confrontation, but also preventing scattered crises from merging into a simultaneous pressure system bearing on trade, energy and regional security.
Dr Badr al-Madi, professor of political science at the German Jordanian University, said the 2026 Global Risk Report reflects not a mere reshuffling of risk rankings but a context of real transformations the world is actually experiencing - particularly as wars and conflicts intensify and the likelihood of their consequences spreading to other regions grows.
'The report comes in the context of what is happening around the world,' al-Madi said, arguing that the risks it warns of are not entirely hypothetical but are present in daily reality, given the continuation of wars and the multiplicity of conflict zones. He cited the Russia-Ukraine war, tensions between the United States and Iran, what he described as the US- and European-backed Israeli war on Gaza, and escalating conflicts in Africa.
Al-Madi said the accumulation of these crises raises the level of global risk, and he placed primary responsibility not only with international institutions but with states themselves. 'Primary responsibility for such wars is not solely institutional or the preserve of the UN - it is ultimately the responsibility of states, which must be guarantors of international law and guarantors of achieving the principal goals required to sustain security and stability,' he said.
On the capacity of the international system to respond, al-Madi said the problem is not only the rising number of wars and crises, but the declining ability of international institutions to respond to and contain them. The application of international law and the capacity of UN institutions to act, he said, have become heavily dependent on the balance of international power.
'The capacity of international institutions to respond, to engage, or to prevent such wars and risks is frankly no longer at a high level - on the contrary, it is at its lowest,' he said.
He linked this decline to what he described as growing great-power influence over international institutions, pointing in particular to US influence over their decisions - both through funding and in relation to the application of international law.
'The world is changing now and is being subjected to very significant changes because of these behaviours,' al-Madi said, arguing that the transformation is tied not only to risk indicators but to the nature of the international system and its capacity to protect security and stability.
On the Middle East, al-Madi said the consequences of this shift are especially visible, as the region continues to function as one of the main centres of tension and local conflicts become entangled with regional and international calculations. The region, he said, remains 'a case of attraction' for wars and risks - driven primarily by the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and by competition over strategic interests in the region.
Al-Madi does not view escalating risks in the Middle East as the product of a single conflict, but as the result of overlapping crises that make any escalation capable of interacting with other regional and international issues - particularly given the weakened capacity of international institutions to enforce international law or play an effective role in preventing the widening of conflict.
Security and strategic expert Dr Bashir al-Da'ja said the world has undergone a genuine change in the nature of risks alongside changes in how they are measured. The 2026 Global Risk Report, he said, does not merely reflect a reordering of priorities but reveals a transformation in the nature of the international environment itself.
'War is no longer a military risk separate from the economy, technology, energy and information,' al-Da'ja said. It has become a point of intersection for a wide range of risks, and the rise of the large-scale war risk, he said, reflects a shift in how states perceive the nature of the international order.
Modern war, he added, does not necessarily begin with a traditional declaration. It can take shape gradually through economic sanctions, cyberattacks, the disruption of maritime corridors, strikes on energy infrastructure and disinformation campaigns, before arriving at military confrontation. He summarised this change: 'The line between war and peace has become more blurred than at any point before.'
On the role of international institutions, al-Da'ja warned that their declining crisis-management capacity compounds the danger of the current moment, because rising risks are coinciding with weaker tools to contain them. 'War can sometimes be deterred by force, but the declining ability of international institutions to manage a crisis means that the tools for preventing and containing war become weaker precisely at the moment they are most needed,' he said.
He cited the multiplication of power centres, great-power competition, the erosion of commitment to international order, and the use of economics, technology and sanctions as instruments of conflict as factors making the international environment more fragile.
The greater danger, al-Da'ja said, is not simply that war might break out, but that it might break out in an international environment 'less capable of containing it,' making crises more likely to expand and persist.
He described the Middle East as a clear example of what he calls 'compound risks,' given the simultaneous presence of armed conflict, geopolitical competition, energy security pressures, maritime corridor threats, cyberattacks, migration and displacement, and regional and international rivalry.
The region, he said, 'is no longer merely a recipient of risks - it has in some areas become a source of them, or a transit point through which they reach the global economy.'
He highlighted the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea as examples of how risk migrates from the regional to the global level, noting that any prolonged disruption to maritime corridors can affect energy, trade, supply chains, shipping costs and insurance premiums in areas far from the Middle East. He described the phenomenon as 'the internationalisation of regional risk' - a crisis begins locally but its consequences become global.
Al-Da'ja warned that the region is no longer facing separate wars but 'a single, highly complex security system,' in which a development in one conflict arena can affect the calculations of parties and arenas elsewhere.
The central challenge ahead, he said, is not only preventing the outbreak of war, but preventing its effects from moving across sectors and countries and becoming a chain of economic, security, technological and social crises. 'The world has not only become more dangerous - it has become more interconnected in the production of danger,' he said. That, in his assessment, is the most important strategic shift reflected in the 2026 global risk indicators.
This article was originally written in Arabic for Al Ghad. It was translated into English with AI assistance and edited by Jordan News.
In just two years, the risk of war climbed 16 places in the report's rankings, against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions and eroding rule of law. At the same time, according to respondents to the report, international institutions have become less capable of managing risks even as those risks grow more complex.
The report - prepared by the United Nations on the basis of a study drawing on responses from 1,300 representatives of governments, international organisations, civil society, the private sector and academic institutions worldwide - does not predict the outbreak of war. It measures expert perceptions of risk and the degree to which the world is prepared to address it.
Analysis by political and strategic specialists speaking to Al Ghad suggests, however, that what has changed goes beyond the way risk is measured. War, they argue, is no longer a discrete military event but has come to intersect with the economy, energy, technology, information and trade. It may begin with sanctions, cyberattacks or the disruption of maritime corridors before escalating into open confrontation.
This is where the most dangerous paradox lies: rising risks are coinciding with a diminishing capacity to contain them. Weak international coordination, declining political consensus and funding shortfalls mean the question is no longer simply whether war can break out, but who has the ability to stop it once it does.
According to expert analysis, the greatest danger is no longer the existence of separate wars, but their interconnectedness - a crisis in one arena can reshape the calculations of another, and a security escalation can become a cross-border economic crisis.
Military and strategic analyst Dr Nidal Abu Zaid told Al Ghad that the shift reflected in global risk indicators is not simply about changes in measurement methods. It reflects, at its core, a change in the international strategic environment and in how states calculate the use of force and engagement in open conflict.
Abu Zaid said one factor currently limiting the risk of broader conflict is a reduced appetite for risk among several key parties. The United States is entering a political phase tied to midterm elections, he noted, while Israel is also approaching an electoral test - both of which make military adventurism more sensitive for decision-makers.
Iran, he added, faces its own constraints, stemming from the attrition it has suffered at the level of leadership and armaments, which limits its capacity to absorb additional risk.
Yet this diminished appetite for risk does not necessarily mean risk itself is declining, Abu Zaid said. It may instead mean that risk is migrating into more complex and less controllable forms.
He said the world is in a phase in which wars 'open and begin but do not end and are not closed,' as international institutions lose their capacity either to contain conflicts or to impose clear paths toward resolving them.
Abu Zaid pointed to the declining leading role of international institutions as one of the most significant shifts in the current security environment, saying the United Nations and the Security Council no longer hold the same influence over the conduct of conflict, particularly in protracted crises where regional and international interests overlap.
He added that this gap in conflict-management capacity has contributed to the rise of what he described as 'radical minds' within several parties to ongoing disputes - including the Iran-Israel-United States conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war - where confrontation continues to be sustained by the interplay of military calculations, political interests and international alliances.
The core problem, Abu Zaid said, is not simply the higher level of risk, but the absence of any international body capable of converting those risks into manageable and containable trajectories - making conflicts more likely to persist and to cascade from one crisis to the next.
He said the most significant current manifestation of this shift is in the Middle East, where a set of security and geopolitical developments have become more deeply interconnected, particularly concerning strategic waterways.
Developments at the Bab al-Mandab strait, he said, occurring alongside tensions linked to the Strait of Hormuz, are opening the way for what he described as a 'strategic geographic arc' stretching between the two passages. 'The purpose of this geographic arc is to control the strategic maritime corridors that put pressure on major supply chains,' he said.
Abu Zaid stressed that the implications of this dynamic should not be reduced to the oil and energy file, since the potential impact extends to supply chains in the broadest sense, encompassing goods, food, medicine and other essential needs.
Any prolonged disruption to these corridors would not remain a regional security problem, he said, but could become an economic and logistical crisis with international reach, given the deep integration between global trade flows and vital maritime routes.
Abu Zaid also connected these developments to US engagement in the region, suggesting that Washington may have an interest in reshaping regional balances in ways that open space for new security arrangements. In this context, he said, the trajectory may move toward a restructuring of security relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as one potential gateway to reconfiguring the regional security architecture and broadening the scope of agreements begun with the Abraham Accords.
He said the United States may prefer, at certain stages of this process, not to engage directly in addressing some security threats, thereby pushing regional parties to seek direct security arrangements among themselves.
Abu Zaid warned that the danger of the current picture lies not in any single waterway but in simultaneous pressure on more than one strategic point in the region. The wider the circle of threats around Bab al-Mandab or the Strait of Hormuz becomes, the more tightly their impact is bound to global trade, energy and supply chains.
The shift in the nature of Middle Eastern risks, on his reading, involves a transition from geographically limited conflicts to an interconnected network of strategic pressure points - one in which a security development in any one corridor can produce economic and security consequences extending well beyond the region.
The danger of this type of crisis, Abu Zaid said, is that managing it no longer means only preventing direct military confrontation, but also preventing scattered crises from merging into a simultaneous pressure system bearing on trade, energy and regional security.
Dr Badr al-Madi, professor of political science at the German Jordanian University, said the 2026 Global Risk Report reflects not a mere reshuffling of risk rankings but a context of real transformations the world is actually experiencing - particularly as wars and conflicts intensify and the likelihood of their consequences spreading to other regions grows.
'The report comes in the context of what is happening around the world,' al-Madi said, arguing that the risks it warns of are not entirely hypothetical but are present in daily reality, given the continuation of wars and the multiplicity of conflict zones. He cited the Russia-Ukraine war, tensions between the United States and Iran, what he described as the US- and European-backed Israeli war on Gaza, and escalating conflicts in Africa.
Al-Madi said the accumulation of these crises raises the level of global risk, and he placed primary responsibility not only with international institutions but with states themselves. 'Primary responsibility for such wars is not solely institutional or the preserve of the UN - it is ultimately the responsibility of states, which must be guarantors of international law and guarantors of achieving the principal goals required to sustain security and stability,' he said.
On the capacity of the international system to respond, al-Madi said the problem is not only the rising number of wars and crises, but the declining ability of international institutions to respond to and contain them. The application of international law and the capacity of UN institutions to act, he said, have become heavily dependent on the balance of international power.
'The capacity of international institutions to respond, to engage, or to prevent such wars and risks is frankly no longer at a high level - on the contrary, it is at its lowest,' he said.
He linked this decline to what he described as growing great-power influence over international institutions, pointing in particular to US influence over their decisions - both through funding and in relation to the application of international law.
'The world is changing now and is being subjected to very significant changes because of these behaviours,' al-Madi said, arguing that the transformation is tied not only to risk indicators but to the nature of the international system and its capacity to protect security and stability.
On the Middle East, al-Madi said the consequences of this shift are especially visible, as the region continues to function as one of the main centres of tension and local conflicts become entangled with regional and international calculations. The region, he said, remains 'a case of attraction' for wars and risks - driven primarily by the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and by competition over strategic interests in the region.
Al-Madi does not view escalating risks in the Middle East as the product of a single conflict, but as the result of overlapping crises that make any escalation capable of interacting with other regional and international issues - particularly given the weakened capacity of international institutions to enforce international law or play an effective role in preventing the widening of conflict.
Security and strategic expert Dr Bashir al-Da'ja said the world has undergone a genuine change in the nature of risks alongside changes in how they are measured. The 2026 Global Risk Report, he said, does not merely reflect a reordering of priorities but reveals a transformation in the nature of the international environment itself.
'War is no longer a military risk separate from the economy, technology, energy and information,' al-Da'ja said. It has become a point of intersection for a wide range of risks, and the rise of the large-scale war risk, he said, reflects a shift in how states perceive the nature of the international order.
Modern war, he added, does not necessarily begin with a traditional declaration. It can take shape gradually through economic sanctions, cyberattacks, the disruption of maritime corridors, strikes on energy infrastructure and disinformation campaigns, before arriving at military confrontation. He summarised this change: 'The line between war and peace has become more blurred than at any point before.'
On the role of international institutions, al-Da'ja warned that their declining crisis-management capacity compounds the danger of the current moment, because rising risks are coinciding with weaker tools to contain them. 'War can sometimes be deterred by force, but the declining ability of international institutions to manage a crisis means that the tools for preventing and containing war become weaker precisely at the moment they are most needed,' he said.
He cited the multiplication of power centres, great-power competition, the erosion of commitment to international order, and the use of economics, technology and sanctions as instruments of conflict as factors making the international environment more fragile.
The greater danger, al-Da'ja said, is not simply that war might break out, but that it might break out in an international environment 'less capable of containing it,' making crises more likely to expand and persist.
He described the Middle East as a clear example of what he calls 'compound risks,' given the simultaneous presence of armed conflict, geopolitical competition, energy security pressures, maritime corridor threats, cyberattacks, migration and displacement, and regional and international rivalry.
The region, he said, 'is no longer merely a recipient of risks - it has in some areas become a source of them, or a transit point through which they reach the global economy.'
He highlighted the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea as examples of how risk migrates from the regional to the global level, noting that any prolonged disruption to maritime corridors can affect energy, trade, supply chains, shipping costs and insurance premiums in areas far from the Middle East. He described the phenomenon as 'the internationalisation of regional risk' - a crisis begins locally but its consequences become global.
Al-Da'ja warned that the region is no longer facing separate wars but 'a single, highly complex security system,' in which a development in one conflict arena can affect the calculations of parties and arenas elsewhere.
The central challenge ahead, he said, is not only preventing the outbreak of war, but preventing its effects from moving across sectors and countries and becoming a chain of economic, security, technological and social crises. 'The world has not only become more dangerous - it has become more interconnected in the production of danger,' he said. That, in his assessment, is the most important strategic shift reflected in the 2026 global risk indicators.
This article was originally written in Arabic for Al Ghad. It was translated into English with AI assistance and edited by Jordan News.