A growing collection of wars and military flashpoints involving several nuclear powers is raising concerns that miscalculation or escalation in one region could pull major powers into a far wider conflict.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered a “dangerous new phase” in which the threat of regional spillover is growing, U.N. Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo warned Wednesday, according to the United Nations. The Middle East is simultaneously confronting the continuing U.S.-Iran conflict and renewed fighting in Yemen, while tensions involving China and Taiwan and nuclear-armed India and Pakistan remain potential avenues for another major confrontation, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
“It’s possible to consider that World War III has begun,” defense policy analyst and retired Marine Dan Grazier told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The big problem before World War II was there were all these separate conflicts that were going on at the same time, and it was only a matter of time before they all got linked together.”
The number of armed conflicts worldwide has reached its highest level since the end of World War II, according to the CFR. Roughly 620 American government officials, foreign policy specialists and academics responded to CFR’s 2026 Preventive Priorities Survey, which identified a Taiwan Strait crisis and clashes between Russia and NATO as scenarios with potentially severe consequences for the United States.
“I would characterize the current environment as extremely dangerous, in part because key players greatly underestimate the potential for disaster,” the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute, George Beebe, told the DCNF. “The biggest problem is that many leaders in the West believe the key to avoiding war is to demonstrate our resolve to escalate the use of force against our adversaries. They believe that diplomatic compromise constitutes ‘appeasement’ that endangers us.”
The nuclear danger extends beyond the sheer size of the world’s arsenals.
Of an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads worldwide at the beginning of 2026, roughly 9,745 remained in military stockpiles available for potential use, 4,012 were deployed with operational forces and as many as 2,200 were kept on high operational alert aboard ballistic missiles, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. All nine nuclear-armed states also continued modernizing and enhancing their arsenals during 2025, with most deploying new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapons systems.
