What are the major security threats ahead?

On the face of it, last week’s NATO summit in Washington ticked all the boxes. The alliance can show that it is bigger and stronger than ever, its military support for Ukraine appears intact, and it has just sent a strong message to China to stop its covert support for Russia’s war against kyiv.

Sir Keir Starmer’s new government has had the opportunity to position itself as a pillar of the transatlantic alliance at a time when political uncertainty hangs over the White House and much of Europe.

Back in the UK, the priorities of this new government are pressing: the economy, housing, immigration, the NHS, to name but a few.

Yet, threats and unwanted scenarios often tend to arise and disrupt the best-laid plans.

So what might happen during the lifetime of this new British government?

Not surprisingly, this situation is on everyone’s lips. But it is no less dangerous for Lebanon, Israel and the entire Middle East.

“The possibility of a full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon this summer should be at the top of the new government’s geopolitical risk register.”

This is according to Professor Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Whitehall think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

As the conflict in Gaza continues and Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping continue, Professor Chalmers believes that “we could be entering a period of sustained war on multiple fronts in the region, for which neither Israel nor its Western partners will be prepared.”

Since the Hamas raid in southern Israel on October 7, there have been fears that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza could spill over into a full-scale regional war.

The risk of such a war is greatest on Israel’s troubled northern border with Lebanon.

Daily exchanges of fire across the border between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia, have already left hundreds dead, mainly in Lebanon.

More than 60,000 Israelis were forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods in the north, and an even greater number of people on the Lebanese side.

Domestic pressure is growing for the Israeli government to “deal” with Hezbollah by pushing its forces north of the Litani River into Lebanon, from where they would be less likely to fire rockets into Israel.

“We don’t want to go to war,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani of the Israeli army, “but I don’t think any country can accept that 60,000 of its citizens are displaced. This situation has to stop. We would like it to be done diplomatically, but Israel’s patience is running out.”

There are good reasons why both sides should not go to war.

Lebanon’s economy is already fragile. The country has only just recovered from the 2006 war with Israel, and a new full-scale conflict would have devastating consequences for the country’s infrastructure and its population.

Hezbollah, for its part, would likely respond to a major Israeli attack and invasion with a massive and sustained barrage of missiles, drones and rockets that could potentially overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defenses.

No place in Israel is beyond his reach.

At this point, the US Navy, positioned offshore, could well join the Israeli camp. One may then wonder what Iran would do.

It also has a considerable arsenal of ballistic missiles as well as a network of proxy militias in Iraq, Yemen and Syria that could be mobilized to step up attacks against Israel.

One solution to easing tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border would be to end the conflict in Gaza. But after nine months and a horrifically high death toll, a lasting peace has yet to be achieved.

The Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), designed to contain and monitor Iran’s nuclear program, was the Obama administration’s greatest foreign policy achievement in 2015.

But all that has long since collapsed.

A year after President Trump unilaterally withdrew from it, Iran has stopped respecting its rules.

Buried beneath gigantic mountains, seemingly beyond the reach of even the most powerful bunker-buster bombs, Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spin frantically, enriching uranium well beyond the 20 percent needed for peaceful civilian purposes. (A nuclear bomb requires highly enriched uranium.)

Officially, Iran claims that its nuclear program remains entirely peaceful and is used only to produce energy.

But Israeli and Western experts have expressed concern that Iran has a clandestine program to achieve what is known as “breakthrough capability”: reaching a position where it has the capability to build a nuclear bomb, but does not necessarily do so.

Iran has not failed to note that North Korea, an isolated global pariah, has steadily amassed an arsenal of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them, constituting a major deterrent to any potential aggressor.

If Iran obtains the atomic bomb, it is almost inevitable that its regional rival Saudi Arabia will also seek it, as will Turkey and Egypt.

And suddenly a nuclear arms race breaks out across the Middle East.

It depends on what you define as “winning.”

In its most extreme form, this means that Russian forces would overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses and seize the rest of the country, including the capital kyiv, replacing the pro-Western government of President Volodymyr Zelensky with a puppet regime appointed by Moscow.

This was of course the original plan behind the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022, a plan that failed spectacularly.

This scenario is currently considered unlikely.

But Russia does not need to conquer all of Ukraine in order to be able to proclaim some kind of “victory,” something it could present to its population to justify the astronomical losses it is suffering in this war.

Russia already occupies about 18% of Ukraine, and in the east its forces are slowly gaining ground.

Although new Western weapons are on the way, Ukraine is suffering from a critical shortage of manpower. Its troops, who fight bravely, often vastly outnumbered and outgunned, are exhausted.

Russian commanders, who seem to care little for the lives of their men, have the masses on their side. The entire Russian economy is on a war footing, with nearly 40% of the state budget devoted to defense.

President Vladimir Putin, whose “conditions for peace talks” have recently been equated with a total surrender of Ukraine, believes he has time on his side. He knows that there is a good chance that his old friend Donald Trump will return to the White House within months and that Western support for Ukraine is beginning to erode.

All Russia needs to do is hold on to the territory it has already conquered and deny Ukraine the opportunity to join NATO and the EU to declare a partial victory in the war it has presented as a fight for Russia’s survival.

Again, there are many warnings that this phenomenon could occur.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his officials have repeatedly said that the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan must be “returned to the motherland,” by force if necessary.

Taiwan does not want to be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing.

But China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and wants to see it “reunified” well before the centenary of the CCP’s founding in 2049.

The United States has adopted a position it calls “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan.

Legally, Washington is required to help defend Taiwan, but it prefers to keep China in doubt about whether that means sending American forces to fight a Chinese invasion.

China would almost certainly prefer not to invade Taiwan.

This would be very costly, in human lives and money. Ideally, Beijing would like Taiwan to give up its dreams of complete independence and volunteer to be ruled by mainland China.

But since that currently seems unlikely – Taiwanese watched in horror as democracy was crushed in Hong Kong – Beijing has another option up its sleeve.

If it decides to act against Taiwan, it will likely attempt to isolate it from the outside world, making life unbearable for its citizens, but with minimal bloodshed to avoid provoking a war with the United States.

Is Taiwan important?

This is about much more than noble principles of defending a democratic ally on the other side of the world.

Taiwan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s highest-end microchips, the tiny pieces of technology that power nearly everything that makes modern life work.

A war between the United States and China over Taiwan would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy that would dwarf the war in Ukraine.

Not exactly, but there are some moderating factors here.

For China, trade is everything. Beijing’s ambitious plans to oust the U.S. Navy from the Western Pacific and dominate the entire region may well be tempered by its reluctance to launch damaging sanctions and a global trade war.

In Ukraine, President Putin is making slow but steady progress across the territory, but this is happening at the cost of terrible human losses.

When the Red Army occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, it suffered an estimated 15,000 deaths over a decade, sparking protests in the country and hastening the demise of the Soviet Union.

In Ukraine, in just a quarter of that period, Russia has suffered losses far higher than that figure. So far, protests have been limited—the Kremlin largely controls the information Russians see—but the longer this war drags on, the greater the risk that Russian public opinion will end up becoming outraged by the growing number of its citizens being killed.

In Europe, where there is great concern that a Trump presidency would withdraw historic protection, a new UK-led security pact is in the works.

As the US presidential election in November approaches, plans are accelerating to try to mitigate any potential negative effects on continental security.