The U.K.Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. Sir Nick Carter warned of the danger of a Third World War by miscalculation, in an interview with Sky News on the occasion of Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, which commemorates the end of World War I. In the U.S., it is known as Armistice Day.
Carter said that the global economic meltdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may lead new to security threats which, in turn, may spark a new world war.
Carter said people across the globe are “living at a moment in time where the world is a very uncertain and anxious place,” and that he thinks “the real risk we have, with quite a lot of regional conflicts that are going on at the moment, is you could see escalation lead to miscalculation, and that is a thing I think we have to guard against.” When asked to describe what he meant about an escalation, he said that it means more people and weaponry “perhaps get involved, and before you can contain it, it leads the sides ending up in a full-blown war.”
He referred to the fact that escalation was underway before both world wars and that it resulted in a “miscalculation which ultimately led to war at a scale we would hopefully never see again.” When asked whether he means that the threat of a Third World War is real, Carter replied, “I am saying it’s a risk, and I think we need to be conscious of those risks.”
Carter told Sky News the importance of remembering those who gave their lives in wartime, because “if you forget about the horror of war then the great risk I think is that people might think going to war is a reasonable thing to do.”
The list of flashpoints Carter might be referring to has been getting longer by the day.
