Historians still debate whether the Franco‑Prussian War of the early 1870s planted the seeds for the catastrophe that followed decades later in World War I, or even if reshaping Europe’s balance of power post-1918 and humiliating Germany helped set the conditions for World War II. And as history has demonstrated many times to date, the ‘start’ of a world war is less a moment than a process.

Half a world away, Asia today is beginning to look uncomfortably similar to Europe of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

At the centre of this geopolitical storm playing out in slow motion lies China’s intensifying pressure on Taiwan. Beijing’s leadership has made clear that what it terms ‘reunification’ is non-negotiable, and to back its claims, military drills around the island of 24mn have grown in both scale and frequency in recent years. This signals a shift from deterrence to preparation.

The risk, however, is that any localised efforts at demonstrating military and political dominance over a resource-poor but strategically vital island off its coast by China, cascades into a crisis that draws in the wider region, and in turn through a web of modern day economic and political alliances the whole world.

The Taiwan question is uniquely combustible because it sits at the intersection of sovereignty, ideology and numerous global supply chains. It is also embedded in a dense network of far-reaching security commitments.

Although the formal US–Taiwan defence treaty lapsed in 1979, Washington still retains a number of obligations under domestic law to assist in the island’s defence should it come under attack; a legacy of Cold War-era arrangements designed to contain China more than help Taiwan and the Taiwanese.

That ambiguity which is neither full guarantee nor disengagement is precisely the kind of miscalculation risk that defined Europe in late 1913 and into early 1914.

China’s strategy, however, is not confined to Taiwan. It is increasingly regional and systemic with territorial claims throughout much of the East and South China Seas, and to the west across the wide expanse of what the rest of the world refers to as Tibet.

And just west of Tibet, across India’s union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Beijing has spent billions deepening ties with Pakistan, largely in the form of nuclear cooperation and missile supply, all the time maintaining a broader security relationship that serves as a counterweight to India's own influence in the region.

This axis, again ‘made in China’, introduces a second potential flashpoint in the form of a South Asian confrontation that could intersect with a Taiwan crisis, stretching India’s military capacity and in turn complicating any coordinated response involving Asia’s biggest democracy.

This would then saddle India with a multi-front dilemma and any ability to influence a wider Indo-Pacific conflict would be severely limited.

As such, the parallels with early 20^th Century Europe are striking. Then, as now in Asia, rising powers were testing the status quo. At the same time the more established powers struggled, and in Asia are now struggling, to respond coherently.

Japan, long constrained by its post-war pacifist constitution, is rapidly moving to rearm and reshape its primarily defensive posture. To this end, Tokyo has significantly loosened restrictions on weapons exports, and is expanding defence spending in moves Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has explicitly linked to concerns about China’s growing assertiveness by saying that a move against Taiwan would be seen as directly affecting Japan.

At the same time, a lattice of alliances is tightening across the region. The United States, Japan and South Korea have a formal trilateral security pact in place, while broader frameworks such as the Quad, linking Washington with Tokyo, New Delhi and Canberra, aim to coordinate responses to counter Beijing’s rise. That is the theory at least.

Such is the concern over China’s actions in the skies and waters around Taiwan though, joint military exercises involving nations from further afield have expanded in scope, with European navies and tens of thousands of troops represented in the rehearsal of scenarios that increasingly resemble real conflict.

From Beijing’s perspective, these developments look like encirclement – something of an irony given its daily efforts to surround Taiwan with People’s Liberation Army naval and air forces. As a result, Chinese officials have warned that such alliances are akin to those involved playing with fire, with the Chinese people told that external powers are the ones militarising the Indo-Pacific and undermining regional stability.

Yet as seen by China’s neighbours, these very same moves and alliances are a necessary hedge against an increasingly assertive and aggressive superpower.

But what transforms a regional crisis into a global one is not just the scale of conflict, but the structure of commitments that bind states together.

In 1914, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne who would have since largely been lost to history had he not been gunned down in a Sarajevo street, escalated into a world war, and all because alliance obligations forced countries into the fray.

The Indo-Pacific today is arguably even more interconnected than Europe ever was at the time – both politically and economically. US bilateral defence treaties with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, in addition to emerging multilateral arrangements, create multiple pathways for escalation and retaliation across the region.

Europe, too, is no longer a bystander and whilst losing its influence as an economic superpower to some extent, has seen NATO members deepen their engagement in the Indo-Pacific since the turn of the century by participating in military exercises and forging defence partnerships with Asian allies. This has led to the UK and Italy co-developing advanced fighter jets with Japan while France has deployed naval assets to the region at times – all links that serve to blur the geographical boundaries of any future conflict.

Compounding the risk, albeit still to a degree being debated, is a perceived erosion of US leadership both at the regional and global level.

US Allies across Asia have grown uneasy about Washington’s lack of reliability of late, particularly as resources are diverted to other theatres such as the Middle East. Yet even before the start of the Iran war in late February, as the US appears to strengthen military co-operation with regional partners on the one hand, its simultaneous expansion of economic ties with China on the other has sent mixed signals.

This ambiguity is dangerous and has been seen before. In the prelude to World War One, the great powers of the age repeatedly misread each other’s intentions, assuming conflicts could be localised or quickly contained. ‘Home by Christmas’ was a common turn of phrase used by the British press and politicians before it got dragged into a war that led to millions of deaths before, four Christmases later, peace was finally agreed.

Today, a similar complacency may be taking hold. China’s incremental pressure on Taiwan in the form of military drills, economic coercion and diplomatic isolation can be seen as a series of small steps, each falling short of outright war. Yet cumulatively, they may be shifting the region towards a future tipping point it cannot avoid.

If the mid-2020s is the early phase of a broader confrontation, it is one characterised not by potential trench warfare of a century ago or mass mobilisation, but by hybrid tactics in the form of cyber operations, economic pressure and proxy conflicts. China’s reported military support to partners beyond Asia, alongside its alignment with other major powers, suggests a willingness to act in and attempt to shape multiple theatres simultaneously.

The analogy with the Franco-Prussian War is instructive. That conflict did not trigger an immediate global conflagration, but it reordered Europe in ways that made future war more likely. Germany’s unification in the wake of that war, French humiliation and the resulting alliance structures that emerged created a volatile equilibrium that eventually collapsed in the summer of 1914.

China’s rise is now reshaping its own regional balances, prompting countervailing alliances and accelerating militarisation across Asia. Japan’s rearmament seen alongside India’s recalibration and the growing involvement of European powers all point to a system in flux.

The question then, is not whether a third world war has begun in the conventional sense. It has not. That much is clear. As of May 1, 2026 there has been no single defining moment to indicate such. No Sarajevo. No mobilisation orders.

But if history is any guide, the early stages of such widespread conflicts are rarely recognised as such.

Asia today is not at war, but it is closer to the beginning of one than many are willing to admit.