How ‘bomb diplomacy’ is blinding us towards World War III

By Festo Mulinda

There is something deeply unsettling about the direction in which global politics is moving: when diplomacy fails, bombs increasingly become the answer. The world is gradually normalising what may be called “bomb diplomacy”, the use of military force to achieve what patient negotiation, compromise and international law have failed to deliver. From Tehran to Kyiv and Caracas, superpowers are making decisions with one hand on the knife.

The danger is not simply that wars are multiplying. It is that they are beginning to connect. The Iran war is perhaps the clearest warning. The 2015 nuclear agreement offered a diplomatic mechanism for containing Iran’s nuclear programme. But Washington abandoned the deal in 2018, and the diplomatic architecture painstakingly built around it began to crumble. In 2026, after months of fighting, ceasefires and negotiations, another US-Iran agreement has stalled, with each side accusing the other of failing to honour commitments.

Ukraine tells a similar story. The Minsk agreements failed to produce a durable settlement, while subsequent negotiations, including the talks in Istanbul and Ankara, failed to prevent the conflict from becoming a devastating war. The lesson appears to have been absorbed not as “we must negotiate better”, but as “we must fight harder”.

While the fights continue, the battlefields keeps expanding. Ukraine recently struck an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, potentially connecting two previously separate theatres of war. In the Middle East, Iran has attacked targets and disrupted shipping in the Gulf, while Houthi attacks have threatened Red Sea commerce. Meanwhile, Israel and Türkiye are increasingly confronting each other over Syria, with Israeli officials openly warning Ankara against what they call “dangerous adventures”. A direct Israeli-Turkish confrontation could transform a regional crisis into something considerably larger, where NATO would have to choose between helping a member (Türkiye) or join their guardian’s friend (Israel) against the alliance’s second largest army.

Another time bomb comes in the shape of maritime chokepoints. The Strait of Hormuz is already severely disrupted, with shipping traffic running more than 90 per cent below pre-war levels. The Bab el-Mandeb remains vulnerable to Houthi attacks, while the Suez Canal faces increased security risks. Even the Panama Canal is under pressure, not primarily from war at present, but from the increasingly strategic competition surrounding global trade routes.

Then, with all routes almost closing, in comes the Arctic Pandora’s Box. As the Northern Sea Route becomes increasingly attractive for Asian-European trade, control of Arctic geography is becoming strategically more valuable. Greenland, therefore, is no longer merely an icy territory. It sits at the intersection of Arctic shipping, military positioning and great-power competition.

Russia already controls most of the arctic route, with about eight nuclear icebreakers. Western powers feel left behind, and want more control for the future of maritime travels. This perhaps reminds you of President Trump’s obsession with Greenland. The arctic will soon be hotter than the 70.7°C Lut Desert, hot with the new diplomacy – Bombs!

This is how major wars begin: not necessarily with one dramatic decision, but through the accumulation of confrontations, alliances, blockades, sanctions, military deployments and wounded national egos.

The most disturbing development in all this chaos may be the return of nuclear logic. If states increasingly conclude that diplomacy cannot guarantee their security, they will seek the ultimate deterrent: nuclear weapons. That conclusion is already visible. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that the nine nuclear-armed states collectively possessed about 12,187 nuclear weapons at the beginning of 2026, and all nine further strengthened their arsenals during 2025.

The message other countries may draw is brutally simple: if you do not have nuclear weapons, you may be invaded, bombed, blockaded or coerced; if you have them, perhaps others will think twice. That is an extremely dangerous lesson.

The parallels with the 1930s should therefore worry us. Great powers competed for resources, strategic territory, trade routes and spheres of influence. National pride repeatedly defeated compromise. Militarisation became normal. Diplomacy became an instrument of convenience rather than a commitment to peace. We should not wait for history to complete the comparison.

World War III will not necessarily begin with a declaration of war. It could emerge from a chain reaction: Iran, Ukraine, Israel-Turkey, the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Arctic, until one crisis ignites another and alliances pull major powers into a conflict nobody originally intended to fight.

Bomb diplomacy is not taking humanity towards peace. It is taking us towards a point where one mistake could become irreversible. The world’s most powerful governments must rediscover a simple truth: diplomacy is not weakness, compromise is not surrender, and restraint is not cowardice.

The alternative is a war that may leave nobody powerful enough to declare victory.