Natasha Kaiser President Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion on American mining at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Friday, August 7, 2026. The early stages of what could become World War III are already upon us.
The current global conflict began in 1917 after the Russian Revolution, which threatened to spread its authoritarian economic and political ideology to the entire world. The battle of ideas that has prevailed for more than a century since then was interrupted first by World War I, a more conventional nationalistic and territorial conflict.
Two decades later came World War II, in which traditional territorial expansion was undergirded with a new set of totalitarian ideologies — those of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan. Those axis powers opposed Communist Russia but shared its commitment to total control of populations, both domestic and foreign.
Both world wars ended with the total defeat of the aggressors and with America in the vanguard of the global struggle between democracy and autocracy. As such, the U.S. resumed its active opposition to the Soviet Union and the tyrannies it spawned. These now included China, North Korea, parts of Southeast Asia, and other places in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Meanwhile, however, communism as practiced in Russia, postwar China, and North Korea, evolved away from the messianic internationalist ideology of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and toward the cult-like deranged systems under Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il-sung. Their like-minded successor dictators — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un — carry on the suppression of their restive populations and the violent threats to peaceful neighbors.
Whatever the precise form of totalitarianism today, all these tyrannical systems have long shared a deep-seated hostility toward the U.S-led democratic model of governance with its certainty of regular regime change only through the routinely expressed will of the people rather than by either heredity or the exercise of brute force.
Hopefully, in the present conflict dynamic, if the Trump administration acts wisely, firmly, and consistently, supported by Congress and allies, the latest iteration of that existential struggle will not erupt into a global calamity. But even if global conflict and the mutual national suicide it portends in the nuclear age are avoided, the aggressor nations can still count on remaining in power and making incremental gains in their expansionist objectives. In this decades-long struggle, a piecemeal collaborative strategy tolerated by the West enables each authoritarian coalition partner to remain in power and inflict significant short-term and long-term damage to the U.S.-led international order.
Starting with Russia, Putin has seized parts of Georgia and conquered or destroyed much of Ukraine’s territory and infrastructure — but not the will of Ukraine’s people or its historic national identity. What Putin has wrought so far is only the first phase of his revanchist goal: reconstituting the Russian Empire and re-asserting Russia as a preeminent European power.
Meanwhile, Iran has confirmed its own revolutionary role as a major military player in the Middle East; second only to Israel, its hated enemy that it believes it is destined to destroy. By directly taking on the U.S., Iran has at least temporarily assumed a leadership role in the authoritarian cabal, distracting the U.S and diverting its resources from the security challenges by other autocrats.
Turning to Northeast Asia, North Korea has established itself as a credible power beyond the Korean Peninsula. It sent 50,000 ground forces to rescue Russia, a recognized global power, from a successful Ukrainian counter-incursion into Putin’s homeland. It has thus demonstrated its value as a contributing member of the anti-Western coalition, gaining valuable combat experience to pursue its own aggressive regional ambitions. Beyond its perennial lust to re-unify the Korean Peninsula under its own despotic and deranged rule, it fired a missile last week near Japan, to warn America’s most important Asian ally against rearming.
These diverse individual forays against the common enemy — America, its allies, and the democratic values they espouse — have succeeded in consolidating and deepening the cooperation between and among this coalition of authoritarian enemies.
Facing these multiple strategic enemy assaults from different geostrategic directions using diverse weapons and tactics, the Trump administration has reacted in contradictory and counterproductive ways. It gives the impression of desperate flailing, Gulliver-like, to escape ensnarement by lesser hostile powers At other times, U.S. officials have complained about having to expend munitions against Iran or to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. They fear needlessly sacrificing U.S. self-defense, and its ability to defend Taiwan aganst China’s aggression.
China, whose economic power has vaulted it to the indispensable leadership role among the authoritarian axis, stands to benefit the most from the fraying of Western collective security arrangements and the potential defeat of the Western democratic model. Formal sovereignty over Taiwan and its absorption into the Chinese empire, along with Tibet. East Turkestan, Macau, and Hong Kong, , will complete the consolidation of the Chinese nation long-coveted by Chinese leaders from Mao to Xi.
President Trump’s foreign policy does not seem much concerned with international moral crusades and such soft concepts as human rights or the rule of law. Yet he does have it within his power to rescue the West’s democracy project from the hostile designs of the world’s dictators, tyrants, and ideological fanatics. He must first convince himself, however, that the same forces that challenge soft democratic values also threaten national, and global, security. The values under attack may be soft, but the attackers are hard and heartless. Their targets are cities and nations that compose the free world, a term Reagan often used but Trump shuns, even while invoking Reagan’s call for peace through strength.
To meet the hydra-headed challenge from a collective group of enemies in Europe and Asia, Trump must state clearly America’s commitment, with its allies and partners, to support the defense of Ukraine, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and other security partners. Only Iran, with its apocalyptic view of the world, will be undeterred by the threat of regime change. Trump must charge his foreign policy and national security team with finding or devising the most prudent and effective way to bring about regime change in Tehran.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of the Vandenberg Coalition.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Vladimir PutinCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Comments: Link copiedMore Opinions - National Security News
See All
Opinions - National Security Crime in DC isn’t an ’emergency,’ but normalizing troops in US streets is by Joseph Nunn, opinion contributor 2 hours ago Opinions - National Security / 2 hours ago 
