The Desensitisation of Humanity: Are We Already at the Beginning of World War III?

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One hundred years after the First World War and more than eighty years after the devastation of the Second World War gave rise to the United Nations, humanity once again finds itself living in an age of permanent crisis.

Wars no longer appear as exceptional events interrupting periods of peace. Conflict has become a continuous backdrop to daily life, transmitted instantly through smartphones, social media feeds and twenty-four-hour news cycles.

Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, the Sahel and numerous forgotten conflicts compete for global attention, yet they often disappear from public consciousness almost as quickly as they emerge. Images of destroyed cities, displaced families and civilian casualties no longer shock societies with the same intensity they once did. Instead, they risk becoming another item in an endless digital scroll.

This raises a troubling question. Perhaps the defining feature of our era is not simply the return of geopolitical rivalry or the emergence of new technologies of war. Perhaps it is something more profound: the gradual desensitisation of humanity itself.

This does not mean that a Third World War has already begun in the conventional sense. There is no formal declaration, no single battlefield and no universally recognised coalition of belligerents. But if world wars are ultimately defined by the globalisation of insecurity, economic disruption, technological competition and the erosion of international norms, humanity may already be experiencing some of the psychological conditions in which a wider conflict could take shape.

From the 'War to End All Wars' to Permanent Global Crisis

The First World War was once described as “the war to end all wars”. Instead, it became the prelude to an even greater catastrophe. The Second World War left tens of millions dead, entire cities destroyed and societies traumatised, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Out of those tragedies emerged a collective determination that such devastation should never be repeated.

Institutions such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, alongside the Geneva Conventions and a wider architecture of humanitarian law, were developed not merely to manage conflicts but to reduce the risk that humanity would repeat its darkest mistakes. International law, diplomacy, multilateral cooperation and human rights became central pillars of the post-war international order.

For decades, these institutions did not eliminate war, but they helped establish rules intended to restrain it. Even during the Cold War, when nuclear confrontation remained a persistent danger, diplomatic mechanisms repeatedly helped prevent local crises from escalating into global catastrophe.

Today, that historical confidence appears increasingly fragile.

Major powers compete across multiple regions. Military expenditure has reached record levels. Economic sanctions have become routine instruments of foreign policy. Cyberattacks, information warfare and artificial intelligence are transforming the nature of conflict. At the same time, regional wars increasingly overlap with global rivalries involving the United States, China, Russia, Europe, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Türkiye and other influential actors.

History rarely repeats itself in identical form. It does, however, rhyme. The gradual normalisation of continuous geopolitical confrontation bears uncomfortable similarities to the atmosphere that preceded earlier periods of global conflict.

The UN Under Pressure: Undermining the Institutions of Peace

Perhaps one of the most worrying developments is not simply the increase in armed conflicts, but the erosion of confidence in the institutions established to prevent them.

The United Nations remains the most comprehensive international organisation ever created. Its specialised agencies — from the World Health Organization and UNESCO to UNICEF and the World Food Programme — continue to support millions of people through development assistance, education, healthcare, refugee protection and humanitarian relief.

Yet these institutions increasingly face political attacks, financial pressure and accusations of bias from multiple directions.

Meanwhile, paralysis in the UN Security Council has become increasingly familiar. Humanitarian agencies struggle to operate in conflict zones. International courts are challenged or ignored when their decisions conflict with national interests. Great powers invoke international law selectively, often supporting multilateral institutions when doing so aligns with their strategic objectives and dismissing them when it does not.

This should concern not only diplomats but ordinary citizens. The UN was never designed to eliminate disagreement among states. It was designed to provide mechanisms through which disagreement could be managed without descending into unlimited violence. Weakening international institutions without constructing viable alternatives risks leaving the world with fewer tools for crisis management precisely when they are needed most.

Criticism of the UN is both legitimate and necessary. Reform is long overdue. But dismantling public trust in multilateral institutions without strengthening or replacing them may produce a far more dangerous international environment.

The greatest achievement of the post-1945 order was not perfection. It was restraint.

Nationalism, New Technologies and the Normalisation of Civilian Suffering

Another striking characteristic of the current international system is the simultaneous return of assertive nationalism and the rapid transformation of military technology.

Across many regions, governments increasingly define national security through military strength, border control, strategic autonomy and technological superiority. National identity has again become a powerful political force, often accompanied by declining confidence in international cooperation.

At the same time, warfare itself is undergoing a profound transformation.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous systems, cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, precision-guided missiles and commercial satellite technologies have fundamentally changed the battlefield. Military operations that once required thousands of soldiers can increasingly be conducted remotely by smaller teams operating sophisticated systems.

These innovations provide obvious tactical advantages. They can reduce risks for military personnel, improve surveillance and increase precision. Yet they also create new ethical dilemmas.

From Gaza to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Iran and across numerous other conflict zones, civilians continue to pay a devastating price. Residential neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools, energy infrastructure and humanitarian facilities are repeatedly caught within modern battlefields. Although international humanitarian law remains clear about the protection of civilians, technological sophistication has not eliminated human suffering.

One of the central paradoxes of twenty-first-century warfare is therefore that increasingly advanced weapons coexist with persistent civilian casualties.

The spread of remote warfare illustrates this contradiction. Because many operations are conducted from a distance and often receive only brief media attention, societies risk becoming psychologically detached from their consequences. War can appear increasingly clinical on computer screens while remaining devastating on the ground.

Technological progress must therefore be accompanied by ethical responsibility. Innovation without humanity risks becoming merely a more efficient method of destruction.

Digital Civilisation and the Desensitisation of Humanity

Perhaps the greatest paradox of our age lies in digitalisation itself.

Never before has humanity possessed such extraordinary access to information. Scientific knowledge, educational opportunities, cultural exchange, medical discoveries and global communication have expanded at unprecedented speed. Digital technologies have democratised learning, connected societies across continents and enabled millions to participate in conversations once restricted to political elites.

In many respects, this represents one of humanity's greatest achievements. Yet digitalisation has also transformed the way human beings experience suffering.

The constant flow of information creates psychological fatigue. Images that once shocked entire societies now compete with entertainment, advertising and social-media content within the same digital space. Catastrophic events quickly disappear beneath newer headlines, reducing even profound human tragedies to temporary moments in an endless cycle of information consumption.

This is not necessarily because people have become less compassionate. They may simply have become overwhelmed.

Psychologists use concepts such as “compassion fatigue” to describe forms of emotional exhaustion associated with repeated exposure to suffering. At the societal level, a broader and more difficult question emerges: can constant exposure to distant violence gradually reduce our collective sensitivity to it?

This is what I mean by the desensitisation of humanity.

When wars become ordinary, civilian deaths become statistics and humanitarian crises become routine headlines, societies risk losing part of their capacity for sustained moral outrage. The danger is not only political but psychological. Democracies depend upon informed and empathetic citizens. If continuous exposure to violence weakens public sensitivity, political leaders may encounter fewer domestic constraints when pursuing increasingly confrontational policies.

The greatest risk, therefore, is not merely another military conflict.

It is the normalisation of permanent conflict.

Lessons from Hiroshima: Who Will Draw the Red Line?

Each year, the anniversary of Hiroshima on 6 August reminds us that humanity has already witnessed the destructive potential of the nuclear age. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in the final days of the Second World War revealed the catastrophic consequences of total war and transformed the strategic imagination of every generation that followed.

Hiroshima should not be viewed in isolation from Imperial Japan's militarism and expansionist wars, which devastated much of Asia. The enduring lesson is not to assign exclusive historical guilt, but to recognise how unchecked nationalism, dehumanisation and the pursuit of absolute military victory can push civilisation towards collective catastrophe.

If that lesson is forgotten, technological progress may once again outpace humanity's moral conscience.

History also teaches that world wars rarely begin with universal recognition that a world war has begun. They emerge through cumulative crises, hardened political attitudes, technological escalation, institutional weakness and societies increasingly accustomed to instability.

That creates another troubling question: what happens when destructive capabilities that were once available only to major states become cheaper, smaller and more accessible? Advances in drones, autonomous systems, biotechnology and other dual-use technologies are lowering barriers that once separated conventional warfare from more dangerous forms of escalation. Preventing their misuse will require stronger international safeguards, not weaker ones.

Whether humanity has already entered the opening chapter of a wider global conflict is impossible to determine. Historians may answer that question only decades from now.

What can already be observed, however, is something equally significant. Over the past century, humanity has developed remarkable technological intelligence while struggling to preserve equal moral sensitivity. We have built faster communications, more sophisticated weapons and more powerful artificial intelligence, yet we continue to confront the same fundamental question that emerged after 1918 and again after 1945: how can civilisation prevent technological progress from outpacing human conscience?

Perhaps the defining challenge of the twenty-first century is not simply avoiding another world war.

It is ensuring that humanity does not first lose its capacity to recognise one while it is unfolding before its eyes.

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