Global war fears rising among security experts: Survey

Global war fears are rising among experts around the world with over 40 percent expecting a new world conflict in the next decade, according to a new survey.

The poll, released Wednesday by the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, found that 40.5 percent of security experts across more than 60 countries think that by 2035, there will be a multi-front war among the most powerful nations. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed, however, said the opposite.

If another world war breaks out, the use of nuclear weapons seems likely, the respondents said. Around 48 percent of experts say they expect nuclear weapons to be utilized in the coming 10 years by at least one nation if a larger conflict breaks out, per the poll.

The potential fighting could also take place in space. Roughly 45 percent of the survey’s respondents expect a war that could, at least in some capacity, take place in space within the next decade.

The conflict will also likely have devastating consequences for the global economy. Around 28 percent of experts said a war between major military nations would be the biggest “threat to global prosperity over the next ten years.” The only other threat that ranked higher was climate change at nearly 30 percent, according to the survey.

Most of the experts, 65 percent, “somewhat or strongly” agreed that China will attempt to take over Taiwan within the next decade. Around 24 percent disagreed with that assessment. In last year’s poll, 50 percent said Beijing would attempt a takeover the Taiwan while 30 percent had the opposite opinion at the time, The Atlantic Council noted.

“This growing awakening on the part of the United States and its allies can become the basis for a call to action for the populations, governments, and militaries of these countries,” Markus Garlauskas, the Sowcroft Center's director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, said in a statement.

“The United States has typically waited until war was thrust upon it before preparing comprehensively,” he added. “Now is the time to act, to prepare, ideally to deter such aggression, and to be ready to hold firm if deterrence fails and we face either a short, sharp war or a protracted one.”

Another 45 percent of security experts “somewhat or strongly” agreed that Russia and NATO countries could be in direct military combat within the next decade, an uptick from last year’s iteration of the survey, when 29 percent said the same thing.

The Sowcroft Center poll was conducted in November and early December 2024 among 357 respondents. The survey does not list a margin of error.

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