Politics

Why modern-day wars can easily go regional

The breakdown of the post-1945 international order has stifled the mechanisms meant to prevent wars from expanding into larger conflagrations

AFP / Reuters / Al Majalla

Why modern-day wars can easily go regional

Amgad Fareid Eltayeb

last update on 18 Mar 2026

The world is now passing through an era of ‘strategic unravelling’, and its proportions are catastrophic. Conflicts no longer remain confined to their immediate geographies. With grim persistence, they expand into regional wars.

Their prevalence stems from the breakdown of the post-1945 international order, designed to contain regional conflicts and prevent them from spilling across borders. This breakdown, in turn, stems from the erosion of deterrence, the polarisation of major powers, and the rise of externally sponsored non-state actors.

Multilateral institutions that have upheld the international order for 80 years have been structurally paralysed. The result has been a succession of armed geopolitical ruptures, from Ukraine to Sudan, Gaza to Iran. In many states, the national fabric has been completely unpicked, and vast humanitarian catastrophes have been inflicted (often on entire populations of unarmed people, such as in Gaza).

Iran erupts

The prevailing global order is both paralysed and existentially threatened, as each new conflict erupts before the embers of the last have cooled, and the US-Israeli war against Iran that began on 28 February is possibly the most acute expression of this paralysis.

Amid meek pleas for restraint from non-combatants and the United Nations, the US and Israel targeted Iran’s leaders, military, and nuclear facilities. Iran responded with ballistic missiles and drones, targeting not just Israel but American interests in neighbouring Gulf and Arab states.

Iran chose to widen the circle of confrontation by drawing its neighbours into the conflict under the logic of shared pain, exposing the region and wider world economically through rising gas oil prices, suspended supplies, and the closure of vital shipping lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz and, by extension, the Suez Canal. The past three weeks have therefore been an illustration of how a local war can spread.

AFP — A worker stands in front of a damaged building in the Al-Lamab suburb near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on 30 July 2025.

Horn of Africa

Across the Red Sea, the clearest sign of instability in the Horn of Africa remains the civil war in Sudan, which has raged since April 2023 and already drawn in several neighbouring states, including Chad, which has acted as a launching ground, supply base, and tactical rear area for the operations of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in western Sudan. Other reports indicate the involvement of Libya, Uganda, and Kenya in facilitating the flow of weapons and mercenaries to the RSF, alongside political and diplomatic support, and the granting of sanctuary on their territories.

On 2 March 2026, Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country had been attacked by drones launched from Ethiopia. The US State Department confirmed that it was aware. This follows reports that the RSF and its alleged backers in the United Arab Emirates (which denies supporting the group) had established recruitment and training camps in Ethiopia, featuring enlisted mercenaries.

The prevailing global order is both paralysed and existentially threatened. Each new conflict erupts before the embers of the last have cooled

Ethiopian involvement in Sudan's war marks a grave turning point that threatens the whole region. Ethiopian militias reportedly operating in Sudan include the Fano, a group from the Amhara community, as well as Tigray forces. Yet their involvement was denounced by a spokesman for the Oromo, the largest ethno-linguistic group in Ethiopia, which comprises one-third of the Ethiopian population. Many of these groups have longstanding grievances against each other.

To add to a flammable mix, Ethiopia's relations with Eritrea and Egypt to the north, and Somalia to the south, continue to deteriorate. This further intensifies the delicacy of the situation. Analysts now warn that a geographically contained conflict (Sudan) could spread far beyond its borders, especially given that Egypt and Ethiopia are already at loggerheads over the latter's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile.

External actors pressing states into the Sudan war—whether through finance, weapons, or logistical facilitation—now threaten the whole region, given the myriad ways it could quickly escalate. This region, with exhausted economies and cross-border identities, is awash with weapons. A single spark can redraw the map of alliances.

REUTERS — A resident stands at the site of buildings hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on 16 March 2026.

Era of paralysis

Elsewhere in the world, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent defence it mounted have drained Europe politically, militarily, and financially. Europe's failure to impose a settlement or even articulate an autonomous security vision without the United States has left the continent hostage to the designs of bigger powers beyond it. That weakness means that in the world's conflict zones, Europe plays no effective part in halting the fighting. When European powers are consumed by a European-Eurasian theatre, their capacity to contain eruptions on the periphery inevitably recedes.

Within this context, the United Nations appears to be paralysed over Iran and Ukraine, where great powers are involved in both conflicts. It also failed to stop the war in Sudan and Gaza. It has not been the difference when it comes to peace negotiations, and to many observes, its inability to protect civilians points to a profound crisis that goes to the very idea of collective security. UN Security Council resolutions are increasingly held hostage to polarised world powers. The UN is now powerless to stop the disintegration of a world order it upheld and guaranteed for decades.

Increasingly, media commentators ask: Are we heading for World War Three? There are things to beware. Global wars never start out as such; they begin with miscalculation, an unmeasured response, typically in an area with simmering grievances. Iran offers one model, but events in the Horn of Africa may prove to be even more dangerous because of the deeper fragility of the states in a region with porous borders and a history of conflict. With no apparent willingness to rebuild a coherent international security order, the enforcement of rules that once prevented conflicts from metastasising into full-scale wars could soon be sorely missed.

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