Winston Churchill titled the first volume of his history of the Second World War, The Gathering Storm. The first volume covered the interwar years and did not hesitate to lay blame for Britain’s failure to read the signs of a looming global conflict. According to Churchill, a hesitant and delayed response to the threat posed by the rise of Adolf Hitler and the rearmament of the Third Reich took root in a pusillanimous political scene in Britain, with too many illusions about peace, too much appeasement sentiment. Churchill, alongside a handful of senior officials in government, were voices in the wilderness, until it was too late.
The parallels between the interwar period and today look increasingly striking. They can be seen in a renewed global contest between democratic regimes and authoritarian governments, with authoritarian regimes, led by China, decrying the weaknesses of democratic systems, extolling their own brand of strong-man rule and repression in the name of order, and trying to position themselves as global exemplars. There is a revisionist power in the shape of Putin’s Russia, desirous of turning the clock back and willing to unleash military force to do so. Democracies themselves are riven by internal discontent and focused on social policy agendas. Western leadership of the global system is deeply distrusted, especially in the so-called “global south.”
There can be no doubt we face our own gathering storm. Its lineaments are clearly narrated in the most recent annual threat assessment produced by the US intelligence community and presented (in unclassified and classified formats) to Congress. [i] Yes, this is a threat assessment from a US perspective, but it is also a threat assessment anchored in dangers to a rules-based, stable, and peaceful global order. It’s not parochial. For Canada, what threatens the US mirrors what threatens us. We just don’t have our own (public) expression, produced by our intelligence system, of the storm that is gathering. [ii]
The headline of the US threat assessment reads as follows:
“During the next year, the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications.”
The US assessment has the feel of intelligence agencies racing to keep up with the present, and to move past legacy thinking, not always successfully.
China continues to be represented as a power with regional ambitions, but a global agenda. Its probably time to see China purely through the lens of its global ambitions for power and influence projection, ambitions for technological leadership, ambitions to define a post-Western order. There are dangers along the way, including impacts on economic stability within China and globally, as its government pursues technological self-sufficiency, and escalatory dangers as it expands its conventional and nuclear arsenal. Read this line and see how chilling and Cold War-ish it sounds to you:
“Beijing worries that bilateral tension, U.S. nuclear modernization, and the People’s Liberation Army’s advancing conventional capabilities have increased the likelihood of a U.S. first strike.”
Time for a US-China hotline.
Russia continues to be viewed by the US intelligence community as a disruptive and nuisance power, rather than a determined challenger of the status quo. It has faced enormous manpower and equipment losses in Ukraine, but, as the US IC concedes, clearly intends to press on, bolstered by iron control over its own population, a willingness to invest in guns over butter in its domestic economy, and with the cushion of a major market for its goods presented by China. Russia may be a declining petro-state rather than a global power, by any quantitative measure; that does not prevent it from acting as one, with few restraints.
In terms of current conflicts, two, of course, stand out. On the Ukraine war, the threat assessment is curiously silent about its broader global significance and future implications. Its hard to know what to make of that silence. Missing is any measure of the war’s impact on NATO, on European security, on global security, especially should a long war persist, or worse, should Russia manage to collapse Ukrainian defences. In The Gathering Storm, Churchill pointed to the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to greater military threats in the future. Its high time to see the Ukraine war in that context, something not lost on many front-line NATO states in Europe.
The US threat assessment devotes more attention to the war in Gaza. There is no sugar coating of a number of facts: the potential for increased regional tensions and escalation; the unlikelihood of any complete Israeli military victory over Hamas; the support that Hamas continues to have among Palestinians; and even the political weakness of the Netanyahu government. The US IC goes so far as to state that it expects large protests against Netanyahu’s government as the Gaza war persists and suggests that “a different, more moderate government is a possibility.” Beyond that, its crystal ball fades to black over any future peaceful settlement in the region.
There are, of course, many elements of the threat environment that were undreamed of in Winston Churchill’s 1930s. Disruptive technological change that can be weaponized, against the backdrop of weak international controls; the vast scope of information warfare, or what the US threat assessment calls “digital influence operations;” cyber threats from states, proxies and criminal organizations, capable of impacting on governance and economic stability.
The new environment for potential conflict extends to the realm of space, where proliferating space platforms, many operated by commercial entities, have become elements of critical infrastructure for the functioning of societies on earth, and thus potential targets for disruption, and where states look to gain competitive advantage in the use of satellites for earth observation.
Added to these threats are those to the global commons created by accelerating climate change impacts, and a weakened global health security system. Just in case we have forgotten COVID, the US threat assessment notes: “countries remain vulnerable to the introduction of a new or remerging pathogen that could cause another devastating pandemic.” Yes, indeed.
The list continues: increased global migration caused by multiple drivers, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and the persistence of global terrorism and violent extremist movements.
Even the Russian Wagner private army, now essentially disbanded, warrants a disturbing note about what the future may hold as more states embrace the use of private military and security companies (PMSCs). China, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are all singled out as seeing PMSCs as “a valuable tool in their arsenal for either advancing or protecting their interests abroad.”
But as the US intelligence community casts its eye across all these threats, it does not properly take the measure of the one that might matter the most—the contest between democratic and authoritarian regimes over the shaping of the future international order.
There are multiple conflict touch points for this contest, of which Ukraine looms the largest at present. But the contest goes beyond exercises of military force, or threats of force. It reaches into economic policies over development and assistance, into ideological narratives carried on vast digital waves and replete with corrupted messages, into the equitable or inequitable sharing of technological advances. It is affected by repression, including transnational repression.
The contest’s immediate measure, in 2024, may be found in the outcome of an unprecedented number of elections worldwide. Putin’s sham presidential election in Russia may not be any kind of bellwether, but studies indicate worrying signs of democratic backsliding globally. As a Swedish Institute, V-Dem, reported, of 60 countries holding national elections in 2024, 31 shows signs of declining levels of democracy, and only 3 are improving. A Pew Institute survey documented similar bad news, with those living in democracies signalling their dissatisfaction with how democratic systems functioned. A near majority of respondents in middle-income countries expressed a desire for autocratic strong man rule. [iii]
As Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm:
“It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.”
Future threat assessments will have to speak to whether democracies were able to reach for “world saving decisions.” They seem in short supply at the moment.
[i] US, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” February 5, 2024 (published March 8, 2024), https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2024-Unclassified-Report.pdf
[ii] The Privy Council Office’s Intelligence Assessment Secretariat has, for over two decades, produced a “Year Ahead” threat assessment, but it is not made public.
[iii] Washington Post, “Russia’s farce election sums up a grim moment in global democracy,” March 18, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/18/global-democracy-russia-election-backslide-autocracy/
I started my academic career as a scholar of the 1930s, and here I am back in it! Very grateful for all the comments. Keeps me going. Best, Wesley
Excellent article! A disturbing assessment, but more disturbing is that this message will be ignored by a government consumed with "we've got your back" navel-gazing incompetence and by a populace distracted with the problems of day-to-day living. Please keep beating the drum Mr. Wark!