Stephen Flynn features on News@Northeastern Article: Is World War III Possible? The Next Few Weeks Will Tell

GRI Founding Director, Stephen Flynn, amongst other Northeastern experts, featured in a News@Northeastern article that is focused on the ongoing crisis in Eastern Europe.

With Ukrainian resistance standing its ground and proving formidable against the ongoing invasion of Russian forces, it’s possible the ground war waged for the past two weeks by Russian President Vladimir Putin could continue for some time. It’s becoming harder for the U.S. and its NATO allies to abstain from participating militarily in the conflict that could spill over into other Western nations, due to this, there are whispers that this may be the recipe for potentially igniting a third world war, developments in the coming days will prove critical, says Mai’a Cross, the Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern.

Stephen Flynn shared his thoughts as to what another global conflict could mean in our current times.

“Would World War III, if it happens, could inevitably involve nuclear weapons.”

“We’re still in the atomic age,” Flynn says. “I know it feels like we haven’t had to pay attention to that fact for some years, but the reality is that Russia and the United States have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.”

The next few weeks are going to be crucial in terms of figuring out whether the war spreads beyond Ukraine. Russia is not doing so well on the ground and is ramping up missiles and airstrikes that have ended up with many civilian casualties. This creates further risks of an accidental crossing into the border of a NATO country. The question is how NATO would respond to that.