Are we living in more dangerous times than previously?

by Peter Greener

On 17 March of this year New Zealand’s Defence Minister Judith Collins and Foreign Minister Winston Peters met with their Australian counterparts Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. They were meeting for the third Australia‑New Zealand ministerial meeting, ANZMIN. In a press conference following the meeting Richard Marles announced that he and Judith Collins had signed an agreement regarding Operationalising the Australia‑New Zealand Alliance. This agreement commits Australian and New Zealand Forces to work as closely and in as integrated a fashion as possible to achieve the vision of ANZAC 2035.

In underlining why New Zealand sought this increased engagement, Minister Collins emphasised what a dangerous world we live in: “I think we live in the most dangerous times that I have ever known in my lifetime, and it’s so important to have good friends who you can rely on.”  Writing for The Guardian the following month, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer proffered similar comments: “the reality is the world has changed: no longer do we live in the benign conditions found during the early part of this century. The world today is more volatile and dangerous than at any other point in my lifetime.” 

But do we live in an unprecedentedly dangerous world? The answer is complicated: it is simultaneously both yes and no.

The Cold War and the most dangerous day in history?

Judith Collins was three and a half years old and Keir Starmer barely six weeks old when the Cuban missile crisis began. The crisis began on 14 October 1962, when a United States U2 spy-plane identified a Russian ballistic missile on a launch pad in Cuba. On 16 October the photographs were presented to the President John F. Kennedy. The following thirteen days saw the world come desperately close to nuclear war.

During this time President Kennedy met with advisors before deciding on a course of action, which he presented to the public on 22 October in a television broadcast at 7 p.m. EST. The programme was broadcast live on BBC radio, which continued operating after midnight so that Britain could hear what was proposed. Kennedy ordered a blockade to be enforced with ships and aircraft and insisted that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev order the missiles and launch sites be dismantled.

I was twelve years of age and woke up to the news the next morning. At school that day we were told by our form teacher that we could bring in transistor radios to keep abreast of the news as the crisis deepened. As children we had watched broadcasts on the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent horrors. The prospect of nuclear war was not an abstract concept.

Over that week as tensions rose, we all listened to the news at break times. Khrushchev at first refused to respond, but ultimately reacted to President Kennedy’s demands by insisting on an assurance that Cuba would not be invaded. By the weekend he was demanding that the USA remove its missiles from Turkey. On Saturday 27 October the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, met with Soviet Ambassador to the United States and agreed that the Jupiter missiles would be removed, but that the agreement must be kept secret. The following day, Khrushchev agreed that Soviet missiles would be removed from Cuba.

It was to be some forty years before the world became aware of just how close we had come to nuclear Armageddon. The 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis in October 2002 saw the National Security Archive from the US organize a conference in Havana. Researchers at the conference revisited the events of an attack by US forces on a Soviet diesel submarine armed with a nuclear missile. Submarine B-59 was one of four nuclear-armed submarines dispatched to Cuba. Vasili Arkhipov, the Chief of Staff of the flotilla, was on board. On the night of the 27 October 1962 B-59 came under attack with depth charges from a US destroyer, the USS Beale. Historical records revealed that the intent of this action was to make the submarine surface but the crew of the submarine did not know that the depth charges were non-lethal rounds. The submarine was incommunicado and, fearing that that world war three had broken out, Captain Valentin Savitsky ordered the B-59's nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing. The third senior officer, political officer Ivan Maslennikov agreed. Firing the missile, though, required all three senior officers on board to agree. And Arkhipov, second in command, refused permission.

Reporting fifty years after the crisis The Guardian ran a story with the headline Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war. It began with the sentence: “If you were born before 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the most dangerous day in history.”

The Contemporary World

None of this is to suggest that the world is not now a dangerous place. Since Russia’s full-scale and ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Israel’s wars in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, President Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 and subsequent war with Iran, China’s growing military might, along with its activities in the South China Sea and the grey zone, the stable world order we knew for decades is rapidly becoming increasingly unpredictable.

How different world leaders were looking to respond to this unpredictability began to be laid out at the World Economic Forum in Davos in later January 2026. Here German Chancellor Friedrich Merz began by saying, “The calm and peace up here on the ‘magic mountain’ in Davos is at stark contrast to a world whose old order is unravelling at breathtaking pace.” He went on to say, “We have entered a time of great-power politics. The international order of the past three decades, anchored in international law has always been imperfect. Today, its very foundations have been shaken. This new world of great powers is being built on power, on strength and when it comes to it, on force. It is not a cozy place.”

At that same Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, “Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” He went on to highlight that rather than acquiescing to hegemons, middle powers should build strength together to counter the rise of hard power and great power rivalry. Later in April, speaking to Al Jazeera, he emphasised that the world was now a more dangerous place, and that one of its previous strengths – its relationship with the United States, had now become a weakness. He added that Canada must take care of itself and not rely on one partner.

Shortly after, in June 2026 TIME Magazine carried the headline, President Trump Revisits Idea to Annex Canada and Make It the 51st State.

Indeed, expanding the United States of America was very much on President Trump’s agenda when, as early as August 2019, had made clear his desire for the United States to take over Greenland – a desire that has returned again in 2026 to unprecedented levels. In January, the BBC had reported that President Trump had made it clear that “the US needs to ‘own’ Greenland to prevent Russia and China from doing so.” Later that month, speaking at Davos, he added "This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America…That's our territory. It is therefore a core national security interest." In response Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen visited Greenland in a show of support for Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his rejection of the US claim. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference the following month, the Danish Prime Minister told the Conference that Donald Trump was still "very serious" about acquiring Greenland. As if to underscore the point, Euro News on 3 June reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had “reignited the flame over the US's continued pursuit of Greenland.” When asked by the House Foreign Affairs Committee if the Secretary was aware that Greenland remained a part of the Kingdom of Denmark he replied …“For now.”

Just before attending the Davos summit, on 9 January, President Macron had asserted that the United States was "breaking free from international rules" and "gradually turning away" from some of its allies. "We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world." At Davos it was revealed that "confidential talks" were ongoing with the Germans on creating a joint European nuclear deterrent. By March The New York Times reported that France had changed its nuclear policy to extend security guarantees to European allies. This was in light of how an aggressive Russia and a retreating United States were redrawing the security landscape in Europe. Hence by the end of May Norway became the ninth country to sign up to the French nuclear deterrence scheme. The United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Belgium had by then already signed defence agreements with France.

On the other side of the world similar sentiments had developed. On 20 February 2026  Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in her first address to Parliament after being re-elected, warned of the dangers of increasing Chinese ‘coercion’. She indicated that she would address Japanese defence policy, and ease restrictions on Japanese exports of military equipment. “Japan faces its most severe and complex security environment since World War II,” NBC News reported Takaichi as saying. The Japanese Prime Minister noted China’s widening military activity adding “China has intensified its attempts to unilaterally change the status quo through force or coercion in the East China Sea and South China Sea.” Takaichi went on to highlight North Korea’s growing nuclear missile capability, as well as China’s closer security ties with Russia. By May Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said that Russia’s military behaviour in the region combined with its deepening links with China were to be seen as “a serious defence concern.” The Japan Air Self-Defence Force scrambled fighters 595 times during the period April 2025 to March 2026. Russian aircraft triggered 214 of those intercepts whilst 366 were Chinese aircraft.

Closer to home

The Defence Policy and Strategy Statement 2023had begun to make it clear that New Zealand could no longer afford to imagine that we were still surrounded by the world’s largest moat. Speaking at the launch of the Statement, Defence Minister Andrew Little emphasised that we no longer lived in a benign strategic environment. The Statement itself was clear that “New Zealand is facing a more challenging strategic environment than for decades, with increasing threats to our security.” Australia’s National Defence Strategy in 2024 similarly asserted that Australia’s strategic environment was deteriorating and that the assumptions which had underpinned Australia’s security for decades — geographic distance, warning time for conflict, and Australia’s regional military superiority — were no longer valid.

With the release of the New Zealand 2025 Defence Capability Plan, the language was even stronger, noting that New Zealand was now facing “its most challenging and dangerous strategic environment for decades,” and emphasised the challenges facing the international rules-based order. It went on to say “Intensifying strategic competition is increasing global and regional tensions, and raising the prospect of military confrontation and conflict.”

Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy was officially launched at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra by Richard Marles, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence on 16 April 2026. He too highlighted that Australia is facing the “most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode.”

On Anzac Day 25 April 2026 Wellington’s The Post editorial concluded with the following statement: “The world in 1914 was described as a powder keg waiting for a spark. The world in 2026 feels similar. Defence spending is up, alliances are unstable and Europe is rearming. As well as remembering old wars, we must pause and think about current and future ones.”

Are we living in more dangerous times than previously? The evidence clearly points to the world being the most dangerous that it has been in decades, but we have seen such strained times before and in such times calmer heads can, and must, prevail.

The article was first published in the Line of Defence Magazine.

Peter Greener is an Honorary Professor, and was previously Academic Dean at the Command and Staff College of the New Zealand Defence Force. He is Senior Fellow in the Center for Strategic Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington.