What's at Risk?

Geopolitical, environmental and technological security are related and cannot be treated independently of each other.

„It is now 85 seconds to midnight” says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), which for almost 70 years now annually sets the so-called “Doomsday Clock”, initiated by a group of Atomic scientists shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This means: the likelihood of human-made global catastrophes is getting closer and closer.

In consultation with its “Board of Sponsors”, which includes eight Nobel Laureates, the scientists identified growing nuclear weapons threats, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), multiple biological security concerns, and the continuing climate crisis as major factors leading to their evaluation. While the other three seem to be equally dangerous, I will, in this article, focus on the issue of (nuclear) weapons threat, i.e. on war.

The main takeaways I will in this article elaborate on are:

• we are in great danger of a great war

• military experts and media are preparing us for it

• military conflicts and other crises are systemically intertwined and have common roots

• we need to develop alternatives of conflict resolution.

The Doomsday Clock is not the only recent document dealing with the risk posed by armed conflicts. The “Global Risk Report” published annually for the World Economic Forum defines “Global Risks” as the possibility of the occurrence of an event or condition that, if it occurs, would negatively impact a significant proportion of global GDP, population or natural resources” (p.6). The Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), analyzed for the 2026 edition of that report with survey responses collected globally in August and September 2025. shows that environmental concerns are being deprioritized, while security issues are now ranking at the top. Almost a third of the respondents select “geoeconomic confrontation” (18%) and “state-based armed conflict” (14%) as “most likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2026” (p. 8).

A conclusion that is often drawn from this is that in future, less can be invested in environmental and social sustainability and more in economic growth and defence. ‘Growth through armament’ is suddenly is appreciated as the new perspective – even if it is based on economically flse assumptions. This is certainly a matter of societal decision making to allocate resources to where they are most needed. When current debates no longer revolve around biodiversity, climate change or marine pollution, but rather around the role of war as a means of conflict resolution, “we” have to shift human, natural and monetary resources from civil to military use.

But is this really a question of either-or? Security involves much more than armor and military capability. While armament can contribute to security focused on attack from an external enemy, there is growing internal threat of the erosion of democracy, including education, health and other provisioning systems, says Rudolf Scholten, a former minister of education and culture who advises the Austrian Vice-Chancellor, and warns that the latter is currently widely neglected. Material extraction, production, use, and disposal are not only main factors of an environmentally sustainable development. These issues are strongly intertwined with security.

In a joint study entitled “National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment” climate researchers and the German Federal Intelligence Service, warn of the consequences of climate change for national security. It starts with the claim that we “are already living in a climate crisis. This situation poses significant security risks both globally and nationally” (translated). Maybe the main statement then is: “If the international community fails to limit global warming in accordance with the Paris Agreement, this could cast doubt on the legitimacy and effectiveness of the rules-based international order. This order has contributed significantly to maintaining stability and peace over the past decades. Actors who are already challenging the United Nations system and the entire rules-based order would use this to further their own goals.” (p. 6, translated).

In a recent book, German Journalists Susanne Götze and Annika Joeres stress the importance of energy production for and in global conflicts and materials play a crucial role for both the energy transition and arms manufacturing. While Europe wants to protect itself with weapons, it “makes itself vulnerable to blackmail with oil and gas”. They regard energy supply as a weapon in the geopolitical power game and see energy independence as a must.

In a similar manner, Austrian climate activist and expert Katharina Rogenhofer speaks of an expanded concept of security that includes

· Increasing extreme weather events

· Vulnerability of critical infrastructure

· Dependence on fossil fuels and the resulting susceptibility to blackmail

· Disinformation and social destabilisation

· Oil and gas as price drivers

and she contrasts this with the opportunities offered by greening:

· Energy freedom instead of vulnerability to blackmail

· Stable energy prices

· Local value creation instead of billions in costs from imports

· Social resilience and less potential for conflict.

Worldwide natural disasters, for example, caused overall losses of around US$ 131bn in the first half of 2025, reports Munich Re.

“Even in the absence of harmful or damaging incidents, the presence of risk alone, can serve as catalysts for social unrest and heighten security risks within regions” write Paul Shrivastava, Carlos Álvarez Pereira and Laetitia Mairlot in their recent paper Planetary Peace for Human Security: Responses to Existential Risks in the Anthropocene, published by the Club of Rome. “For instance, climate action failure, leading to prolonged droughts, can exacerbate water scarcity and food shortages, resulting in mass migration and social instability.”

At the same time, military spending triggers enormous amounts of material extraction (I will come back to this aspect in a later post), but the use of resources is in turn a main driver that causes the crossing of planetary boundaries, ie destabilizing the fundamental processes that together maintain a stable and resilient Earth system. Linking those two sides of the same coin, the planetary boundaries with the needs of all people is described by the framework of the so-called “Doughnut Economics”. In a systemic view of how wars arise these economic-material roots of conflicts are certainly part of the complex stories to be investigated.

In his book “Why the World Cannot Find Peace” German ‘war researcher’ Carlo Masala describes wars as complex processes in which individual aspirations, political and social systems, and the international system all play a role. One aspect of ‘social systems’ is the desire to secure access to resources. Masala does not consider individual, political and social factors sufficient to explain the outbreak of war. However, they can contribute to it.

Based on scientific literature, Masala describes how wars come about. ‘If there is no higher authority that states can trust, this creates a situation of uncertainty,’ writes Masala, referring to the American political scientist Kenneth Waltz. ‘In their quest for maximum security, states unsettle other states. These, in turn, try to become more secure, thereby damaging the sense of security of others. This causes the situation to escalate further and further,’ writes Masala. This idea of a security dilemma as a cause of war goes back to the German-American political scientist John Herz.

And this is exactly the spirit that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in December 2025 expressed when saying that we must be prepared for a level of war that our grandparents or great-grandparents had to endure. And he added: “This is a tragedy, we can prevent”.

But sometimes one gets the impression that such a war is being deliberately provoked, when, for example, reading the recent headline on the front page of “profil”, Austria’s leading news magazine: “Imagine there’s a war... and we have to go. The debate over conscription”, which is currently a hot topic in our country. “Sending soldiers with less training into action to defend Austria would be irresponsible, because they would have no chance of survival on the modern battlefield,” said Erwin Hameseder, head of the Austrian Military Service Commission, which last week recommended extending compulsory military service from six to ten months, according to the Salzburger Nachrichten on 26^th January 2026.

Browsing through such documents, my impression is that nuclear risks are currently not on top of these debates. Today (5^th of February 2026) marks the end of the New START agreement, the last nuclear disarmament treaty between the US and Russia, which means that the upper limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers will no longer apply. I’ll have to come back to this in a later post. That said, Mark Rutte has portrayed the horrors of war quite realistically in his aforementioned speech, which we also see delivered to our living rooms and mobile devices every day.

But while “military experts” appear in the media very frequently I very rarely see, hear or read the opinions of peace researchers. Now I remember the 1980s, the time of my politicisation, when we marched twice with 70,000 others through Vienna to prevent the ‘NATO Double-Track Decision’ on the deployment of American medium-range missiles. Similar to today, the peace movement was also vilified 40 years ago: we were accused of naively supporting the ‘enemy’ – at that time, the Soviet Union.

‘Imagine it’s World War III – and no one notices,’ wrote Martin Staudinger some time ago in the Austrian newsletter Falter.maily and used historical analogies (1942) refering to an Israeli historian who believes ‘that we don’t even realise it, even though we’re already in the middle of it’ (Falter) – and not today, but more than a year ago!

And perhaps it’s even worse. ‘We make up stories’ to justify American power ambitions, said Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs to Tucker Carlson with further historical comparisons from the last few centuries. ‘We must be the unrivalled No. 1,’ he says of the goals of the US military-industrial complex. And: ‘We are closer to a nuclear war than at any time.’

My question now is: how can we Europeans with this uncomfortable situation and developments. Are we really at the mercy of the USA? Or can we develop our own strategy without being crushed between the large and powerful blocs of the world? What can an international peace movement, which will hopefully grow stronger soon, contribute to this – and what can I contribute?

A year ago, the report to the Club of Rome entitled ‘Enduring Peace in the Anthropocene’ was published. Without a question mark! It dealt with Gaza and Ukraine – but also went far beyond that. It is about a culture of peace, humanity and reconciliation, ethics and justice – about ‘positive peace’. Petra Künkel, for example, calls her article ‘Rethinking peace – beyond patriarchal paradigms’, while Matias Lara Otilia Rose-Marie Meden presents the possibility of youth-led conflict transformation. Mamphela Ramphele from South Africa writes about ‘Conflicts as symptoms of our self-denial’. And Ugo Bardi refers to Aurelio Peccei, who 60 years ago recognised the importance of cold and hot wars for a scientifically sound understanding of the challenges facing humanity, which the Club of Rome has described as a ‘global probematique’ and which I discussed in my last post.

Or, as Hans Holzinger, who worked for the Robert-Jungk-Library in Salzburg, writes in his recent post: “Military security promises are deceptive and fuel confrontation. We need a return to diplomacy and global understanding.

I will continue to research and reflect on this in my future posts.

PS: I am grateful to Gertrude Suschko, member of the board of the Austrian Chapter of the Club of Rome, for important insights expressed here.

More on this topic:

References

Susanne Götze and Annika Joeres: Die Sicherheitslüge. Wie Europa sich mit Waffen schützen will – aber mit Öl & Gas erpressbar macht. Eine Streitschrift. München: oekom Verlag, 2025.

Carlo Masala: Warum die Welt keinen Frieden findet, Wien: Brandstätter Velag, 2025.

Paul Shrivastava, Carlos Álvarez Pereira and Laetitia Mairlot: Planetary Peace for Human Security: Responses to Existential Risks in the Anthropocene, published by the Club of Rome, 2025.

Kenneth Waltz: Theory of International Politics. Waveland Press. Long Grove, IL, 1979.

John H. Herz: Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma. World Politics Vol. 2, No. 2, 1959, pp. 157-180.