You sometimes wonder if people who put together newspapers these days have ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. This was one of Aesop’s fables which taught children about the dangers of scaremongering in order to get attention, the moral being that if you persist in doing so, no-one will believe you in the end.

If nuclear warfare is upon us, there’s nothing readers can do about it

If nuclear warfare is upon us, there’s nothing readers can do about it

Certainly, sub-editors who write headlines to the effect of ‘We’re on the breach of World War Three’ seem unaware of its lesson, as do their superiors, who all hope that such attention-grabbing sensationalism will increase sales or garner more online hits. Which explains why we saw in the Daily Mail this weekend a report headed: ‘World War III will likely start within the next decade, majority of Britons believe – and military experts agree.’

In the article below we read a new YouGov poll which reveals that 53 per cent of people think it is ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ that we will be dragged into global conflict within the next five to ten years. It went on to quote General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of Joint Forces Command, who said, ‘We live in a new world of state confrontation and conflict which is unlike the world we knew a few years ago,’ and words from former army colonel and intelligence officer Philip Ingram: ‘For the first time ever, I can see a clear path to global conflict.’

There is no doubt that we live in precarious times, and that we don’t know where the unfolding conflict in Iran will lead, or when it will end. But that has always been the case with wars. They’re always frightening and no-one ever knows when or how they will finish.

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There’s also a world of difference between acknowledging the global dimension of this latest conflict – with Russia now directly implicated in abetting the Iranian regime – and irresponsibly bandying around lurid headlines about ‘World War Three’.

Wording does matter. While the prospect of ‘World War Three’ – especially for older readers who lived through the Cold War – will have direct connotations with nuclear warfare and the annihilation of the human race, the experts quoted by the Mail spoke more accurately and appropriately about a ‘global conflict’. Elsewhere, in the Times on Saturday, another cooler head, the historian Niall Ferguson, gave his assessment of events. Despite the best efforts of the subs – ‘Is this just a Gulf war? Or the start of World War III?’ reads the headline – Ferguson soberly places this localised clash in the wider context of what he calls ‘Cold War II’. This is the ongoing, 21st century clash between the USA and China, which like the first Cold War, is fought by proxy when it is fought for real. In Ferguson’s evaluation, the current war ‘cannot and will not be prolonged at the present intensity beyond a few more weeks’.

Scaremongering may be good for those trying to flog newspapers or solicit more traffic online, but it can serve no benefit to others. If nuclear warfare is upon us, there’s nothing readers can do about it – not even hiding under a table will save you. Otherwise, more seasoned and jaundiced types will wearily shrug their shoulders, feeling that they’ve heard it all before.

We were subjected to it ceaselessly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 when we were forever told that we were on the brink of Armageddon. We were treated to a comparable outbreak of alarmism during the Nato bombing of the rump Yugoslavia in 1999, after Russia announced that it had retrained its nuclear weapons on Western targets. Before that, my generation were needlessly and pointlessly terrified in the 1980s by the film ‘When the Wind Blows’, which also foretold that we were all going to die horribly and soon.

The ultimate problem with crying wolf is that it not only detracts from the credibility of those spreading alarm, it also nurtures a mood of cynicism and complacency. The zealots at the more extreme end of the environmentalist movement have been spreading fear for decades, and the most tangible result of their actions, apart from scaring an impressionable, younger generation out of their wits, has been to instil doubt and scepticism about their entire cause. The panic and catastrophising that accompanied the 2020-21 Covid pandemic will have a corresponding outcome, in that we are more likely to be blasé about the next virus headed our way.

Headlines proclaiming the imminent outbreak of Third World War might have similar, unintended consequences, in lowering our guard, leaving us unprepared the next time a global superpower does pose a clear and present danger.

© The Spectator