Three wars have unfolded across three different corners of the world, and for the most part they are not treated as a single system. There is the confrontation between the Sunni states and Israel against Iran and its proxies that has reshaped the Middle East — a war that, after months of fighting, is now drawing toward its close: on 14 June 2026 a memorandum of understanding was announced, and on 17 June it was signed by the presidents of the United States and Iran, intended to bring the conflict to a formal end within sixty days — even as its consequences continue to settle.

There is Russia’s war in Ukraine, dragging on far beyond what anyone anticipated and recasting Europe’s very conception of its own survival. And there is the steadily mounting tension in the South China Sea — for now spilling into open force only intermittently — at the center of which lies China’s ambition to absorb Taiwan.

The recognition that these are bound to one another carries real consequences for how we see the world, and for how the world’s states must prepare for what is coming. Germany, South Korea, and Israel are key states in these three regions — three democracies that, for all the criticism leveled at them, act out of a sense of responsibility to the international community and contend with the challenges the democratic world holds in common.

The war between Russia and Ukraine forced Germany to confront a truth it had avoided for decades — that economic prosperity is not, in itself, a security policy. The tension in the South China Sea, alongside the continuing hostility with the North, sharpened South Korea’s understanding that what has not yet happened may well be precisely what comes next. And Israel — which sought to carry out “the dirty work” together with the United States (to borrow the German chancellor’s phrase) and now finds itself left to wage the campaign largely alone — has every reason to examine the possibility of new........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)