Major hotspots, which can fuel the large-scale war, are Korean peninsula, NATO aggression on the western border of Russia, South China Sea, Iran-Saudi Arabia escalation, India-Pak conflict on Kashmir and Israel-Arab on Palestine.
Any miscalculation or adventure by the stakeholders can lead to the full scale conventional or nuclear war, Iran and Saudi Arabia led collation have already been engaged in the fighting proxies in Syria and Yemen, India and Pakistan have fought 4 conventional wars in the last 70 years on Kashmir but the risk of nuclear conflict is imminent as both the neighbor have got the nuclear arsenal in the last two decades, Israel Arab conflict has the potential to turn up the full-scale conflict but it is unlikely to happen in the near future as the Arab collation is busy in deescalating Iranian aggression, South China Sea multilateral territorial conflict could result in the war but the ASEAN member is politically fragile and not prepare to afford it, although these conflicts could take the world towards the uncertainty and insecurity the level of threat is moderate. The threat level is the highest the NATO aggression on the western border of Russia, being a military superpower the Russian Federation could not allow NATO to dictate in Europe.
Although technically nations are not in the war but they are preparing for it, every major nation is increasing the defense budget to modernize the military and defense equipment, and they are using this peacetime for an arms race to increase the quantity and quality of technology. Russian president Vladimir Putin had shown his intention to use Artificial intelligence for the further modernizing the military, Russia has set the goal 2025 to arm military with the autonomous tank, drones, and highly precision-guided missiles, and it wished to incorporate robotics in the military industry to cut down 30 percent of the workforce. The USA is the front-runner in this area, and the incorporation of AI in the defense is the part of US $1.5 trillion Pentagon military modernization 2030. China has not revealed its intention to use AI for defense publicly but many commentators believe that their model of investment to it is such that it could be switched for the defense industry. European nations have increased the defense budget this year after Trump administration pressure so they would be definitely considering AI in defense.
USA, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Israel, and Greece are the major manufacturer of the defense equipment, which ranges from the bullet to the Submarines. USA, Israel, and Russia have developed the anti-missile defense system technology which is very demanding among the war-prone nations, Russian S300, S400 series, American THAAD and iron dome of Israel are some of the examples. The major importers are China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Middle Eastern nations. Recently, Saudi Arabia made a controversial deal of US $ 250 billion with president Trump, the deal include tanks, drone, advanced missile system, bombers, and anti-missile defense system, and it was the biggest defense deal in the history. China has acquired S400 from Russia under a multi-billion dollar defense deal. India is seriously talking with Russia for the US $ 15 billion defense deal including S400.
The United States is alone using almost half of the international defense budget to claim its hegemony across the world, it spent the US $611 billion in 2016, and the new administration has asked for the considerable increment to it in 2017. China is second in the list with the US $ 215 billion, 2 percent of its GDP. Russia is spending almost 5.3 percent of the GDP, it stands at 3rd position with the US $ 69.2 billion, and USA and NATO are the biggest threat for them. NATO nations, a military alliance of 28 nations led by the USA in North Atlantic, are spending the US $ 900 billion each year.
UN and other peace organization have been calling for the disarmament of the planet from the sophisticated war equipment, but most of the leading nations are increasing their defense budget to a new high. Stockholm International Peace Research Organization has released the fact sheet for 2016 defense spending, It shows US $1,686 billion was spent which is almost 2 percent of the world GDP, and its equal to the GDP of Italy. The fund could have been used for, the uplifting from the poverty, climate change, to solve food crisis, to bail out the economy of Greece and humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Middle East and Africa.
