Global wars in the past – i.e. those that have spilled over the confines of single continents – have generally been fought about territory, trade, religion, sovereignty, security, ideology, race, and/or the personal ambitions of those most responsible for provoking them.

The next World War may be different. It will embrace several of these motives and traits, but with another great ‘divide’ dominating them. That’s the one between ‘the West’, and the ‘Other’; Europe and the USA on the one side, representing so-called ‘democracy’, liberalism in its many guises, and ‘enlightenment’; and on the other side countries – or governments – rejecting these ideals, maybe regarding them as false or hypocritical, and falling back on ‘tradition’ – and traditional kinds of dictatorship – to set against the seductive blandishments of the West.

All the countries presently opposed to the West share these latter characteristics. Some are religious autocracies (Iran); others deeply reactionary and secular (Russia); and yet others simply anti-Western, because of the harm they feel the West has done to them, especially during the era of European and American imperialism; and still is doing in the eyes of some. Many of these claims are justified: exploitation, annexation, other forms of theft, racial and cultural arrogance, and the consequent diminishing of those ‘inferior’ societies and their values in the eyes of the ‘superior’ West. Many in the ‘Other’ parts of the world are still smarting from this.

This is what brings together all those presently pitted against the West: Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, militant Islam, and others; in mutual sympathy, if not  (yet) in the form of military alliances. It also works to undermine the resilience of the West as a counter to it, attracting as it does extreme Rightists in Britain, for example, who have always questioned elements in their own liberal societies (the ‘woke’ ones), and hankered after more ‘disciplined’ régimes. That’s what brings Putin, Kim Jong Un and Farage together; and also probably the reactionary and autocratic Trump, if he gets in again.

I’m tempted to call this ‘nostalgicism’, because of its ‘reactionary’ character. For people and nations unnerved and confused by ‘modernity’ (as it shouldn’t be called), with their traditional cultures and even identities under threat from so-called American ‘imperialism’, and wanting to feel ‘Great’ again, but on their own terms; for all these the faux-familiar past provides a comfort zone, a sort of stability, and an alternative basis for national regeneration. It may be a more powerful influence than we think. If there is a Third World War, on any level, nostalgia could well provide the common bond between some mighty – and otherwise highly disparate – enemies.