Large-scale war has vaulted to the top of the list of dangers keeping global risk experts awake at night, according to a new United Nations Global Risk Report. The finding marks a striking reversal from just two years ago, when the prospect of a major interstate conflict was treated by many of the same analysts as a remote, almost theoretical concern. The shift, drawn from surveys of the specialists who help governments and institutions worldwide anticipate emerging threats, suggests that the guardrails many assumed would prevent great-power conflict are increasingly seen as fragile.

The report does not point to a single cause. Instead, it reflects an accumulation of incidents, each individually containable, that together have convinced experts the world is drifting toward a more dangerous era. Recent events illustrate why. In Lithuania, a European Union and NATO member bordering Russia's ally Belarus, a drone incursion into national airspace set off alarm bells in a region already on edge over Moscow's war in Ukraine. Such episodes, even when they do not escalate, have a cumulative effect on how experts calculate risk: each one tests the boundaries of deterrence and raises the possibility of miscalculation.

A Widening Arena for Conflict

Compounding these anxieties is the growing militarization of space, an arena once governed by a loose consensus that it should remain largely free of weapons. As more nations invest in satellite technology with both civilian and military applications, and as anti-satellite capabilities proliferate, space has become another domain where great powers can signal strength or provoke rivals without firing a shot on the ground. Analysts who study global risk increasingly view this expansion of the battlespace, from cyberspace to orbit, as evidence that the traditional buffers between peacetime competition and open conflict are eroding.

This pattern echoes historical warnings about how seemingly separate developments, an arms race here, a diplomatic crisis there, can combine to produce a sense of inevitability. Historians of the First World War have long argued that no single factor caused that catastrophe. Rather, it was the interaction of multiple pressures: a naval arms race between Britain and Germany, a rigid alliance system that turned regional disputes into continental ones, and a series of escalating crises, from Morocco to the Balkans, that steadily narrowed the room for diplomacy. As one historian noted of the leaders navigating the July Crisis of 1914, there was a stark "disproportion between their intellectual and moral endowments and the gravity of the problems which faced them."

Echoes of a Familiar Pattern

Whether today's experts are witnessing a similar convergence of destabilizing forces, rather than an isolated flashpoint, appears to be central to the anxiety captured in the UN's report. Alliance commitments, once framed as guarantees of stability, can also act as tripwires that pull multiple nations into a conflict that begins as a bilateral dispute. NATO's mutual defense obligations, for instance, mean that an incident on the alliance's eastern flank, such as the Lithuanian drone breach, carries implications far beyond the country directly affected.

Similarly, the competition unfolding in space bears some resemblance to the pre-1914 naval race, in which Germany's push to build a fleet capable of rivaling Britain's convinced London that a confrontation was becoming unavoidable. Today's competition over orbital assets and anti-satellite weaponry may not carry the same symbolism, but experts increasingly interpret it the same way: as a signal that major powers are preparing for contingencies that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago.

Two years ago, the idea of a large-scale war breaking out felt like a distant hypothetical to the experts who help chart the world's dangers. Today it tops their list of fears.

Why the Shift Matters

The report's authors did not attribute the change to any single government's policy or any one region's instability. Instead, the rising concern appears to reflect a broader recalibration among the risk analysts, diplomats, and security officials who inform the survey. Where once major war was filed alongside other long-tail risks, such as pandemics or financial collapse, it has now moved to the forefront of expert concern, ahead of other perennial worries like climate change or economic instability.

That repositioning carries consequences. Governments and international institutions often calibrate spending, diplomatic priorities, and military posture based on where experts believe the greatest dangers lie. A world in which major war is treated as the top risk, rather than a background possibility, is one in which defense budgets, alliance commitments, and crisis diplomacy are likely to receive renewed urgency.

The UN report offers no forecast of when or where such a conflict might erupt. Its significance lies instead in what it reveals about the collective judgment of those whose job is to anticipate danger before it arrives: a growing sense that the world's stabilizing mechanisms, from international norms to deterrence itself, may be weaker than they appeared just a few years ago.