Chapter 4, VIII. The War Without a Declaration: How COVID, Coordination Collapse, and Shadow Warfare Unleashed World War Three
- john raymond
- Jul 10
- 3 min read
When the history of this war is written, it may not begin in Ukraine or Gaza or Taiwan. It may begin with a virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic did not create global authoritarianism, but it exposed the catastrophic weaknesses of the Western alliance and opened the door for the world's most dangerous actors to move.
When institutions failed to protect their people, when lockdowns birthed paranoia, and disinformation ran faster than science, Putin understood what others only feared: the rules had been suspended. The fog of pandemic became the fog of pre-war.
Where the liberal West saw a public health crisis, the autocrats saw an opportunity to reshape the board. COVID revealed what Macron had already called out: NATO was braindead. Mutual trust frayed. Leadership stumbled.
And into that breach, the autocratic entente surged. Putin saw that the Western alliance—especially under Trump’s leadership—had no centralized coordination, no unified strategy, no credibility.
Trump’s tariffs shove China back toward Russia; but COVID broke the West's ability to respond coherently. In the absence of resilience, chaos became strategy.
And in that chaos, a new kind of war began.
The autocrats could do more than just invade. Because now they didn’t need formal declarations.
The war they wage was not one of lines on maps or the seizing of capitals.
It is war by other, other means: a war of decapitation strikes, cyber-attacks, meme floods, energy leverage, proxy conflicts, and psychological disruption.
It is a war fought not just on the battlefield—but inside the public mind, across social platforms, and within the faltering synapses of broken institutions.
Putin moved first—not just into Ukraine, but into the very idea of Western coherence.
He hacked elections, flooded discourse, compromised leaders, and bribed loyalists. But he did so with a plan: fracture the West before it can resist. Get Trump in place to kneecap the response. Build a shadow alliance where loyalty is fluid, hierarchy is unclear, and survival is the only principle.
Xi, for his part, hesitated. He does not love Putin and certainly does not trust Trump.
But his authoritarian instincts bound him to their side of the Hegelian struggle. He would rather be humiliated in an authoritarian alliance than risk destruction in a liberal one.
His strategy became one of hedging—propping up the entente where needed, but always securing China’s own interests. He uses Pakistan against India, flirts with peace while probing for war, hacks his allies while praising their “strategic partnership.” It is shadow diplomacy for shadow warfare.
Meanwhile, other actors—Bibi Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, Kim Jong Un—each exploit the chaos in their own way.
Bibi evades prosecution at home and abroad by staying at war.
Modi rouses nationalist fervor while keeping one foot in Russia’s arms.
Kim plays the mad dog to destabilize Western calculations.
They are not allies in the traditional sense. They are collaborators in chaos—united only by their desire to maintain power, reject norms, and weaken the West.
This is the shadow hierarchy of World War Three.
At the top, Putin and Trump operate not as national leaders but as meta-generals in an asymmetric offensive.
They use their position, not to govern, but to disrupt—to create a battlefield where perception and confusion matter more than territory or law.
Trump serves Putin not because of ideology, but because of shared interest: sabotage the West, and both benefit.
Xi follows, not with trust, but with calculation.
The rest fall in line not through loyalty, but necessity.
There will be no formal start to this war. That is the point. This war has already started.
If we keep waiting for the invasion that looks like the last one, we will miss the one we are already losing.
The war is fought in waves—Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, Kashmir, cyberspace.
The battlefield is everywhere. The tactics are evolving. And the strategy is simple: destabilize the West until it collapses under the weight of its own disbelief.
To win, we must name the war. We must call out the enemy. And we must recognize that the greatest threat to peace is not confrontation—but denial.
This is World War Three. It has already begun.
And the only question is, how many more than the estimated 1.3 million people will have to die before this war ends?
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