WWe, for those who eschew both Arabic numerals and Roman numerals
A modest proposal: since reading the Roman numeral II has apparently become a load-bearing skill our political class can no longer be trusted to perform, let us retire the old notation entirely. Henceforth, the present conflict shall be denoted by Euler’s number, taken to a minimum of ten decimal places, and pronounced e. Anyone who can pronounce it can also, in principle, locate it on a map.
From Mauritania to Mindanao, from Mozambique to Moscow
A non-exhaustive itinerary of the present unpleasantness, west to east:
In the Sahel, the Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) is losing ground to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Islamic State Sahel Province. JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front mounted the largest coordinated offensive in Mali since 2012 in late April, killing the Malian defense minister in Bamako and seizing the military base at Tessalit. Burkina Faso now leads the Global Terrorism Index. In the Lake Chad Basin, ISWAP and Boko Haram remain entrenched across the Nigeria-Cameroon-Chad-Niger borderlands, and ISWAP is now supplying ISSP fighters and trainers westward.
In Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces continue the world’s deadliest war for civilians, with the RSF expanding offensives into Kordofan, Darfur, and now Blue Nile state via Ethiopian transit. In the Horn, Ethiopia and Eritrea have spent the spring massing forces on opposite sides of the Tigray border, with Eritrea backing the TPLF old guard, Egypt courting Eritrea over Assab, and the UAE backing Abiy Ahmed. Somalia is fighting al-Shabaab while the Federal Government tries to dissolve the South West state administration; Israel has recognized Somaliland and is the object of an Ethiopian port-access deal that Mogadishu refuses to accept. Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado insurgency by the Islamic State of Mozambique continues to displace civilians in Nangade and Macomia districts, with cross-border traffic from Tanzania picking up again.
In the Middle East, the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28; Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz; Saudi Arabia is pumping seven million barrels a day through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu; Hezbollah is fighting the 2026 Lebanon war; the Houthis resumed missile and drone strikes on Israel from Yemen on March 28 and are openly contemplating closure of Bab el-Mandeb; an Iranian-aligned drone strike hit the Port of Salalah in Oman; Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base has taken Iranian fire wounding more than two dozen US troops; and the Gulf States are negotiating frantically. The Gaza ceasefire of October 2025 is technically still holding, technically.
In South Asia, Pakistan is in its third month of cross-border war with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, with airstrikes on Kabul, Asadabad, Kunar and Kandahar; the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is conducting drone strikes inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; the Balochistan Liberation Army has blockaded the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and hijacked passenger trains; India and Pakistan had the worst direct exchange of fire in decades last year, and India’s Manipur state just saw its deadliest month of Meitei-Kuki-Zo-Naga violence in eighteen months. Bangladesh is in nationwide unrest following the assassination of Sharif Osman Hadi.
In Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s civil war grinds on, with Min Aung Hlaing installed as president after a sham election and General Ye Win Oo as military chief, conducting near-daily airstrikes against KNU/KNLA positions in Mon and Kayin states, one of which hit a hospital and crossed into Thailand on April 20. Thailand and Cambodia fought a five-day border war last July, agreed to a December ceasefire, and remain in a cold standoff under Anutin Charnvirakul. Indonesia’s West Papua separatist conflict produced fresh combat deaths in Puncak regency last month. The Philippines is managing rido violence and ISIS-affiliated factional fighting in Mindanao.
In Eastern Europe, the war in Ukraine continues into its fifth year, with Kyiv now striking deep into Russian oil infrastructure and Russia running a foothold in Madagascar for good measure.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography,” Mark Twain is supposed to have said, though he probably did not. The remark has the additional defect of being optimistic.
Here is the point of the exercise. The First World War was not called the First World War until the Second World War began, when the term was applied retroactively. We are at present already past the European phase of what will, in due course, be retroactively called the Third. As we have little cause to believe we will survive the Fourth, ordinary prudence requires that we name the present war now, while we still can. World War e will do. The digits go on forever, which feels about right.
* * *
Sources: ACLED Conflict Index and 2026 Watchlist; International Crisis Group, “10 Conflicts to Watch in 2026” and “Ethiopia, Eritrea and Tigray: A Powder Keg in the Horn of Africa” (Briefing 210, 18 February 2026); Critical Threats Project “Africa File” (9 April 2026) and “Ethiopia Prepares for War” (25 February 2026); Wikipedia, “2026 Mali offensives,” “2026 Houthi strikes on Israel,” and “Red Sea crisis”; The Diplomat, “How Thailand’s Messy Politics Fueled Its Border War With Cambodia” (February 2026) and “Pakistan’s Worsening Threat Landscape in 2025”; ACLED Asia-Pacific Overviews (January, April, May 2026); Zitamar Mozambique Conflict Monitor (20 April to 3 May 2026); Stimson Center, “Mali Attacks: Aggravating the Sahel Security Crisis”; African Security Analysis, “JNIM Multi-Axis Offensive” (March 2026); US MARAD Advisory 2026-006; The New Humanitarian, “The growing threat of conflict in the Horn of Africa”; Foreign Policy, “Iran War Offers Dangerous Precedent in Indo-Pacific” (12 May 2026). The Twain attribution is apocryphal; no published source in Twain’s lifetime contains the line.
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