Every day that the Russia-Ukraine war continues and escalates, the threat of a wider war increases. Moscow and Kyiv are now routine targets in this war, and the death toll continues to rise. Poland and NATO countries, including the United States, continue to aid Ukraine, while North Korea, Iran, and China help Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S./Israeli war with Iran has spread to other Gulf states and the Red Sea, causing turmoil and uncertainty in global oil markets. And tensions continue to rise in the western Pacific over the future of Taiwan. History never actually repeats itself, but it sometimes rhymes. In 2026, it is rhyming with the events of 1956.
Today’s crises in the same three regions could also coalesce into a third world war.
Seventy years ago, political uprisings in Eastern and Central Europe — especially in Hungary and Poland — shook the foundations of the Soviet empire. In the western Pacific, tensions were high after the 1954-55 Taiwan Strait crisis, which involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) shelling and bombing of the Nationalist-controlled islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu. In the Middle East, Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal and nationalization of the Suez Canal Company led to Israel’s invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, backed by France and Britain, which also dispatched troops to the region and conducted air strikes. The crises in these three regions in 1956 had the potential to evolve into a third world war. Today’s crises in the same three regions could also coalesce into a third world war.
In his study of the origins of the First World War, the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan traced them generally to the decline of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s European order between the peace ending the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and Bismarck’s dismissal by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890. What we are witnessing in 2026 is the result of the decline of President Richard Nixon’s global order that his diplomacy and statecraft established between 1969 and his resignation in 1974.
Nixon’s realist statecraft improved U.S. relations with China to strengthen our containment policy against Soviet Russia, while making peace in the Middle East in the wake of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. But Nixon also improved relations with Russia — détente — to punctuate his “triangular diplomacy” that kept the U.S. closer to China and Russia than they were to each other. In a sense, Nixon’s statecraft was similar to Bismarck’s diplomacy in the late 19th century that arranged the European chessboard in a way that kept France and Russia from forming an alliance against Germany. (RELATED: Nixon–Mao, Trump–Putin, and Triangular Diplomacy)
Richard Nixon learned statecraft in part by serving as vice president in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower was not a philosophical or ideological conservative, but a conservative realist when it came to foreign policy. Eisenhower’s realism in 1956 helped prevent the crises in East-Central Europe, the Middle East, and the western Pacific from descending into a global cataclysm.
Eisenhower significantly titled the second volume of his presidential memoirs Waging Peace, in which he provided his reflective perspective on the crises in the Middle East, Eastern-Central Europe, and the western Pacific. “These crises,” Eisenhower wrote, “… at times threatened to touch off World War III.” In October 1956, Eisenhower had to deal with all three crises simultaneously. In his memoirs, he provided a day-by-day, hour-by-hour account of the developments in Europe and the Middle East.
Eisenhower noted the irony that in Eastern Europe the U.S. joined France and Britain in condemning the Soviet crackdown (politically in Poland; militarily in Hungary), while in the Middle East, the U.S. sided with the Soviets in opposition to the Israeli-French-British action over Suez. He explained that without European assistance in Hungary — which would not be forthcoming due to the Anglo-French involvement in the Middle East — the United States could do nothing militarily to save the Hungarian revolution, while the actions of Israel and our allies in the Suez crisis could have led to a direct U.S.-Soviet military conflict. U.S. interests — not those of Israel or our NATO allies — governed Eisenhower’s decisions.
Tensions with China over Taiwan existed in 1956, but lay dormant until 1958, when Eisenhower again — as he did in 1954-55 — successfully deterred a full-scale invasion of Taiwan by Communist China.
So, Ike pressured Israel, France, and Britain to withdraw from Egypt, which they ultimately did. And when the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt, Eisenhower quietly warned them “about the consequences of any such move.” Eisenhower reflected in his memoirs that in the face of political criticism for failing to support Israel and our NATO allies and the Hungarian and Polish uprisings, he made decisions that protected American interests and maintained global peace. His decisions and actions in the western Pacific did likewise.
In assessing Eisenhower’s decisions in the midst of the 1956 crises, biographer Michael Korda writes that “Ike had acted swiftly, decisively, and undeniably for the good; although he felt great sympathy for his old friends in Britain, and even greater sympathy for the gallant but ill-advised Hungarians, he carefully managed events to avoid a clash with the Soviet Union, and he preserved peace — not a perfect peace, to be sure, or one without victims and compromises, but still peace.”
The same could be said for Nixon’s foreign policy decisions from 1969 to 1974, when he established a world order that reduced Soviet influence in the Middle East and protected U.S. interests there, maintained the peace in the Taiwan Strait, and set the stage for the unraveling of the Soviet empire, which was achieved by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.
President Trump, with the current crises in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the western Pacific, is dealing with the decline of Nixon’s global order that developed from misguided foreign policy decisions of his predecessors reaching back to Bill Clinton. Those misguided decisions involved the unwise expansion of NATO, the imprudent “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan with George W. Bush’s “Wilsonian” overtones which distracted our attention from China’s geopolitical challenge, and a neoconservative approach to global politics that emphasized ideology over realism. It is Eisenhower’s management of the 1956 crises that shows the way forward for President Trump.
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