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Every other day it seems like World War III is about to kick off. Your average morning living in Ōtepoti consists of waking up, sleeping through 8ams, the temperature being cold as fuck, eating month old yogurt and scrolling through the news to see Donald Trump has bombed someone. Again. You make it to campus, do the Wordle, the Connections, the Strands and buy a rice ball. You consider skipping the rest of your lectures for a well-deserved nap, when you remember that Trump fucking bombed someone. As you eat dinner, scrolling reels that jump from AI puppies on a trampoline, to graphic footage of burning buildings and starving children, to gym rats, to reposts of a fresh petition. Save the children! Boycott! Protest! You read it, but feel out of the loop. You sign it anyways. It’ll make sense to someone. Someone – somewhere – knows what’s going on geopolitically at the moment. Probably.

We live in a pretty complex world. There are planets, and black holes, and birds, and war, and Miga Hako has six different flavours of rice ball to choose from. That’s a lot – and most choose to focus on the most immediate problem first (the answer to that is honey butter, obviously). But shit is seriously hitting the fan, and there's shooting lasers and flying drones and threatening nuclear warfare. At a certain point, you need to engage. 

Positive change starts with education. Yes – all of these issues and conflicts are confusing. They’re often pretty damn depressing. They’re far away, easy to ignore, and hard to change. But being able to do that is a privilege, and reducing ignorance among those able to turn a blind eye is the first step in triggering collective action.

In 2025 there were an estimated total of 65 active conflicts across the world. That’s a whole lot of beef, and a whole lot of important shit that deserves airtime on national news and global attention. But for the purposes of sticking to the 6-page-feature-format, and keeping the attention of the Gen-Z-short-form-brain, this article will focus on the big three conflicts: Iran, Gaza and Ukraine. With some added explanation from international relations and global security specialist Professor Robert Patman, Critic Te Ārohi has condensed these complicated and layered conflicts into just five minutes of reading. Hopefully you’ll gain some understanding of what’s happening in these conflicts, and why you should definitely care. 

Sit down, grab your mental stimulus of choice (Subway Surfers, Minecraft vlogs, DnB remixes of 70s classics – the world is your oyster) and get ready to learn, baby.

Iran 

Filling up your car is expensive. Airport shuttles have added a $2 fuel surcharge. Everyone mumbles that it's because of Iran, but it seems no one totally knows why. 

The US and Iran have Beef with a capital B. Four decades worth of it, in fact. This has been festering like the unidentifiable vegetable at the back of your fridge. Israel and Iran also have beef – think lovers to enemies. The US and Israel are basically besties. We’re talking military aid, financial support, and more vetoes in the UN security council than you’ve got shits left to give. 

Note that the UN Security Council is composed of fifteen members who each receive one vote. Ten are non-permanent members (Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama, Somalia, Bahrain, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Latvia, Liberia – who all get to serve a 2 year term on the Council), but five are permanent (Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, United States). These are basically the big dogs of international law and they hold the power to impose legally binding resolutions upon member states in the maintenance of international peace and security. They also have veto powers which means a single permanent member can immediately dismiss any resolution or decision. You might see a problem beginning to form here. 

WTF Is Happening?

• 28 February 2026: While we’re dancing at Electric Ave, or sitting in our flat telling everyone we “didn’t want to go, anyways”, things are going crazy overseas. US and Israeli forces combine to launch an illegal attack on Iran, targeting missile infrastructure and military sites. This winds up killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Big fucking fuck up. Trump claims he’s eliminating nuclear threats, but no one really trusts anything he says. Iran strikes back, launching attacks on nearby Israeli and US military assets. Rinse and repeat. 
• Very soon after: Shit. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's busiest shipping channels. You know, located in Iranian and Omanian waters in the Middle East, and basically the key to the global economy? Bad news! It’s closed. The world starts listening. Fuel prices skyrocket, and even driving to Pak’nSave for cheap groceries isn’t so cheap anymore. The US and Iran take turns swinging, threatening, and imposing blockades. Basically, it’s a total shit show. 
• 27th April 2026: The Human Rights Activists News Agency has documented approximately 3,400 deaths in Iran alone since the February attack – 1,701 of these being civilian deaths. However, statistics are few and far between, given the complexity and ongoing nature of the conflict. We’ll likely remain incapable of recognising the true impact for a while. 
• Time of Print: The latest figures report the US casualty count as 629. Ceasefires came and went, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed and then fell apart. The Strait is not so straightforward anymore. Each side thinks they’re winning, but no one is. Yet it continues – essentially at a stalemate. National news moves on to people shitting at death metal concerts.

Why Do We Care?

But what’s that got to do with little ol’ North Dunedin, lost in a sea of ignorant bliss, nestled in the corner of the Pacific? Fuel prices seem to be finally starting to go down, and people are moving on. Right? Wrong. 

Beyond the economic impacts on fuel and on fertiliser, Iran is actually just the tip of the iceberg in terms of small and middle powers fighting for security within the international arena. Hold onto your hats – we’re about to get theoretical.

Aotearoa’s small size, and our lack of influence, is actually why this conflict does affect us. As Robert Patman explains: “New Zealand is a relatively small country, and it’s not alone – most countries in the world are small or middle powers”. Essentially, not every country is a great power like the US or China. Therefore, these smaller countries depend on a “rules based international order”, which is the international law, rules and norms intended to guide state behaviour. It’s modern humanity’s attempt to postpone the gradual descent into anarchy and the ultimate realisation of real life Fortnite. 

Patman emphasises that this is not because these smaller powers are “altruistic and more principled than anyone else”, it’s because these countries actually just “don’t have [the] heft or power to create opportunities for themselves internationally. They need rules – rules are there for the weak, not the strong.” So, when the US breaks these rules and bombs Iran, and no one does anything, it becomes extremely, terrifyingly clear that there is actually nothing to constrain these powers. As put by Patman, “the big players have a licence to do what they want, and the smaller and middle powers just have to accept the situation.”

Here’s a metaphor: imagine the US is actually this guy called Alex who’s flatting on Castle. Alex is 5’7”, his girlfriend just broke up with him because his mates gave him a buzzcut last weekend, and he can’t afford a bag for Saturday night because he spent the last of his weekly StudyLink money at Night ‘n Day buying wedges with extra sour cream. 

So what does Alex do? He burns a couch. Specifically, he burns Isaac’s couch. Isaac is Iran in this analogy, and he lives on Dundas, and has a whole deep-rooted rivalry with Alex that no one really knows or cares about… until now. Grant Robo (the UN) is away for the weekend at his fancy batch in Queenstown, so Alex gets away with burning Isaac’s couch. Chaos ensues. The sky turns a grim shade of brown as couches across North D go up in flames. If no one’s gonna stop you burning a couch, why wouldn’t you burn a couch? It makes Alex feel incrementally better.

As Patman eloquently puts it: “The whole point of international law is that you can’t pick and choose which laws you want to accept. We may not like the regime in Iran, but that is no justification for breaking international law, otherwise you’re creating a recipe for a descent into the law of the jungle.”

According to him, both Iran and US/Israel want an agreement and peace deal, but they “want it on their own terms”. Both sides disagree on the wording of the framework for discussing peace, “let alone achieving peace.” The US and Israeli forces may be presenting themselves as holding the upper hand, but domestic pressures and the state of the global economy speak otherwise. Meanwhile, “Iran, quite rightly, presents itself as the victim of an attack which violated international law, and they’ve made it quite clear they’re not surrendering on any terms.” Essentially, at least one of these players is going to have to concede something for peace, and so far, they’re all refusing.

So that’s one conflict covered, at least in very simplified, basic terms. Congratulations for making it this far, but unfortunately, there’s a whole lot more going on. 

The Gaza Strip 

Ding ding ding! It’s time for round two! To set the scene, we’re talking hundreds of years worth of tension and violence, millions of people, and not enough land. Israel versus Palestine, here we go: 

WTF Is Happening?

• 1917: Throwing it back to WWI as the British take control of Palestine, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (🦦), and the Jewish population starts pulling up. Things get tense, and the British get so stressed that even tea doesn’t soothe the situation.
• 1947: The UN votes to split Palestine in two. No one likes this idea. It’s an objectively horrendous idea. The sort of awful idea that ends in civil war. Approximately 700,000 Palestinians are displaced. 
• 14th May 1948: The State of Israel is established (Jesus fits in somewhere here, but call us number four on the Rice Purity Test because we aren’t leaving room for him in this particular conflict breakdown). A civil war becomes an international conflict.
• 1949: Everyone agrees to stop shooting each other (theoretically).
• 5th–10th June 1967: Nevermind. Tension results in the Six-Day War, which essentially chucks the Middle East into a Nutribullet and produces an entirely new map in which the State of Israel basically controls everything – including the Gaza Strip (a specific geographic region located within Palestine/Israel, and one of the most populated places on Earth). A lot of people are very unhappy, to put that exceptionally mildly. Palestine (including both Gaza and the West Bank) is now officially an Occupied Territory. 
• 22nd November 1967: The UN Security Council passes a resolution requesting Israel to kindly go away. Israel does not go away.
• 2005: 38 years later, Israel finally does leave the Gaza strip. Yay! Except not yay, because the US starts stirring the pot and spreading the joys of democracy.
• 25th January 2006: Hamas is elected into the Palestinian Legislative Council. Hamas is the Palestinian political organisation that currently controls the Gaza Strip, and is considered by many international bodies to be a terrorist group – but remember, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. This election pisses Israel off in a major kind of a way. In a “let’s block them in and control all land, air and sea access forever” kind of a way. This is the sort of blockade that is classified as an act of war under international law. Now the 2.1 million people located in Gaza are essentially in an open air prison. Hamas is also not happy. Proper mad. For like 20 years. Picture Mentos in a Coke bottle. 
• 7 October 2023: Hamas (no longer a democratically elected government, instead a militant authority maintaining power through force) launches a major attack on Israel, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages. Israel retaliates. Over and over and over again. The global community calls for an immediate ceasefire. But wait – a hot new bombshell enters the villa! It’s no one's favourite situationship: the US x Israel. And the US vetoes this ceasefire resolution not once, or twice. Six fucking vetoes. 
• 10th October 2025: The ceasefire eventually arrives. Except it’s basically as effective as a sheet of Gladwrap. The conflict continues, and innocent people continue to die. It’s nothing short of horrific. 
• Time of Print: As of August 2026, Palestinian Health Officials report a death toll of 73,386, including 20,000 children. 92% of all residential buildings in Gaza have been demolished. Take a minute to let that one sink in. 

Why Do We Care?

The Middle East may seem like a galaxy away, and with how long this has been unfolding, it can be hard to remain clued in. But you have to. As Patman states, what’s going on is another example of the “dangerous erosion of international law”.

On top of that, Aotearoa is directly impacted. According to Patman, the actions that have been taken with respect to Gaza are an “assault” on the vision that respective New Zealand governments have had since 1945. In the drawing of the UN Charter, New Zealand had the vision of an international arena in which institutions were “authoritative, in which there were procedures, rules and treaties” from the outset. Basically, the war crimes are stacking up, but no one’s getting sent to the naughty corner, and the peacemakers aren’t peacemaking. 

Back to our dear analogy, the couches basically keep on burning. Grant Robo (the UN) is now completely missing in action, and the firefighters (international law) quit ten years ago due to only having watering cans to fight an inferno with. 

In short, the situation in Gaza is not only just as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but a whole lot worse – we haven’t even touched on Zionism, Christian Zionism, Islam and all the religious conflict issues at play here too. And it doesn’t really appear to be getting any better. “There’s no doubt about it, Hamas’ attack on Israel was clearly a war crime,” Patman explains. “But Israel’s response has involved war crimes as well. Some might say genocide”. We would. 

While 2023 and the release of Barbenheimer might seem like an age ago, and the headlines may have vanished from your TikTok FYP, the conflict in Gaza is of huge ongoing significance. 

Ukraine 

A long, long time ago (2022) Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, Queen Lizzy died (RIP), and a scary Russian man (Putin) threw his toys out of the cot (launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine). This led to four years of active war. One thousand six hundred and twenty one days. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

Think of Putin as humanity’s biggest shit talker. He’d do great on Love Island if he wasn’t so busy being Earth’s number one bully/dictator for the past 26 years. Ukraine is his unfortunate neighbour, and Putin is not a fan of Ukraine. That’s a bit of an understatement – Putin fully wishes Ukraine didn’t exist and has been shouting that from the rooftops for years. There’s a lot of history behind that, but we’d blow completely over word count if we went there. Just know that Russia has a problem with keeping its hands to itself and realising that not every country wants to be cuddled by Mother Russia. 

WTF is happening?

• February 2014: Putin illegally annexes (takes control of) Crimea, a peninsula in Ukraine, and then Russia and Ukraine go to war. For 8 years. And thousands of people die. Yet again, no global players do anything about it, except implement a few sanctions. Sanctions are restrictive measures such as trade limits and travel bans, the international version of having a passive aggression war with your flatmate cause they ate all your bread when they got the munchies one night. So the world moves on.
• 24 October 2022: Russia launches a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Basically that war we just talked about gets a whole lot more legit, and no one’s surprised. Peace deals keep failing, and it’s probably user error, but no one can find the manual (Putin probably threw it out 30 years ago, but you didn’t hear it here).
• 2025: No need to fret, the US is here to save the day! Sike. While there have been some mediated negotiations, still no progress has been made. As Patman eloquently explains: “Dictators don’t normally accept Plan B.”
• Time of Print: Four years later, and the conflict continues at an active stalemate. Putin keeps making demands and he’s not saying ‘please’. Pretty rude when you think about it. Ukraine’s sticking it out, and they’re also getting super whizzy with drone technology. However, innocent people are very much still at risk – an estimated 16,000 civilians have died since the 2022 invasion, and in May of this year the UN reported the highest civilian casualty toll since April 2022.

Why Do We Care?

Once again, Ukraine may seem like a land far, far away, but it has a whole lot to do with us. According to Patman, New Zealand has a “huge stake” in the outcome of this conflict, and we pretty much need Putin to fail. “Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Zelenskyy [President of Ukraine] must surrender land in order to get peace. For Aotearoa, that is a disastrous outcome because it sends the message to the aggressor that your aggression has paid off and you’ve been rewarded.” But wait! There’s more. “One of the biggest enablers of the invasion is China. There is a direct linkage between the outcome in Ukraine and our security in the Pacific.” That means this matters a whole lot for us.

Let’s bring the analogy back one last time. Basically, everyone’s burning couches – apparently international states are fine to let everything go up in flames, so long as their flat remains standing. Imagine that Chris (China) from Queen Street saw a video of the couch burning war between Alex and Isaac, and he wants in on the fun. Now everyone in between Queen Street and Castle Street, including Nick (New Zealand), is in the line of fire and are frantically Googling how to fireproof their free Facebook marketplace couches. And where’s Grant Robo when you need him? Sitting with his hands tied by yet another string of morally dubious vetoes.

While you may have moved on from your post-Covid-feral-emo-depression-2022 era, the conflict in Ukraine is a current event and should be treated as such. But how does one go about fumigating a Putin infestation? With four years of incessant conflict and countless failed negotiations, the situation in Ukraine is beginning to feel as hopeless as a flat completing their fourth round of scabies treatments. 

However, there appears to be a light at the end of this tunnel. Patman claims that the costs of invading Ukraine have recently risen dramatically for the Putin regime, and this "is likely to have dire political consequences. I can’t predict when, but the current trajectory is that Ukraine may be able to oust Russia from Crimea in the next 6 months.” You heard it here first.

What Now? 

Congratulations, you made it through! Whether you were just trying to flick through the mag to find your horoscope and got lost, or read this on purpose, you just survived a crash course in some pretty complicated international relations. 

It kinda feels like conflict is on the rise, international law is on the downfall, and Aotearoa’s about to get lit (and not in a good way). When asked his opinion on the sense of impending doomsday, Patman was sure to spark a sense of hope: “While we’re seeing many great powers acting with impunity at the expense of others, many of the world’s problems do not respect borders. I’m talking about climate change, pandemics, and transnational terrorism. These challenges can only be fixed by countries working together.” In other words, Patman thinks these conflicts actually have a silver lining in that they will force countries to work together in an international arena, when they’d otherwise be pre-occupied with self-preservation. Fingers crossed. 

Of course. The good ol’ classic teamwork makes the dreamwork. But there’s no need for sarcasm – it might actually work this time. The whole couch species depends on it, and New Zealand’s got a role to play. As Patman explains: “there is an opportunity opening up for smaller middle powers to be much more influential in international politics [...] They actually have to get organised and start lobbying for change because the international status quo is not working for the majority of countries [...] and the only way to do so is to create a United Nations Security Council which is more representative and also more functional.” That’s totally number one on our bucket list. 

All three of these conflicts have become protracted conflicts, although the current Iran/US conflict is only just starting to move into that stage. Protracted conflicts are not just conflicts that last a long time – they become increasingly difficult to resolve, with complex causes, shifting dynamics and seemingly no clear path towards peace. As these conflicts drag on, they become harder for us to follow and easier to tune out. They fade from the daily headlines, we understand less and less about what’s happening on the ground, and newer conflicts take their place in the news cycle – and in the calls for protests, donations and political action.

This creates a kind of conflict fatigue. The urgency we felt at the beginning starts to fade even though the brutality and injustice is still present. Think about how up in arms we were in 2022 when the Ukraine conflict really kicked off. There were huge protests, constant news pieces and calls for governments to act. Four years later, and the war is still ongoing, but it doesn’t get the same level of attention anymore. The newest crisis feels like the most urgent, while older conflicts gradually become background noise and we “other” them, with our attention span not able to focus on them anymore.

But let’s circle back to the age old question: what the fuck are we meant to do? Sit on the metaphorical couch and pray that no one lights it on fire? Although Dunedin may not be the hub of New Zealand’s foreign policy decisions, every person can make a difference. Ignorance is curable. It is a choice that we are lucky to have. Make the decision to open your eyes and open your mind. Utilise the resources that lie at your fingertips and educate yourself as a citizen of a global community. Start today. 

We totally hate to break it to you, but it’s fairly safe to assume that your creepy AI tailored selection of Instagram reels is not a reliable news source. Instead, to keep up with current events, here is a handy-dandy-ready-made list of reputable and relevant news sources. 

• The Hoon: A Kiwi production led by two journalists – Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale – that explores geopolitics and the political economy in Aotearoa. It’s perfect if you’re keen to dive a little deeper into the mindfuck that is international relations. 
• The Making of Modern Ukraine: In 23 hour-long podcast episodes, American historian Timothy Snyder will answer all your questions and queries regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
• Middle East Eye: An online news publication dedicated to reporting on events that occur across the Middle East, regardless of whether or not its trending in the TikTok algorithm.

Don’t be afraid to go web surfing, or talk to professors like Robert Patman to learn more. Heck, even check out Fox News once in a while for a pinch of entertainment. Question everything. Then question yourself. See where the educational doom scroll takes you, and be aware of the echo chamber your algorithms lead you into. Then bathe in the sense of enlightenment and superiority that washes over you when you realise you actually kinda know what’s going on. Tell your friends. 

This shit matters. International relations and foreign policy are complex and confusing and quite frankly insane, but they are absolutely not irrelevant. Everyone has a stake in the matter, and education is the first step in actualising that interest.