'Car crash President' Donald Trump's election win 'just made World War Three much more likely'

The world has been left reeling after Trump's crushing victory over the Democrats, with one expert fearing his aversion to conflict could lead to the terrifying prospect of World War Three

Donald Trump's sweeping victory yesterday has brought the likelihood of World War Three closer - but not for the reasons you might think, an expert has said.

The celebrity president declared victory after securing the 270 votes he needed to wrestle the White House from the Democrats after seizing key battleground states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. In the hours since, the world has been left reeling and wondering how his presidency could create seismic shifts in the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The fear is that Trump's bolshy and populist rhetoric could lead to a breakdown in international relations and a foreign affairs crisis. But defence and security expert Professor Anthony Glees said it's actually Trump's hesitancy around conflict that could cause the real crisis.

"I think the threat of WW3 has grown but not because Trump wants, quite the reverse," he told the Mirror. "The threat of a European and world war has increased, paradoxically, because he absolutely does not want war and because of his strategies for avoiding war.

"But he does not seek conflict. He wants to avoid it. The problem is that history teaches us that you do not avoid wars by not wanting them, indeed the reverse is true. As Reagan's presidency shows, you make peace by being tough with your enemies and turning them into adversaries at worst and friends at best."

The US's main adversaries and enemies - Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - must not see Trump as "weak or disinterested" as it will "encourage" them rather than put them off the lust for war, Prof Glees said.

He added: "They believe that if they don't threaten the USA, then the USA will not care what they do to those they regard as their own enemies. And that's us.

"So I think we are all right to be apprehensive about Trump after his massive and stunning victory, even as we should believe he is not out for war but could end up getting one. He's now a fact of life and we must learn to live with him. But doing so will stretch us in the UK and Europe to the our limits and probably beyond them, and we will find ourselves forced by our weakness to witness many things that will horrify us."

With Trump behind the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal, many fear the volatile leader could trigger a nuclear emergency but Prof Glees believes it's more likely we'll see "years of conventional warfare, especially if Putin wins in Ukraine".

"And over time, not least because of what Iran is doing to help Russia and what Russia will do to help Iran, a wider conflict in the Middle East could be postponed by Trump's policies towards Israel but it is likely to end in a much larger explosion by the end of his second presidency," he added.