26th September 2026
The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 as a bitter internal conflict over the future of Spain.
It soon became something much bigger.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy backed General Franco's Nationalists with aircraft, troops, weapons and military expertise. The Soviet Union supported the Republican government with military advisers, tanks, aircraft and other equipment. Thousands of foreign volunteers also travelled to Spain to fight.
The war became, in effect, a battleground for competing international ideologies and military technologies.
Almost 90 years later, there are some uncomfortable parallels.
Today's wars in Ukraine and Iran are not simply repetitions of Spain. The circumstances are different, the technologies are different and the major powers have generally tried to avoid putting their own forces directly into combat against one another.
But the underlying pattern is becoming increasingly familiar.
Countries that are not formally at war with each other are helping others to fight.
Spain became a laboratory for the great powers
One of the most striking features of the Spanish Civil War was the extent to which foreign powers used it to gain military experience.
Germany's Condor Legion took part in operations and bombing raids. Italy sent tens of thousands of troops as well as aircraft and pilots.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum describes Spain as a military laboratory in which new weapons could be tested under battlefield conditions.
That has an obvious modern echo.
Ukraine has become a testing ground for drones, electronic warfare, air defence and long-range weapons.
Iran's conflict with the United States and Israel is providing another battlefield in which missiles, drones, air-defence systems and other technologies are being tested under real combat conditions.
The modern military-industrial system therefore does something rather extraordinary.
A component can be designed in one country, manufactured in another, assembled somewhere else and eventually used in a war thousands of miles away.
The lessons learned can then influence the next generation of weapons.
China and Iran
This is where the comparison becomes particularly interesting.
Reuters reported this month that US Senator Jeanne Shaheen had cited reports that Chinese and Hong Kong companies were supplying components used in Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. She also pointed to alleged Chinese satellite support and China's continuing purchase of Iranian oil.
These are US claims, rather than facts accepted by all parties, and Beijing has rejected allegations of military support in some cases.
Separately, Reuters reported in July that Iran was expected to receive up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers under a reported $60 million-$70 million agreement. China's Foreign Ministry described that report as groundless.
Whether every reported transaction ultimately proves accurate or not, the broader pattern is clear enough to examine.
Iran is attempting to rebuild and strengthen its military capabilities.
China has substantial economic and strategic interests in Iran.
Russia also has its own relationship with Tehran.
And the United States and its allies are attempting to prevent Iran from becoming a stronger military threat.
The result is an increasingly complicated international web.
Meanwhile, Ukraine
The same broad pattern can be seen in Ukraine, although the circumstances are very different.
Britain, France and other European countries continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine, including air-defence capabilities and access to sensitive technology. Britain has also been working with Ukraine on its domestic production of long-range missiles.
Russia, meanwhile, has received increasing military assistance from countries including North Korea.
Reuters has reported that North Korea has supplied Russia with weapons and troops, while Ukrainian officials have reported North Korean missile personnel being deployed to Russia.
Reuters has also reported evidence of military training between China and Russia connected to the Ukraine war, although Beijing's position is that it is not a party to the conflict.
So we are seeing something considerably more complicated than two countries simply fighting each other.
The great powers have learned something from Spain
The lesson from Spain may be that supporting another country's war can provide strategic advantages without necessarily requiring a declaration of war.
A country can supply weapons.
It can supply components.
It can provide intelligence.
It can provide satellite information.
It can provide money or buy another country's exports, helping keep its economy functioning.
It can train personnel.
And it can do all of this while insisting:
"We are not actually fighting the war."
That distinction matters.
A Chinese component inside an Iranian missile is not the same thing as a Chinese soldier launching the missile.
American intelligence assistance to Ukraine is not the same thing as American troops fighting Russian forces.
But from the perspective of the country being attacked, the distinction may appear rather less important.
The dangerous grey area
This creates a grey area between peace and war.
During the Spanish Civil War there was even a formal Non-Intervention Agreement. Twenty-seven countries signed it, including Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union.
Yet Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union all violated the policy by continuing to provide assistance to their respective sides.
That should sound familiar.
Today we have international organisations, sanctions, export controls, arms treaties and diplomatic declarations.
Yet military equipment and dual-use technology continue to move across borders.
The difference is that today's technology makes the process considerably harder to see.
A shipment of finished tanks is obvious.
A shipment of thousands of electronic components that could be used in civilian products as well as missiles is much harder to interpret.
Is this really a series of proxy wars?
Perhaps.
But "proxy war" can sometimes make the countries actually doing the fighting disappear from the picture.
Ukrainians are fighting for Ukraine.
Iranians are fighting for Iran.
Russians are fighting for Russia.
Israelis are fighting for Israel.
These countries have their own interests, objectives and decisions.
The great powers are influencing those conflicts, but they are not necessarily controlling them.
That distinction is important.
The Spanish Civil War also cannot simply be reduced to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin fighting through Spanish proxies. Spaniards themselves had profound and bitter political divisions that produced the conflict in the first place.
The outside powers made the war more international.
They did not invent all of its underlying causes.
Could history repeat itself?
This is where we should be cautious.
The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939.
Within months, Europe was at war.
It is tempting to see Spain as a "dress rehearsal" for the Second World War, and many people at the time did exactly that.
But history does not operate like a railway timetable.
The world today has nuclear weapons, much more powerful economic interdependence and far greater awareness of the consequences of direct confrontation between major powers.
China, Russia, the United States and European countries all have enormous reasons to avoid direct war with one another.
That may be precisely why proxy warfare has become so attractive.
It allows countries to compete without crossing the final line.
But where is the final line?
That is perhaps the most important question.
What happens if Chinese military technology helps Iran strike American forces?
What happens if Western weapons supplied to Ukraine strike deeper into Russia?
What happens if Russian or Chinese assistance becomes increasingly direct?
What happens if an American, British, Russian or Chinese military aircraft is accidentally shot down by equipment supplied through one of these networks?
At some point the distinction between supporting a war and participating in it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
That is the danger.
And there is a Caithness connection
At first glance, all of this seems a very long way from Caithness.
But international conflicts eventually reach even the most remote communities.
They reach us through fuel prices, heating oil, electricity costs, food prices, shipping costs and government spending.
Caithness has another particular vulnerability.
We are heavily dependent on road transport and have long distances between communities. When diesel becomes expensive, the effect does not stop at the filling station.
It works its way into the cost of delivering food, building materials, agricultural inputs, repairs, transport and virtually everything else that has to travel by road.
The great powers may be playing a geopolitical game thousands of miles away.
But the bill does not necessarily stay there.
The uncomfortable conclusion
Perhaps the most important lesson from Spain is not that another world war is inevitable.
It is that a conflict can become international long before the major powers formally declare that they are at war.
The Spanish Civil War demonstrated how quickly weapons, money, soldiers and technology could turn a domestic conflict into an international confrontation.
Today's technology makes that process even easier.
A missile can contain components from several countries.
A drone can depend upon foreign electronics.
An attack can rely upon satellite information generated thousands of miles away.
And a war can be sustained by a complicated network of countries which insist they are not actually fighting it.
That leaves the world with an uncomfortable question.
Are the great powers learning how to fight one another without actually declaring war on one another?
If the answer is yes, then the challenge for diplomacy is not simply to stop individual wars.
It is to prevent the network of competing wars, alliances and proxy relationships from eventually connecting together into something much bigger.
Spain offers a warning.
It does not provide a prediction.