BIn October 1940, as Americans prepared to select a president, World War II was raging — German troops occupied Paris — but without U.S. participation. American voters had, however, a choice worthy of the ominous moment.

The Democratic candidate was two-term incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, with his 1937 “quarantine” speech on aggressor nations and subsequent military buildup, was nudging a mostly isolationist nation toward involvement in a global conflict. The Republican candidate was businessman Wendell Willkie, a political novice aided by the mostly internationalist and Republican “Eastern establishment” — much maligned, and today greatly missed. Having registered zero support for the GOP nomination in polls three months before the convention, he wrested it from Ohio’s isolationist Sen. Robert A. Taft.

Remember 1940. In three weeks, Americans will not have a comparably reassuring choice when they select the president who will determine the nation’s conduct during World War III, which has begun.

With hindsight, it is apparent that World War II, a cascade of crises initiated by the coalescing Axis of Japan, Germany and Italy, began with Japan’s 1931 occupation of Manchuria. Posterity might conclude that World War III began before Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, and no later than Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

Beginning Jan. 20, the next president will cope with today’s axis: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. U.S. participation in World War II actually began with aggressive, and hardly neutral, Navy patrolling of the North Atlantic shipping lanes on which Britain depended. And U.S. participation in World War III began before this week’s decision to send to Israel an advanced missile defense system and about 100 troops to operate it.

This system will defend Israel against an anticipated Iranian response to Israel’s coming retaliation for Iran’s Oct. 1 launching of about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. The United States has been providing intelligence and weapons to Israel and Ukraine as those nations, like Britain in 1940, fight for their survival and our civilization.

On Monday, the Financial Times reported that the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service said that this year a parcel burst into flames before it was to be loaded on a plane at a DHL freight center in Leipzig. The official said that if the fire had started in flight, the plane would have crashed. He described this episode while detailing a dramatic increase of “aggressive behavior” by Russian agents.

The Wall Street Journal said the head of Britain’s domestic security agency MI5 reported a “staggering rise” in attacks in Europe, coordinated by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. They are aimed at disrupting arms production, intimidating politicians and sowing panic in the streets:

“This summer seven people were accused by U.K. authorities of setting fire to a London warehouse owned by Ukrainian businessmen … . Russian saboteurs are also suspected of being behind a fire at a Berlin factory that builds air-defense systems. In France, prosecutors are investigating a possible Russian connection after two people were found spray painting more than 200 Star of David symbols on buildings … . There has also been a spate of arson attacks in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.”

The MI5 head also said, according to the Journal, that Russia and Iran are using criminals in targeted nations to commit arson, sabotage, and attack Russian and Iranian dissidents abroad. The paper noted that a Spanish politician who supports an Iranian opposition group “was shot in the face in broad daylight late last year.”

North Korean military engineers are assisting Russian launches of ballistic missiles at Ukrainian targets. This month, North Koreans reportedly were killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian territory. Russia’s arsenal includes North Korean missiles and large-caliber ammunition.

From Russia’s western border to the waters where China is aggressively encroaching on Philippine sovereignty, the theater of today’s wars and almost-war episodes spans six of the globe’s 24 time zones. This is what “the gathering storm” (the title of the first of the six volumes of Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs) of a world war looks like.

The U.S. presidential campaign is what reckless disregard looks like. Neither nominee has given any evidence of awareness of, let alone serious thinking about, the growing global conflagration.

This world disorder, more than spending extravaganzas (defense not included), will define the Biden-Harris administration’s reputation. And this year Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Putin-adjacent prime minister, who opposes aiding Ukraine, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago twice in 125 days.

What gathering storms gather is strength. Then they expend their stored violence.

George Will is a Washington Post columnist.