wars and military conflicts essay

No One Should Think the War Will Be Short

It is prudent to consider how a conflict over Taiwan might unfold. Within military circles, there is growing fatalism and an almost dogmatic certainty that China will strike first and target both U.S. and Taiwanese forces simultaneously in a Pearl Harbor–style surprise attack, but is that the most likely or most dangerous possibility? 1  

Chinese revisionism and designs for Taiwan could spur conflict that ranges from economic and political gray zone contests at one end to a massive preemptive conventional assault on the other. 2  

Across the range of possibilities, if conventional war breaks out between the United States and China, any notion of a short war with defined off-ramps fought solely over Taiwan’s independence seems naïve. 3 The Chinese Communist Party has staked its legitimacy on reunification and stated it would “pay any price,” which points to the unlikely availability of off-ramps. 4 Several recent articles have pointedly noted that a fixation among the United States and its allies and partners on a “short, sharp war” could have disastrous consequences. 5 A reflexive desire to immediately surge forces into combat and win a rapid victory also is misaligned with current capabilities, risk tolerances, and escalation management principles. 6 Worse still, short-war thinking encourages misaligned force design decisions prior to conflict and risk management decisions during it. Stunning an enemy and killing him are two different things, and both the United States and China must consider what comes next after a first, violent clash. 7 Ample research suggests surprise attacks and/or large-scale aggression are highly likely to invoke the human psychology for revenge, leaving rational cost-based analysis by the wayside as the desire to strike back at all costs takes the forefront. 8

Force designs that champion speed and “decision advantage” as primary pillars of victory are custom-tailored to rely on high-risk, high-intensity engagements and small numbers of sophisticated, expensive, and exquisite capabilities. 9 Unfortunately, such an approach is fraught with the potential for disaster. High-risk, high-intensity combat is a double-edged sword: rapid escalation on one hand, and destruction of one’s own means to continue the conflict because of attrition on the other. Even if U.S. forces come out on top in fast-paced head-to-head engagements, their inability to reconstitute losses would give China an advantage and incentive to pursue protraction to “lose the battle, win the war.” If a nation still maintains the capability and will to fight, it is likely to do so. 10  

Similarly, low-number, high-cost exquisite systems only have an advantage if a conflict is either asymmetric, and the enemy has no way to counter such systems, or short, and the systems prove decisive before their complete exhaustion. The inability to mass produce exquisite systems often renders them nearly impotent even before first use. Consider the effect of Russian hypersonic missiles in the war in Ukraine. 11 New technologies are influencing the way the Russia-Ukraine war is being fought, but neither hypersonic missiles nor drones have proved decisive or prevented the war from dragging on. Protraction in any form gives the advantage to a force designed for staying power. 

Rather than focus on fast victory, the U.S. Sea Services should create an alternate strategy and complementary force design around capabilities that enhance strategic deterrence; provide response options that enable manageable escalation; and rely on tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) designed to produce sustainable lethality while husbanding forces and minimizing risk. To achieve these outcomes would require investment in capabilities that can:

• Survive or rapidly recover from an initial strike

• Be optimized to support Taiwanese forces

• Create and maintain their own antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) zones

• Emphasize the support and execution of non-attributional kinetic and nonkinetic effects that manage escalation and incorporate allies and partners

• Provide a hedge for enabling and arming for long-term offensive power

The strategic aim of a U.S.-led response to a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan should be broad and play the long game. As a Rand Corporation study, U.S. Military Theories of Victory for a War with the People’s Republic of China , points out, “The more ambitiously the United States defines its war aims, the harder it will be to persuade China to accept defeat.” 12 Strategic objectives following a failure of deterrence should center on turning the catastrophe of war and preemption into a unified commitment to resist China’s revisionist agenda and severely damage its capacity as a global leader. 

Time, after all, is not on China’s side. Its looming demographic collapse should point U.S. strategy toward allowing the Chinese Communist Party to hasten its ultimate failure through its global belligerence. 13 This slower strategy would be preferable to meeting China on its terms, in its preferred battle space, and under its timetables. Instead, there would be no strikes on mainland China, no battles with tens of thousands of service members killed on both sides, and no opportunities for China to land a knock-out blow to the U.S. military, which would reduce the risk of massive conventional or even nuclear escalation. Under such circumstances, it is hard to imagine how China could turn even a total occupation of Taiwan into the fait accompli military writers so often warn of. 

For a country that already spends more on internal security and population-control measures than military defense, old-school realpolitik tactics such as funding and supporting internal and external resistance groups and competitors would yield outsized results. 14 Thinking about future conflict with China through this lens produces a different set of priorities for force structures, tactics, and technology. As Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. has written,  “A strategy designed to convince a rival it cannot win a protracted war entails convincing it that it cannot win a short war.” 15 The objective then, is convincing China that the United States does not accept even the possibility of a fait accompli and that, under any initiating circumstances, China can expect irreversible long-term damage, protracted military resistance, and geopolitical and economic ruin. 

The Tools Required

There are capability gaps that urgently need to be filled to enable this strategy. Fortunately, many options to do so are already funded. 

The cornerstone of a counterstrike and counter-A2/AD strategy is persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) coupled with long-range targeting. The development of many capabilities is well underway and organized loosely under the Joint All-Domain Command and Control program, and the United States can achieve this goal, but doing so will require: additional funding—agreed on and spent ; standardization; and training for emerging C5ISRT capabilities. 

The main deficits in this area are not hardware or software. If anything, the legions of software suites, unmanned systems prototypes, and ISRT tools provide the perfect case study in “too much of a good thing.” Service-specific solutions to strategic problems have produced a barrage of software and systems with few clear leaders, limited standardization, and no time to train or fully implement them. The Department of Defense does not need dozens and dozens of varying versions of the same thing. It needs a few working models and time to get them into the hands of the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who will employ them in combat. Many amazing capabilities are being tested and fielded in small numbers. Pick the most promising to be iteratively upgraded and improved. Invest heavily in the winners and put all the others on program life support or pull the plug. 

The C5ISRT that is the foundation of the future force ultimately depends on kinetics to operationalize it. Numerous Proceedings articles have argued that the United States needs to prioritize weapons. 16 Production of long-range precision-strike capabilities, torpedoes, and surface-to-air missiles must be kicked into overdrive—starting a decade ago. Vastly more important than another fifth-generation aircraft or new class of warship, massively enlarged stockpiles of these weapons are required, as is immediate funding to maturity and fielding of all the near-future weapons. The containerization of these weapons already being planned and demonstrated would allow them to be more distributed, survivable, and scalable in any protracted conflict and, if such weapons are provided to proxies, would enable additional elements of escalation management through deniability. The combination of a common federated C5ISRT capability and adaptable mobile weapon systems will allow rapid force generation, if required, through existing land- and sea-based platforms. 

For a counter-A2/AD strategy employing concepts such as distributed maritime operations, expeditionary advanced base operations, and littoral operations in a contested environment, the Sea Services also need better enablement at scale. Construction battalions, construction equipment, and mobile versions of all the items required to create, repair, and sustain temporary bases, airfields, and port facilities need to be prioritized, funded, and stockpiled. Current bases in the Pacific also need to be vastly improved and hardened to provide increased survivability and alternate and contingency operational modes. 

The defeatism that often accompanies discussion of the defense of bases and airfields on Guam and Okinawa is too pessimistic. Yes, those locations are within range of enemy fires, but permanently cratering an airfield and destroying facilities is hard. Despite being at the receiving end of the largest missile barrages since World War II, Ukraine’s combination of mobility, deception, and training significantly mitigated the effectiveness of Russian attacks. 17 Hardened expeditionary bases and rapid repair capabilities would provide sustained enablement for a strategy that focuses, first, on strategic deterrence—by reducing the possibility of China being able to deliver a knockout blow—and, second, on maintaining the capability to endure. 

What Is Not Needed (For Now) 

To move out on producing the necessary tools, the Sea Services must free themselves from the burden of unnecessarily exquisite and expensive weapon systems of many types. While the Navy is certainly “divesting to invest,” nascent future capabilities and technology have been overhyped. 18 Hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence–enabled next-generation unmanned loyal wingman platforms may be the future, but they are not the immediate future. To deter or defeat an increasingly revisionist and belligerent China, those programs should be placed on the back burner while more immediate and readily available priorities take the lead. 

Improving the Tools We Have

Last comes the category of forces and capabilities already in place but that perhaps need some innovation and creativity to redefine their purpose in a future great power conflict—the reimagined tools and those that have gotten back to basics. The Navy’s surface forces need to focus less on dramatic, high-risk maneuver offense and more on securing sea lines of communication, prosecuting antisubmarine warfare, and carrying out escort duties, blockades, and maritime interdiction outside China’s primary weapons engagement zones. Risk-managed offensive raids may still be required, but they should be viewed as contingency operations for most conventional surface forces. 

Carrier strike groups need to transform into mobile command-and-control nodes and area air-defense providers that can linger outside most weapons engagement zones indefinitely. The air wings, enabled by expeditionary advanced bases, should plan and practice conducting very-long-range maritime strikes through dynamic multiday missions. Enabling this capability will require innovative thinking on all the small details, such as mobile access to classified networks and communications, mission planning, and prebased maintenance teams. Paired with long-range Air Force fighter and strike aircraft, Navy maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft, and Air Force strategic lift as long-range maritime-strike multipliers, the joint force would wield a potent ability to strike Chinese forces. 

The remaining strategy must rely on in-place forces and the “hedge force” nearer to the fight, some of which can act in ways that might not be readily attributable—undersea and irregular warfare forces, for example. These more survivable forces will need to stand in for large traditional surface-action groups that cannot—and should not—be expected to close within range to conduct force-on-force naval brawls. 19 Submarines, special forces, multidomain task forces, and Marines will pair with U.S. A2/AD systems and long-range strike capabilities to provide a sting designed to last but unlikely to culminate existentially—in catastrophic escalation. These forces also provide more realistic avenues for allies and partners to support U.S. forces by virtue of their un- or less attributable nature. By avoiding the possibility of a knockout blow, any aggressor would be forced to grapple with another way out of the conflict. If China were to push outside its purpose-built A2/AD zone to force decisive battle, it would instantly find itself playing against the U.S. military’s greatest strengths and outside the support of the A2/AD system it spent decades developing. 

The Evolution in Military Affairs

These concepts are evolutionary, not particularly novel. They prioritize risk management, husband conventional forces for protraction, and slow the potential for escalation by avoiding large-scale destruction on either side. This is the strategy version of “no fast hands in the cockpit,” a saying among aviators that highlights that, during an in-flight emergency, often the worst thing an aviator can do is overreact by moving too quickly. 

Few nations would willingly start a war they knew would soon descend into protraction. Casting doubt on even the possibility of a short war for Taiwan would have an outsized deterrent effect. To accomplish this, the United States must strengthen and diversify presence, protect its forces, and display a credible offensive and defensive capability. This slower, more measured strategy is complemented by the ticking clock of geopolitical danger for China and helps ensure the United States does not risk more than it should in the early stages of a fight. 

Achieving the right mix of capabilities, forces, and posture to maximize strategic deterrence and prevail in any potential conflict is the most urgent challenge the U.S. military faces. Most of the necessary tools are available now, and dedicated leaders and policy-makers are making headway unifying the joint force. Military leaders must guard against preparing only for the perceived worst-case scenario or the siren call of a short war and instead design a force mindful of escalation and protraction and prepared to excel across the continuum of conflict. Many of the tools needed are neither flashy nor expensive, but they must be prioritized. Details such as data standards and TTPs should be better defined and enforced across the future-looking tools the joint force needs, and innovative TTP development and better enablement should continue rapidly to help reimagine the tools the Sea Services already have.

1. Seth Cropsey, “Pearl Harbor Redux: U.S. Risks Repeating Strategic Errors,” Asia Times , 7 December 2022.

2. Charity S. Jacobs and Kathleen M. Carley, “Taiwan: China’s Gray Zone Doctrine in Action,” Small Wars Journal , 11 February 2022; and CDR Paul Giarra and CAPTs Bill Hamblet and Gerard Roncolato, USN (Ret.), “ The War of 2026: Phase III Scenario ,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149, no. 12 (December 2023).

3. Raphael S. Cohen, “America’s Dangerous Short War Fixation,” Foreign Policy , 28 March 2023.

4. Denny Roy, “China Struggles to Repurpose the Lessons of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” Asia Times , 28 December 2023.

5. Hal Brands, “Getting Ready for a Long War with China: Dynamics of Protracted Conflict in the Western Pacific,” American Enterprise Institute, 25 July 2022.

6. Ryan T. Easterday, “The Fallacy of the Short, Sharp War: Optimism Bias and the Abuse of History,” The Strategy Bridge, 16 March 2023.

7. Iskander Rehman, “Planning for Protraction,” The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 9 November 2023.

8. Rose McDermott, Anthony C. Lopez, and Peter K. Hatemi, “‘Blunt Not the Heart, Enrage It’: The Psychology of Revenge and Deterrence,” Texas National Security Review 1, no. 1 (December 2017).

9. Summary of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) Strategy (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 2022).

10. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “Protracted Great-Power War: A Preliminary Assessment,” Center for New American Security, February 2020.

11. John Grady, “ Russian Hypersonic Missiles Underperforming in Ukraine Conflict, NORTHCOM Says ,” USNI News , 20 May 2022.

12. Jacob L. Heim, Zachary Burdette, and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “U.S. Military Theories of Victory for a War with the People’s Republic of China,” RAND Corporation, 21 February 2024.

13. Michael E. O’Hanlon, “China’s Shrinking Population and Constraints on Its Future Power,” Brookings Institution, 24 April 2023.

14. Adrian Zenz, “China’s Domestic Security Spending: An Analysis of Available Data,” The Jamestown Foundation, 12 March 2018.

15. Krepinevich, “Protracted Great-Power War: A Preliminary Assessment.”

16. For example, CDR Graham Scarbro, USN, “ Strike Warfare’s Inventory Problem ,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149, no. 12 (December 2023); LCDR Patrick Rawlinson, “ Torpedoes: Get Smaller to Think Bigger ,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 150, no. 3 (March 2024); and CAPT Sam Tangredi, USN (Ret.), “ Replicate Ordnance, Not Cheap Drones ,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 150, no. 3 (March 2024).

17. Jaganath Sankaran, “How Ukraine Fought against Russia’s Air War,” The Lawfare Institute, 22 January 2023.

18. Mallory Shelbourne, “ SECNAV, CNO Pushing Plans to Decommission 11 Warships in Fiscal Year 2024 ,” USNI News , 20 March 2023.

19. Bryan Clark and Dan Patt, “Hedging Bets: Rethinking Force Design for a Post-Dominance Era,” Hudson Institute, February 2024.

Commander Justin Cobb, U.S. Navy

Commander Cobb is the maritime fires officer with Carrier Strike Group 11. A rotary-wing aviator, he previously served as the commanding officer of the Helicopter Training Squadron 18 Vigilant Eagles at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Florida. A graduate of the Joint Forces Staff College, he conducted his joint tour at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, where he was the lead action officer on the NATO joint command-and-control concept. 

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War and the Age of Nationalism — How 19th-Century Conflicts Gave Rise to the Modern National Identity 

“ War strengthened a national sense of belonging.”  

By Niels Eichhorn

“IT IS NOT the joy over the defeated enemy, but the joy of overcoming weakness and discord which the past centuries bear sad witness to and whose painful feeling gradually faded away like a bad dream in the thunder of the battle . . . But let us also take comfort in their heroic strength and believe that the people who were capable of such victories are still moving towards a great future.”

These were the words of Prof. Dr. Diez at a banquet honoring Sedantag or Day of Sedan, a commemoration of the Battle of Sedan that took place during the Franco-German War of 1870/71, on September 2, 1895.

Like the original forms of Memorial Day in the United States (known initially as Decoration Day), Sedantag was never a recognized national holiday, but from its establishment in the 1870s to its falling out of fashion during the Weimar era , the day served as a reminder to the German people of the sacrifices of German soldiers to bring about the founding of the modern German nation state.

The Battle of Sedan did not end the Franco-German War; the conflict would continue a few more months until the French accepted defeat. However, the battle signaled the decline of the Second French Empire , birth of the Third Republic , as well as the emergence of a fully unified German nation state . In both Germany and France, the war strengthened a national sense of belonging. Both sides erected monuments to commemorate the soldiers who fought and died in the war. In that, there was nothing new or unique among the mid-19th century conflicts.

In our new book The Civil War in the Age of Nationalism , we illustrate that people everywhere, including in the United States, struggled with the same problems and came up with similar solutions. This essay will showcase this by looking at what we call the “three modernizing wars” of the mid-19th century, the Crimean War , American Civil War, and the Wars of German Unification (especially the Franco-German War).

Sandwiched between two deadly conflicts, the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Wars of German Unification from 1864 to 1871, the American Civil War was at a crossroads of military development. Modern industrial technology had dramatically advanced the manufacture of weapons, increased the range and speed of loading, increased the size of artillery projectiles, and changed the face of naval warfare; however, while the conflicts of the mid-19th century were modern in a sense of technology, they were backward looking in the tactical use of these weapons and the disposition of troops on the battlefield. In this sense, they marked a transition from the strategies and tactics of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to the devastating conflicts of the 20th century.

Mass conscription and the advent of new technology meant the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars changed the face of warfare. But the conflicts also spread new ideas of nationalism, political freedom, and constitutionalism across the western world. This, however, was only the beginning of a process and many states remained in a proto-nationalist state with the contours of the nation still ill-defined.

The United States was no exception. The Declaration of Independence and war with Britain created a country; the constitution defined its political boundaries, but a national identity was lacking. Over the following decades, Northerners, Westerners, Southerners, minorities, and others contested the meaning of the United States. Southerners imagined a state-centered nationalism that eventually shattered the United States with the secession of South Carolina in 1860. The Civil War, emancipation , the Gettysburg Address , and the many legal changes during Reconstruction crafted a new nation with a new national, political identity. The very name “United States” went from the plural (“ the United States are… ”) to the singular form (“ the United States is… ”).  

What President Abraham Lincoln and his armies accomplished with blood and iron Otto von Bismarck brought about with the Prussian state in a series of three conflicts in the 1860s. Bismarck’s realpolitik had no qualms ignoring constitutional limitations when he outmaneuvered the Prussian Landtag in 1862 over constitutional and budget disagreements. Furthermore, to achieve his goal of aggrandizing Prussia, he had no problems dragging Austria as an ally into a war with Denmark and then turning around two years later to fight Austria for hegemony among the German states.

Similarly, Lincoln was willing to do anything to protect the country, including extending it westward , where his forces were no longer armies of emancipation and union, but armies of empire and, from a Native American perspective, genocide. Lincoln seemingly never considered the disconnect between his policies toward enslaved people in the south and Native people in the western parts of the country. Imperial expansion, however, was a common theme of nation-building during this period, as many western but also western hemispheric countries used this expansion to revitalize the nation and foster a national community of a certain set of people that excluded others.  

The process of defining a nation or the imagining of a national community was never an easy one. Wars certainly helped in the crafting of these imagined communities and the soldiers who died in the conflicts offered in their sacrifices — heroic figures as well as martyrs to the cause of the nation. Lincoln well understood this aspect of national imagining as demonstrated by his eloquent words at the opening of the Gettysburg National Cemetery , invoking the sacrifices of those who had died on the field to defend the United States. Talking about soldiers, Lincoln noted: “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it;” therefore, this was a conflict that would ordain the country with a new birth. This was a very religious language, but one that people in this era were extremely familiar with and invoked frequently, even if they may not have personally believed themselves.

But Lincoln’s famous words at Gettysburg were likely not entirely his own. Like many Americans, he had paid close attention to the events in Hungary in 1848 and 1849 . The radical Hungarian independence leader Lajos (anglicized as Louis) Kossuth had delivered a powerful address on a battlefield, honoring the fallen heroes of Hungary, not unlike Lincoln at Gettysburg. More so, Lincoln’s famous word of the Gettysburg Address that this conflict would represent a rebirth of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” may well have been lifted or paraphrased a Kossuth speech to the Ohio legislature in 1852. Nevertheless, Lincoln and Kossuth were the leaders of their respective causes to create a new framework for their national community during an existential struggle—one was successful in life and the other not.

At the same time, Kossuth remained unreconciled to the defeat of Hungarian independence and continued to work on another revolution. He was not unlike many of the unreconciled rebels in the United States who kept the Confederate national identity alive in the decades following their defeat. Nevertheless, when Kossuth died in 1894, by which point Hungary had gained autonomy or self-rule and adopted extremely restrictive national and ethnic policies , akin to Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the United States, he was honored by a state funeral in Budapest.

Politician Julius Justh eulogized Kossuth, saying “In Louis Kossuth, we mourn one of the greatest, most honorable, and most selfless figures of history. He is not only our dead, but the dead of humanity . . . for the services of Kossuth were larger, worldwide in significance, immortal.”

In similarly grandiose terms did Massachusetts Senator, Charles Sumner eulogize recently slain President Lincoln noting:  

“Then will the Unity of the Republic be fixed on a foundation that cannot fail, and other nations will enjoy its security. The corner-stone of National Independence is already in its place, and on it is also inscribed the name of George Washington. There is another stone which must have its place at the corner This is the Declaration of Independence, with all its promises fulfilled. On this stone we will gratefully inscribe the name of Abraham Lincoln.”

Lincoln had helped imagine a new United States.

Of course, leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant , Lajos Kossuth, and others received statues and monuments to honor their work imagining and crafting new nation states. Their shrines would serve as symbols and foundations of the new nations they helped design. At the same time, as Lincoln so rightfully pointed out in the Gettysburg Address, it was not the generals and politicians any more who received all the cheers; but the common soldiers as well. Warfare had proletarized in the course of the 19th century.

The Crimean War altered British attitudes toward war veterans and gave birth to the quintessential “Private Smith” or “Tommy” of British folklore. The British had set the stage with this new remembrance when they created the Victoria Cross in the Crimean War to honor the bravery of soldiers in the face of the enemy and is awarded irrespective of rank. Over one hundred members of the British armed forces received this recognition. Mimicking the Victoria Cross, the United States created the Medal of Honor in 1862, which was also for bravery and awarded to the common soldier. These medal recipients were the martyrs and living monuments of the reimagined nation.

By the end of the 19th century, the United States government preserved a couple large battlefields for future generations. Some promoters of the creation of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park sold the project as an effort in reconciliation, but veterans had other ideas. The Scioto Gazette in Ohio succinctly summarized the situation: “It makes a true soldier’s blood boil to think of having those battle fields covered with Rebel Monuments.” Throughout the world in the hyper-nationalistic, imperial-militaristic age of the late 19th century, erecting monuments to past and recent heroes was a reminder to the present generations of the struggles their nation had faced and how to safeguard those accomplishments. Wars had and continue to help imagine and reimagine the nation states the world over, just like the American Civil War in the United States.

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The Five Reasons Wars Happen

Christopher Blattman | 10.14.22

Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes or Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait , the United States seems closer to a great power war than at any time in recent decades. But while the risks are real and the United States must prepare for each of these conflicts, by focusing on the times states fight—and ignoring the times they resolve their conflicts peacefully and prevent escalation—analysts and policymakers risk misjudging our rivals and pursuing the wrong paths to peace.

The fact is that fighting—at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations—is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict. The costs of war also mean that when they do fight countries have powerful incentives not to escalate and expand those wars—to keep the fighting contained, especially when it could go nuclear. This is one of the most powerful insights from both history and game theory: war is a last resort, and the costlier that war, the harder both sides will work to avoid it.

When analysts forget this fact, not only do they exaggerate the chances of war, they do something much worse: they get the causes all wrong and take the wrong steps to avert the violence.

Imagine intensive care doctors who, deluged with critically ill patients, forgot that humanity’s natural state is good health. That would be demoralizing. But it would also make them terrible at diagnosis and treatment. How could you know what was awry without comparing the healthy to the sick?

And yet, when it comes to war, most of us fall victim to this selection bias, giving most of our attention to the times peace failed. Few write books or news articles about the wars that didn’t happen. Instead, we spend countless hours tracing the threads of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the two world wars. When we do, it distorts our diagnosis and our treatments. For if we follow these calamitous events back to their root causes and preceding events, we often find a familiar list: bumbling leaders, ancient hatreds, intransigent ideologies, dire poverty, historic injustices, and a huge supply of weapons and impressionable young men. War seems to be their inevitable result.

Unfortunately, this ignores all the instances conflict was avoided. When social scientists look at these peaceful cases, they see a lot of the same preceding conditions—bumblers, hatreds, injustices, poverty, and armaments. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. So these are probably not the chief causes of war.

Take World War I. Historians like to explain how Europe’s shortsighted, warmongering, nationalist leaders naively walked their societies into war. It was all a grand miscalculation, this story goes. The foibles of European leaders surely played a role, but to stop the explanation here is to forget all the world wars avoided up to that point. For decades, the exact same leaders had managed great crises without fighting. In the fifteen years before 1914 alone, innumerable continental wars almost—but never—happened: a British-French standoff in a ruined Egyptian outpost in Sudan in 1898; Russia’s capture of Britain’s far eastern ports in 1900; Austria’s seizure of Bosnia in 1908; two wars between the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. A continent-consuming war could have been ignited in any one of these corners of the world. But it was not.

Likewise, it’s common to blame the war in Ukraine overwhelmingly on Putin’s obsessions and delusions. These surely played a role, but to stop here is to stop too soon. We must also pay attention to the conflicts that didn’t happen. For years, Russia cowed other neighbors with varying degrees of persuasion and force, from the subjugation of Belarus to “ peacekeeping ” missions in Kazakhstan. Few of these power contests came to blows. To find the real roots of fighting, analysts need to pay attention to these struggles that stay peaceful.

Enemies Prefer to Loathe One Another in Peace

Fighting is simply bargaining through violence. This is what Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung meant in 1938 when he said , “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao was echoing the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who, a century before, reminded us that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of course, one of these means is far, far costlier than the other. Two adversaries have a simple choice: split the contested territory or stake in proportion to their relative strength, or go to war and gamble for the shrunken and damaged remains. It’s almost always better to look for compromise. For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.

Compromise is the rule because, for the most part, groups behave strategically: like players of poker or chess, they’re trying hard to think ahead, discern their opponents’ strength and plans, and choose their actions based on what they expect their opponents to do. They are not perfect. They make mistakes or lack information. But they have huge incentives to do their best.

This is the essential way to think about warfare: not as some base impulse or inevitability, but as the unusual and errant breakdown of incredibly powerful incentives for peace. Something had to interrupt the normal incentives for compromise, pushing opponents from normal politics, polarized and contentious, to bargaining through bloodshed.

This gives us a fresh perspective on war. If fighting is rare because it is ruinous, then every answer to why we fight is simple: a society or its leaders ignored the costs (or were willing to pay them). And while there is a reason for every war and a war for every reason, there are only so many logical ways societies overlook the costs of war—five, to be exact. From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable.

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat , Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens. He can pursue whatever course helps him preserve his regime’s control. When leaders go unchecked and are unaccountable to their people, they can ignore the costs of fighting that ordinary people bear. Instead, rulers can pursue their own agendas. That is why dictators are more prone to war .

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy. What costs and risks he does bear, Putin is willing to pay in pursuit of glory and ideology. This is just one example of intangible and ideological incentives for war that so many leaders possess—God’s glory, freedom, or some nationalist vision.

Societies have ideological incentives too. Unlike the people of Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Ukrainians refused to accept serious restrictions on their sovereignty despite what (at first) seemed to be relative military weakness. Like liberation movements throughout history—including the American revolutionaries—they have been willing to undertake the ruin and risks of fighting partly in pursuit of an ideal.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. He and his advisors grossly underestimated the difficulty of war. This is a story of institutional bias—a system that is unwilling to tell its leader bad news. Autocrats are especially prone to this problem, but intelligence failures plague democracies too . Leaders can be psychologically biased as well. Humans have an amazing ability to cling to mistaken beliefs. We can be overconfident, underestimating the ruin of war and overestimating our chances of victory. And we demonize and misjudge our opponents. These misperceptions can carry us to war.

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty. In the murky run-up to war, policymakers don’t know their enemy’s strength or resolve. How unified would the West be? How capably would Ukrainians resist? How competent was the Russian military? All these things were fundamentally uncertain, and many experts were genuinely surprised that Russia got a bad draw on all three—most of all, presumably, Putin himself.

But uncertainty doesn’t just mean the costs of war are uncertain, and invasion a gamble. There are genuine strategic impediments to getting good information . You can’t trust your enemy’s demonstrations of resolve, because they have reasons to bluff, hoping to extract a better deal without fighting. Any poker player knows that, amid the uncertainty, the optimal strategy is never to fold all the time. It’s never to call all the time, either. The best strategy is to approach it probabilistically—to occasionally gamble and invade.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace ? Better to pay the brutal costs of war now, to lock in one’s current advantage. Some scholars argue that such shifts in power, and the commitment problems they create, are at the root of every long war in history —from World War I to the US invasion of Iraq. This is not why Russia invaded Ukraine, of course. Still, it may help to understand the timing. In 2022, Russia had arguably reached peak leverage versus Ukraine. Ukraine was acquiring drones and defensive missiles. And the country was growing more democratic and closer to Europe—to Putin, a dangerous example of freedom nearby. How could Ukraine commit to stop either move? We don’t know what Putin and his commanders debated behind closed doors, but these trends may have presented a now-or-never argument for invasion.

Putting the five together, as with World War I and so many other wars, fallible, biased leaders with nationalist ambitions ignored the costs of war and drove their societies to violent ruin. But the explanation doesn’t end there. There are strategic roots as well. In the case of Russia, as elsewhere, unchecked power, uncertainty, and commitment problems arising from shifting power narrowed the range of viable compromises to the point where Putin’s psychological and institutional failures—his misperceptions and ideology—could lead him to pursue politics by violent means.

The Paths to Peace

If war happens when societies or their leaders overlook its costs, peace is preserved when our institutions make those costs difficult to ignore. Successful, peaceful societies have built themselves some insulation from all five kinds of failure. They have checked the power of autocrats. They have built institutions that reduce uncertainty, promote dialogue, and minimize misperceptions. They have written constitutions and bodies of law that make shifts in power less deadly. They have developed interventions—from sanctions to peacekeeping forces to mediators—that minimize our strategic and human incentives to fight rather than compromise.

It is difficult, however, to expect peace in a world where power in so many countries remains unchecked . Highly centralized power is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because it accentuates all five reasons for war. With unchecked leaders , states are more prone to their idiosyncratic ideologies and biases. In the pursuit of power, autocrats also tend to insulate themselves from critical information. The placing of so much influence in one person’s hands adds to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. Almost by definition, unchecked rulers have trouble making credible commitments.

That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself. And it is why the world’s most worrisome trend may be in China, where a once checked and institutionalized leader has gathered more and more power in his person. There is, admittedly, little a nation can do to alter the concentration of power within its rivals’ political systems. But no solution can be found without a proper diagnosis of the problem.

Christopher Blattman is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. This article draws from his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace , published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi , via depositphotos.com

31 Comments

War, in the end, is about Armed Robbery writ large; whether Committing it, Preventing it, or Redressing it. It is all about somebody trying to take somebody else's stuff.

Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls. – Steven Erikson

That is the right reason, I do not know about the others, but I will give you a+ on this one

its beeches thy want Resorces

"Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically, "marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others." – Robert Anton Wilson

Wars often come when a group of nations (for example the USSR in the Old Cold War of yesterday and the U.S./the West in New/Reverse Cold War of today) move out smartly to "transform"/to "modernize" both their own states and societies (often leads to civil wars) and other states and societies throughout the world also (often leads to wars between countries).

The enemy of those groups of nations — thus pursuing such "transformative"/such "modernizing" efforts — are, quite understandably, those individuals and groups, and those states and societies who (a) would lose current power, influence, control, safety, privilege, security, etc.; this, (b) if these such "transformative"/these such "modernizing" efforts were to be realized.

From this such perspective, and now discussing only the U.S./the West post-Cold War efforts — to "transform"/to "modernize" the states and societies of the world (to include our own states and societies here in the U.S./the West) — this, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy;

Considering this such U.S./Western post-Cold War "transformative"/"modernizing" effort, note the common factor of "resistance to change" coming from:

a. (Conservative?) Individual and groups — here in the U.S./the West — who want to retain currently threatened (and/or regain recently lost) power, influence, control, etc. And:

b. (Conservative?) states and societies — elsewhere throughout the world — who have this/these exact same ambition(s).

From this such perspective, to note the nexus/the connection/the "common cause" noted here:

"Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."

(See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)

“Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”

(See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)

Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

In the final paragraph of our article above, the author states: "That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself."

Based on the information that I provide above — which addresses the "resistance" efforts of entities both here at home and there abroad — might we beg to differ?

From the perspective of wars between nations relating to attempts as "transformation" by one party (and thus not as relates to civil wars which occur with "transformative" attempts in this case) here is my argument above possibly stated another way:

1. In the Old Cold War of yesterday, when the Soviets/the communists sought to "transform the world" — in their case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such this as socialism and communism:

a. The "root cause" of the conflicts that the U.S. was engaged in back then — for example in places such as Central America —

b. This such "root cause" was OUR determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which were taking place, back then, in OUR backyard/in OUR sphere of influence/in OUR neck of the woods.

2. In the New/Reverse Cold War of today, however, when now it is the U.S./the West that seeks to "transform the world" — in our case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as market-democracy:

“The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement, enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies,’ Mr. Lake said in a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.”

(See the September 22, 1993 New York Times article “U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed” by Thomas L. Friedman.)

a. Now the "root cause" of the conflicts that Russia is engaged in today — for example in places such as Ukraine —

b. This such "root cause" is now RUSSIA'S determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which are taking place now in RUSSIA'S backyard/in RUSSIA'S sphere of influence/in RUSSIA's neck of the woods.

(From this such perspective, of course, [a] the current war in Ukraine, this would seem to [b] have little — or indeed nothing — to do with "Putin's twenty-year concentration of power in himself?")

It’s easy to put the whole blame on Putin himself with his unchecked power . But this is a gross simplification of the reality in case of the Ukraine war. NATO expansion everywhere and especially into the very birthplace of Russia was a huge irritator , perceived as unacceptable, threatening, arrogant with no regard to Russia’s interests. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a clear warning, that was completely ignored. Without NATO’s ambitions there would be no war in Ukraine. Or Georgia .

When the Soviet Union installed missles in Cuba , the democratic and presumably the country with all checks and balances in place almost started a nuclear war with the Soviets. It was a reckless gamble that could end the world Why expect anything less from the modern Russia that feels threatened by NATO encroachment?

In the end, whether it's about committing, preventing, or rectifying, war is all about armed robbery. The main plot is around a thief trying to steal from another person.

One of the main causes of war is nationalist garbage. This nationalist site conveniently omits this as they push their preferred chosen nationalist enemy(cold war leftovers in this case) on the reader. What do you expect from OVRA/NKVD reruns?

In addition to the reasons explored to further explain the cause of war, there are also self-defeating schema in thought structures that deteriorate over time. They become compromised by the wear-and-tear grind of life of individuals seeking natural causes and solutions collectively and apart. This is particularly relevant to the matter of war dynamics. When energies used to pursue peace are perceived as exhausted, unspent warfare resources appear more attractive. Particularly in the instances of deteriorating leaders who are compromised by psychopathy, war can quickly become nearly inevitable. Add a number of subordinated population that are unable to resist, and the world can quickly find itself following in the footsteps of leaders marching to their own demise. On the broader sociopolitical battlefield, with democracy trending down and the deterioration in global leadership increasing, the probability of both war and peaceful rewards increase. The questions that arise in my mind point to developing leaps forward to the structures of global leadership, particularly for self-governing populations, leveraging resources that mitigate the frailties of societal and individual human exhaustion, and capping warfare resources at weakened choke points to avoid spillovers of minor conflicts into broader destruction. Technology certainly can be used to mitigate much more than has been realized.

Wow, I could say all those things about the U.S. and its rulers.

We don't have a dictator.

Trump came pretty close to being a dictator, what with the way people were following him blindly, and the ways that all parties, (Both republicans AND democrats) have been acting lately I wouldn't be surprised if a dictator came into power

War happens because humans are predatory animals and preditors kill other preditors every chance they get. The 3 big cats of africa are a prime example. We forget that we are animals that have animal insticts. There will always be war.

As in, "SOme of us are carnivores and some of us are herbivores?" Hitler was a vegetarian….

The cause of war is fear, Russia feared a anti Russian Army in Ukraine would come to fruitinion in the Ukraine threatening to invade Moscow!

But did the USA really have anything to fear from Iraq? From Afghanistan? From Vietnam?

it takes one powerful man in power to start war and millions of innocence people to die, to stop the war . / answer!,to in prison any powerful person who starts the war , and save your family life and millions of lives, / out law war.

The biggest cause of war is the demonstration of weakness among democratic nations facing a well-armed dictator with irrational ambitions. In the case of Russia, the democratic world turned weak on Vladimir Putin at a time when both democratic institutions and peace might have been preserved. Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first-ever freely elected president, had given the newly democratic Russia a real chance to enter the community of free nations in 1991. But when Putin was elected in 2000, we saw the warning signs of trouble. Putin already was undermining democracy. In Russia’s transition from socialism, he used his old KGP connections to buy up all the political parties (except ironically the Communist Party, which now was tiny and unpopular). He also declared he yearned for the old greater Russia, with those Soviet Union borders. The U.S. and NATO didn’t take Putin’s greater-Russia statements too seriously. After all, once their economy stabilized after the transition from socialism, the Russian people were pleased with their new and free Russia, the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the new openness to the West. There was no popular call for retaking old territory. But Putin had his own plans, and as Christopher Blattman’s article observes, when you’re dictator (and even with ‘elections’ you are dictator if you own all the political parties) you can go your bloody way. Then came America’s ‘Russian re-set.’ As Putin consolidated his power, and forced the parliament, the Duma, to give him permission to run for several unopposed ‘re-elections,’ the U.S. decided to go gentle on Putin, in hopes he’d abandon his authoritarian course. This was the fatal mistake. When the U.S. should have been publicly encouraging Putin to commit himself to international borders and to democracy in Russia, the U.S. leadership instead was asking what it could do to make Putin happy. Putin saw this as weakness, an opening for his insane territorial desires, which focused mainly on Ukraine. He let a few more years go by, prepared secretly, and then in 2014, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, killing about 14,000 people and claiming Ukraine’s Crimea for Russia. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but the terrible damage had been done. Because the Free World’s leaders had let down their guard, an awful precedent had been set. A new Russian dictator had murdered to steal territory. To him, the price was low. That told him he could do it again someday. And in 2022, again sensing weakness from the West, Putin invaded Ukraine once more. Not only have tens of thousands of Ukrainians been killed in this new war, but the Russian people themselves are now locked in an even tighter, more brutal dictatorship. Peace through Strength is not just a slogan. It’s as real as War through Weakness. My father, who fought in Europe in World War II, said an American soldier’s first duty was to preserve America’s rights and freedoms, as described in the Constitution. He said an American soldier also has two jobs. A soldier’s first job, he said, is to block the tyrants. Just stand in their way, he said, and most tyrants won’t even try to pass. That’s Peace through Strength. A soldier’s second job, he said, is to fight and win wars. He said that second job won’t have to be done often if we do enough of the first job.

I hope there will be no more wars in the world

This, pandemic of wars will soon make us realize and accept the fact that the global society’s compassion towards its individuals is numbed and will eventually be completely absent as it is transformed into a human super-organism, just as one’s body is not concerned about the millions of cells dying daily in it, unless it affects the body as a whole like the cancer cells where we consider them to be terrorists and actively kill them.

Boghos L. Artinian MD

I hope there is no more war in this world

war it not good for all humans

Ultimately, be it engaging in, averting, or resolving, war can be likened to organized theft. The central theme revolves around a thief attempting to pilfer from someone else.

In the end, whether involving, preventing, or resolving, war can be compared to organized theft. The core idea centers on a thief attempting to steal from someone else.

No nation would wage a war for the independence of another. Boghos L. Artinian

And I will give you one word that sums up and supersedes your Five Reasons: Covetousness James 4:2, ESV, The Holy Bible.

Christopher Blattman offers a comprehensive analysis of the five key reasons wars occur, shedding light on the complexities underlying conflicts and peacekeeping efforts. Blattman emphasizes the importance of understanding the incentives for peace and the institutional mechanisms that mitigate the risk of war. By examining factors such as accountability, ideology, bias, uncertainty, and reliability, he provides a nuanced perspective on the decision-making processes that lead to conflict. Blattman's insights underscore the significance of promoting dialogue, minimizing misperceptions, and strengthening institutions to preserve peace in an increasingly volatile world.

Excuse me, but why all the Russia focus? Also, can all these "reasons of war" be applied to Israel also – autocratic rule, biases in information, etc? Finally, most wars in the last 70 years have been started by the US (either directly invading, or by supporting a nationalist faction in bloody coups and civil wars) – do the same reasons apply to those wars, as in the US has essentially autocratic leadership which has biased views and fears competition?

This article offers a crucial reminder that while the threats from nations like Russia and China are real, war is usually a last resort due to its ruinous costs. By focusing not just on conflicts but also on the many instances where peace is maintained, we can better understand how to prevent escalation and foster stability. The analysis of the five reasons wars occur—unaccountability, ideology, bias, uncertainty, and unreliability—provides valuable insights for building stronger institutions that promote peace.

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How US military planning has shifted away from fighting terrorism to readying for tensions and conflict with China and Russia

Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Disclosure statement

Eric Rosenbach received funding from the United States government to develop executive education programs.

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President Joe Biden’s recent approval of a major shift in U.S. nuclear weapons strategy highlights the attention the country’s national security officials are paying to Chinese ambitions for influence in the world.

As changes emerge in the types of threats facing the U.S., the American military adjusts its strategic focus, budgets and planning. For instance, after 9/11, the U.S. military refocused away from its Cold War emphasis on preparing for combat against a powerful nation – the Soviet Union – and toward fighting small terrorist and insurgent groups instead.

Over the past decade, the Pentagon’s efforts have shifted back to preparing for what officials call “ great power competition ” among the U.S., Russia and China .

The most important strategic shift that’s evident in planning for great power competition is a focus on deterrence. In classic military strategy, deterrence focuses on making an adversary believe they can never achieve their goals by military force, because the response would be overwhelming and decisive. The National Defense Strategy released in October 2022 – the document that articulates the nation’s goals, objectives and resource allocation for the next two years – explicitly recognizes the potential risk of tensions and open conflict with Russia or China, and it calls for “integrated deterrence” to prevent it. That means combined efforts from the military, intelligence and diplomatic agencies across the U.S. government.

The National Military Strategy – the military’s section of the overarching National Defense Strategy – lays out how the U.S. armed forces will contribute to that effort. As a former assistant secretary of defense and Pentagon chief of staff , I see that the military is focusing on three main goals to achieve integrated deterrence and prevent a conflict with Russia or China.

New operational plans

For the military, integrated deterrence means the armed forces will depend both on where forces are located and what they can do once they’re in action to influence adversaries’ decisions about when, where, how – and whether – to use military force against the U.S. or its interests.

In the shift away from counterterrorism toward preparation for a great power conflict, the Defense Department has developed new ways to deal with the fact that Russia and China, unlike small terrorist groups, can fight in the air, on land and at sea anywhere around the world – and online and in space, too.

First among those methods is what the Pentagon calls “ dynamic force employment ,” in which U.S. military forces are deployed rapidly around the world, without predictable rotation schedules. This approach can reassure allies facing threats from Russia or China.

For example, the U.S. has, at times, deployed as many as 10,000 troops to Poland . The troops are not permanently stationed there, but a continuous presence of U.S. forces keeps Russia guessing about the size and capabilities of the force and demonstrates a commitment to support nervous NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

Second is a shift of personnel and capabilities to what is called “ multi-domain operations ,” in which units with different missions across air, land, sea, space and cyberspace plan and train together. That way, they can be prepared to work closely together in actual conflicts.

This level of collaboration allows the nation to respond to threats in a variety of ways. For instance, challenges to American naval power on the high seas do not have to be met directly with corresponding naval action, but instead could be answered with cyberattacks or from space.

This approach might make the Chinese People’s Liberation Army think twice about launching military operations against Taiwan. Not only would the Chinese potentially face a fierce direct conflict, but U.S. cyber and space operations could also disrupt or destroy Chinese military communications, hindering their attack.

Investments in modernization

Recent research has shown that China’s investments in its military personnel and capabilities – particularly in air, naval and nuclear forces – have grown exponentially over the past two decades, to a level estimated at near parity with the United States. This has prompted the U.S. to modernize its own military’s corresponding capabilities. For the 2024 budget, the Department of Defense allocated a whopping US$234.9 billion for programs to support integrated deterrence , which likely represents a 10% increase over previous spending plans.

Some of this money will go to developing and acquiring F-35 fighter jets and building Columbia-class, nuclear-powered submarines . When the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific region, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia , deploy these planes and submarines, they will remind potential adversaries of American military power – which is itself a deterrent against foreign aggression.

Over the past 10 years, China’s rapid expansion of its nuclear weapon supply has alarmed senior policymakers in the U.S. Although then-President Barack Obama pushed countries to envision a world free of nuclear weapons , he approved the most expensive and significant upgrade ever to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 2022, the Biden administration renewed a financial commitment to “ field a modern, resilient nuclear triad ” consisting of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and long-range nuclear bombers.

Advancing technology

In 2019, the Space Force was established as a separate branch of the armed forces and tasked with defending American space-based assets and upholding international law. Because of the importance of satellite communications to military operations and civilian life – including internet connectivity – the Space Force works closely with Cyber Command , the military organization charged with defending the nation against cyberattacks, to prevent malicious hackers from disrupting systems vital to the world, such as the Global Positioning System , widely known as GPS.

Recent intelligence indicates that China plans to conduct destructive cyberattacks against U.S. domestic critical infrastructure, including the electric grid, during any conflict. To counter those plans, Cyber Command continues to enhance its abilities to defend U.S. systems and companies against cyberattacks, as well as to conduct attacks against systems in other countries.

The Pentagon is also seeking to counterbalance China’s rapidly expanding military forces by using artificial intelligence software in a program called the Replicator Initiative . The effort seeks to build thousands of low-cost, AI-directed autonomous aircraft and boats that can be used in combat to “ counter the (Chinese military)’s mass with mass of our own ,” in the words of Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

Integration with allies and partners

The U.S. military has also sought to strengthen alliances with other countries, especially over the past four years of the Biden administration.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine led NATO to expand its membership as well as the numbers and capabilities of troops available to the organization. The U.S. has reinforced its commitment to NATO, increasing troop deployments in Eastern Europe and support for European defense initiatives by committing nearly $3 billion in funding for additional fighter aircraft, air-defense batteries and munitions.

In Asia, around the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific Ocean, a vast region that the government often calls “ the Indo-Pacific ,” the U.S. has strengthened alliances with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines by conducting numerous military exercises and increasing military assistance. Efforts like the annual Marine Aviation Support exercise are aimed at countering Chinese military and political influence.

The U.S. has also sought to strengthen its alliances with the U.K. and Australia, with a commitment to sell up to five conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian navy by 2030.

Collectively, the U.S. has combined all of these efforts into a coordinated approach seeking to avoid open conflict with China and Russia. But the work is not yet done: The global political and military landscape is ever-changing, and new security challenges are always emerging.

Grace Jones , a master’s student in public policy and research assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, contributed research to this article.

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Military Learning and the Future of War

The U.S. National Defense Strategy of 2018 was an inflection point. The United States reoriented its defense enterprise on great power competition and conventional challenges that Russia and China pose. U.S. is steering away from the focus on counter-terrorism operations that have preoccupied the U.S. for the past 19 years. [1]   The impetus for this reorientation stems from a combination of factors:

• A desire to turn away from unpopular unconventional conflicts that seem to drag on interminably;
• The very real strides China in particular has made (and Russia has claimed to have made) toward fielding conventional military forces that could challenge or even defeat those of the U.S. in some scenarios;
• The aging and wearing-out of major American weapons systems based mostly on technologies of the 1970s and 1980s; and
• The advent of a new generation of advanced weapons systems including hypersonic missiles, drones and other unmanned systems, augmented by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other information technologies.

These concerns have concentrated the minds of America’s national security leaders in a good way—change is needed.  But they have also tended to focus the national security debate on a particular set of challenges related primarily to high-end conventional maneuver war. 

That focus is excessive.  The U.S. must certainly prepare far better for such conflicts than it is currently on track to do, but it must also recognize that almost any future war will incorporate many features observed in the post-9/11 wars as well as in the hybrid war and gray zone approaches that Russia and China have been pioneering.

It errs as well in framing the Chinese and Russian threats as more similar than they are, lumping both into the category of “great power competition” with a focus on conventional military capability.  The Russian and Chinese approaches to war and preparation for it, however, diverge in important ways.  Preparing for one does not automatically ensure adequate preparation for the other.

The U.S. is in a learning race as much as a technology race.  Russia and China are aggressively working to understand current conflicts, develop coherent theories about possible future conflicts, test those theories in their own and others’ conflicts, and then refine them and repeat the cycle. 

The U.S. is falling behind in this intellectual race perhaps even more than in the technological race.  Military thinkers envisioning future conflict typically imagine returning to the large-scale wars of the past with new technologies. [2] They struggle to imagine new modes of warfare and the systems, organizations, and doctrine to use them well – particularly before the full revolutionary capabilities of new technology have come to fruition in ways that permit large-scale experimentation. [3]   They remain excessively focused on the challenges of high-end conventional conflict without taking adequate account of the transformation particularly in Russian military thinking around the concept of hybrid war, in which military operations are subordinated to informational objectives.

Experimentation can occur before technologies are fielded and major wars erupt. Historically, interwar periods are rarely periods of peace, but rather periods of smaller conflicts. Small wars are catalysts for change that drive the best innovators and executors to imagine and prepare for future conflict. [4] The 1973 War partly inspired the development of U.S. Air-Land Battle Doctrine. [5] Peacetime sometimes produces new, challenging, and innovative modes of warfare; even states that lack the resources for widescale modernization can use interwar periods to experiment and learn. [6]

Our adversaries, and particularly Russia (and Iran), are now aggressively experimenting with new concepts and techniques in small wars, overseas engagements, and domestic crises.  The Russians are conducting extensive lessons-learned activities based on their experiences fighting in Syria and Ukraine, and are constantly updating their theory, doctrine, organization, and practice based on those lessons.  The Chinese are learning lessons from their historical and current pandemic and disaster relief operations, their special operations, wargaming, and observing other actors such as Russia overseas.

American military thinkers are suffering from these problems less than has been historically common. They are alive to the threats of weapons systems still in their infancy such as hypersonics and autonomous systems.  They are also thinking deeply about potential cyber attack scenarios far beyond anything the world has yet seen.  Part of the driving force behind the urgency of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which the Congressionally-mandated commission to review the NDS itself found not urgent enough, is precisely the concern that recent American defense budgets have not allocated sufficient resources to meet these coming challenges.

But the American discourse is falling into its traditional historical pattern in one sense.  The desire to turn away from “endless wars” and focus on fighting the kinds of wars Americans think they prefer seriously undermines efforts to learn lessons from the last two decades of conflict or even from ongoing small-scale conflicts in which the U.S. may or may not be participating.  Americans are thus more inclined to theorize about how war might evolve given changes in technology than to observe how it is evolving.  And the U.S. is also focusing on a future operating environment shaped more by technology than geopolitics. The U.S. is therefore at risk of losing the military learning race and finding at the start of the next major conflict that, despite having imagined some important developments in conventional war, it is still intellectually, doctrinally, and organizationally unprepared for the war it is in.

The Institute for the Study of War is therefore launching a series of papers that explores the ways the United States, its competitors including Russia and China, and these and other potential adversaries are learning from ongoing geopolitical competition and military engagements. The series explores the ways these evolutions in the operating environment provide opportunities for experimentation and testing of new technologies, capabilities, and approaches to war. The papers explore organizational adaptations to incorporate new capabilities, doctrinal changes to harness them, and the ability to institutionalize these changes in ways that will shape the future of war.

Return to the Military Learning & Future of War homepage . 

[1] “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge,” January 2018, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf .

[2] For this criticism of current thought, Sean McFate, The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder (New York: William Morrow, 2019).

[3] The robust literature on military lessons learned exceeds what the authors can place in a proposal footnote. Two seminal studies in are Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, edd., Military Effectiveness, 3 vols., (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); for historical cases of this specific phenomenon: Dennis Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany (Archon Books, 1975); J.F.C. Fuller, “Plan 1919,” in Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier , 1938, in which he imagines fighting one-sided, uncontested armored warfare using tanks as if they are at sea rather than on terrain.

[4] Max Boot, Savage Wars of Peace and War Made New ; David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Oxford: 2009).

[5] John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle:  The Development of Army Doctrine 1973-1982, TRADOC Army Historical Series, 1984); for a prescient case study that illuminates how Hezbollah and Iranian proxies learned lessons that they now are applying to fight the ongoing wars in Syria, Stephen Biddle and Jeff Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy , Strategic Studies Institute: 2008, available at https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=882 .

[6] Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Mary R. Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Reprint 2014).

The Contemporary Spectrum of Conflict: Protracted, Gray Zone, Ambiguous, and Hybrid Modes of War

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Heritage.org

Oct 5, 2015 37 min read

Frank G. Hoffman, PhD

Hew Strachan, the preeminent military historian at Oxford, stated in a lecture delivered in 2006 that one of our most serious problems today is that we do not know what war is. He put his finger on a critical shortfall in Western thinking about security:

If we are to identify whether war is changing, and—if it is—how those changes affect international relations, we need to know first what war is. One of the central challenges confronting international relations today is that we do not really know what is a war and what is not. The consequences of our confusion would seem absurd, were they not so profoundly dangerous. 1

The larger problem is that the U.S. has a strategic culture that does not appreciate history or strategy, nor does it devote sufficient attention to the breadth of adversaries facing it and the many different forms that human conflict can take. Many current critics of U.S. policy or strategy in the Middle East or Asia bemoan the aimless state of strategy and policy. While there are deficiencies in U.S. planning and strategy processes, the larger intellectual challenge is a blinkered conception of conflict that frequently quotes the great Prussian soldier Clausewitz without realizing the true essence of his theory and how it applies to the ever evolving, interactive phenomenon we call “war.” Moreover, the U.S. national security establishment too often fails to understand opponents, their strategic cultures, and their own unique conceptions of victory and war.

Current perceptions about the risks of major war, our presumed preponderance of military power, a flawed understanding of irregular war, and our ingrained reliance on technological panaceas like precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and drone warfare make serious defense planning ever harder. This misunderstanding afflicts the military as much as it does political elites and the general public. At least three consequences can be expected from a flawed grasp of contemporary conflict:

• Unreasonable political and public expectations for quick wins at low cost,
• An overly simplistic grasp of the application of blunt military power and what it will supposedly achieve, and
• Naïve views of both adversaries and the context for conflict.

As our own recent history shows, however, the reality is much more complex. War is seldom so clear-cut, and “victory” is far more elusive in reality. The vast majority of conflicts are seldom as precise or as free of casualties or political frustrations as we tend to remember. We prefer Operation Desert Storm (1991) as a simple and satisfying war. It pitted good against evil, and its conclusion was decisive, albeit not as decisive as World War II. But most conflicts are messy, relatively ill-defined in scope and by objective, with an array of actors, and unsatisfying in outcome.

The conflict spectrum includes a range of activities to which students and practitioners of war refer when attempting to characterize a given conflict by participants, methods, level of effort, types of forces, levels of organization or sophistication, etc. As should be expected in any attempt to define aspects of something as complex as war, there is ample debate over characterizations and definitions, whether one form of war is more or less complex than any other, or whether war can be so neatly categorized as to subdivide it along a spectrum in the first place. Debates over supposedly “new” and generational wars are common today in academic circles, and the prevalence of irregular wars is increasingly recognized. 2

Generally speaking, large-scale conventional war is rather easy to understand. The term evokes images of tank battles, artillery barrages, planes bombing targets, and large masses of men clashing in battle as depicted in countless movies and books. Similarly, discussions of counterinsurgency (COIN) and stability operations often need little clarification given U.S. involvement in such operations for nearly 14 years in the larger Middle East and Central Asia regions.

Over the past decade, however, other terms have entered the lexicon of national security and defense analysts as they have attempted to describe conflicts that fall short of conventional war but are something substantively different from COIN and stability operations. What follows are descriptions of these other types in order to draw out and clarify the range variation of conflicts we face in the contemporary security environment.

Gray Zone Conflicts and Ambiguous Warfare

Recently, there has been a good deal of discussion about “gray zone” conflicts. This term appears in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and has also been reflected in official Japanese government documents. 3 The term captures deliberate multidimensional activities by a state actor just below the threshold of aggressive use of military forces. In such conflicts, adversaries employ an integrated suite of national and subnational instruments of power in an ambiguous war to gain specified strategic objectives without crossing the threshold of overt conflict. Adversaries may employ proxy forces to increase the level of military power being used without losing deniability.

Examples of recent gray zone conflicts include China’s assertive behaviors in the South China Sea, sometimes referred to as “salami slicing tactics” by which they carefully erode the existing international order and attempt to change the norms of international behavior and assert their preferred reinterpretation of existing laws and rules of the road. 4 China’s diplomatic assertions, information announcements, and deliberate use of fishery/maritime security forces to assert sovereignty in and around contested shoals and islands in the Pacific constitute a good case study in deliberately deniable acts of aggression. Russia appears to be following similar tactics in numerous countries, a form of “Simmering Borscht” by Russian officials seeking to extend Moscow’s sphere of influence without triggering an armed response by Western Europe or the United States.

Both cases clearly demonstrate that states that lack the capability to gain their strategic objectives with conventional means can find ways to erode the international order or to paralyze responses by other states through ambiguously aggressive actions. They also demonstrate that states that do possess the necessary conventional means may determine that their objectives can be achieved without resorting to conventional war and that this “gray zone” of war may actually suit their purposes better. These countries seem to recognize that U.S. strategic culture conceptualizes war and peace as two distinctive conditions—a perspective that is not held by other cultures.

Gray zone conflicts are aimed at a gap in our intellectual preparation of the battlespace and a seam in how we think about conflict. As noted by defense policy veteran Nadia Schadlow:

By failing to understand that the space between war and peace is not an empty one—but a landscape churning with political, economic, and security competitions that require constant attention—American foreign policy risks being reduced to a reactive and tactical emphasis on the military instrument by default. 5

Senior U.K. officials have articulated the need to counter what they call ambiguous warfare. The relevance of this term can be seen in Russia’s seizure of Crimea, as Moscow’s planned actions were deliberately enacted to obscure attribution to Moscow and to paralyze or delay Western responses. But Russia’s activities in eastern Ukraine, where over 7,000 fatalities and sizable battles have occurred, are anything but ambiguous: Russian forces, Spetsnaz advisers, armor, and artillery are employed there in direct support of Russian separatists. It is neither masked nor concealed.

The war in eastern Ukraine is not just a proxy war; it is a combination of advanced military assets with irregular forces, propaganda, and coercion of the civilian population. Vladimir Putin may elect to disavow these forces, promulgate new laws making any public notice of Russian casualties illegal, and cremate the bodies of his fallen soldiers to avoid revealing the depth and mounting costs of Russian involvement, but none of this makes the conflict anything other than a Russian operation.

Russia’s larger set of activities against the West do not involve warfare as the U.S. has traditionally defined it. Moreover, “warfare” connotes a defense-centric response or a principal responsibility in solely military terms. Thus, “gray zone” or “ambiguous conflicts” are better terms that convey the complex nuances of such conflicts.

Irregular Wars

Irregular wars can be fought by states but generally involve non-state actors using sub-conventional capabilities including ambushes, raids, and minor attacks. Existing U.S. doctrine defines irregular warfare as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. 6 U.S. defense efforts in irregular warfare can include counterterrorism; unconventional warfare; foreign internal defense; counterinsurgency; and stability operations that, in the context of irregular warfare, involve establishing or reestablishing order in a fragile state or territory. 7

Irregular warfare is characterized by indirect and asymmetric approaches that avoid direct and risky confrontations with strong forces. The goal for an irregular force is to erode its adversary’s power, legitimacy, and will. Such conflicts are usually drawn out or protracted in time. They can include insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, terrorism, and counterterrorism. Modern cases of irregular warfare increasingly include activities that we traditionally characterize as criminal behavior, and transnational criminal organizations may be present in such conflict. The level of violence in irregular wars can be low but can flare quickly with attacks or acts of terrorism.

These conflicts are well above the more indirect and less violent levels seen in gray zone conflicts but below the threshold of conventional war where armor, artillery and airpower assets are employed with greater degrees of integration and violence between combatants. The Islamic State or Daesh represents the high end of an irregular adversary, with high levels of adaptability and increasing lethality. 8

Terrorism is a subset of irregular warfare. Terrorism is often a label assigned to certain types of armed groups rather than an accurate description of their mode of war. The official definition found in Title 22 of the U.S. Code provides that terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” 9 It could be a tactic of a revolutionary movement, or it could be the strategy of choice for a small cell of zealots.

There is widespread consensus in the security field that the democratization of lethal means of conflict will embolden small networks or even individuals to greater violence. 10 Not much more than a decade ago, several forecasters projected a new age in ultra or catastrophic terrorism in which terrorists would attempt to kill thousands of Americans in a single day. 11 They were routinely ignored until 9/11. Politically motivated violence against innocent noncombatants has continued to evolve, with increasing numbers of large-scale attacks occurring in several ongoing conflicts, most of which are centered in civil wars. U.S. intelligence officials believe such conflicts (Nigeria, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq) constitute a major near-term threat to our interests. 12

The past few years have seen a significant rise in terrorist attacks and fatalities. 13 Much of this increase is connected to Islamic extremists. 14 The U.S. government–sponsored National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) reported some 8,400 terrorist attacks in 2012, with 15,400 fatalities. 15 The aggregate of fatalities is also increasing, as these attacks produced more than 17,800 deaths and 32,500 injuries in 2013. 16

In 2014, the number of terrorist attacks jumped 35 percent, to 13,500, while the number of fatalities soared 81 percent, to 33,000. 17 The majority of these attacks (60 percent) occurred in five countries (Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria), and almost 80 percent of fatalities from terrorist attacks also took place in five countries (Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria). Over 9,000 people were kidnapped, representing a 300 percent increase. The most significant increase was in large-scale attacks (those that kill over 100 people), which jumped tenfold from two to 20. 18 (For the most violent states and global totals for 2014, see Table 1.)

Al-Qaeda’s evolving but persistent threat is just one element in this projection. 19 There is no doubt that the core of the old al-Qaeda has been transformed. 20 Some analysts contend that it has a better strategy, deeper bench, greater resilience or dexterity, more appeal, and higher amounts of sanctuary than imagined. 21 As START Executive Director William Braniff has noted, “groups generally associated with al-Qa’ida remain the most lethal groups in the world.” 22 Worse, ISIS is competing with al-Qaeda for influence, assets, and recruits and is more nuanced in how it employs violence and combines terrorism, repression, and services. 23

Violence is not limited to the Middle East or South Asia. Boko Haram, for example, is considered responsible for over 10,000 deaths since 2001.It was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State in 2013. Recent congressional reports have highlighted this group’s linkages to al-Qaeda and potential for direct threats to American interests. 24 Its leader, Abu Bakr Shekau, pledged allegiance to Islamic State emir Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in March 2015. 25 Boko Haram’s grisly campaign includes a suicide attack on a U.N. building in Abuja in 2011, repeated attacks that have killed dozens of students, and the kidnapping of 250 girls in 2014. 26

To help the reader, a construct for a spectrum of conflict is presented in Figure 1.

Hybrid Wars

Building on Marine General Charles Krulak’s depiction of future wars as the “stepchild[ren] of Chechnya,” 27 U.S. Marine analysts identified trends suggesting deliberate efforts to blur and blend methods of war. This forecasted convergence evolved into a theory of hybrid threats. 28 The projection was borne out by the example of Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon a few years later and appears to be relevant to other conflicts as well. 29 Two Secretaries of Defense in the United States found the concept useful, 30 and numerous other military leaders, including Chiefs of Staff of the Army and several Joint leaders, recognized that current “bins” were not matching up with contemporary conflict. 31 Hybrid threats are now part of the lexicon used by the senior levels of the U.S. military in the Quadrennial Defense Reviews, in national-level intelligence reports on the future character of war, and in various top-level documents of other countries. 32 Some European military analysts, pushed by Russia’s example, have also embraced the hybrid evolution as a feature of contemporary conflict. 33

The term “hybrid” reflects more than a cross-breeding or blurring of regular and irregular tactics. It was originally defined as involving “Any adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, catastrophic terrorism, and criminal behavior in the battlespace to obtain desired political objectives.” 34 The crime, socially disruptive behavior, and mass terrorism aspects of hybrid warfare should not be overlooked, but the fusion of advanced capabilities with the fluidity of irregular tactics is key and has been borne out repeatedly over the past decade. Hybrid theory is also seen in Russian campaigns in Georgia and Ukraine. 35 In the Crimea, Russia demonstrated that it had learned from its performance in Georgia in 2008 and had sought more indirect and hybrid methods. 36 This was hardly new or “ambiguous,” but it was effective under very unique circumstances. This led the Secretary General of NATO in Brussels to employ the term as well.

Putin is certainly not reinventing warfare, but a new generation of leaders, spawned within the KGB, are clearly applying long-standing Russian concepts of protracted conflict that are not well understood by Americans. 37 The chief of Russia’s general staff noted in 2013 that “War and peace, are becoming more blurred. Methods of conflict have changed, and now involve the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other non-military measures.” 38 What some call the “Gerasimov Doctrine” is consistent with the trends identified by U.S. military theorists and the intelligence community about hybrid threats. For this reason, hybrid warfare is now an explicit discussion point at NATO and major European think tanks. 39

It also applies to Iranian doctrine and exercises. 40 Hybrid threat theory is most often tied to ground conflicts, but Iranian naval force investments and exercises clearly demonstrate that high-tech, swarming, hybrid war at sea is possible. 41 Iran’s mixture of fast but lethal small boats, mini-submarines, mines, illegal seizures, advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, and threats to interdict vital oil lanes is very representative of a hybrid maritime threat.

Some analysts have recently conflated hybrid threats “with incremental approaches to remain below the threshold of intervention from the U.S. or our allies.” 42 Such an extension of hybrid threat theory is understandable given the theory’s sourcing from Russian and Chinese writings, which deal with the fusion of various non-military tools (finance, propaganda, lawfare, etc.) with threats of force. However, as noted earlier, the “below the threshold” idea fits better with gray zone or ambiguous conflicts, which involve conflict activity short of violence. Hybrid threats ably combine various modes of fighting in time and space, with attendant violence in the middle of the conflict spectrum. Gray zone conflicts do not cross that threshold and use a different mix of methods, entirely short of bloodshed.

Unconventional Conflict

Some authors have advanced the concept that we need to reinvigorate U.S. capacity to engage in “warfare” with greater agility at lower levels short of war. Max Boot and Dave Maxwell have noted American deficiencies in responding to foreign sources of conflict that the United States used to deal with during the Cold War. 43 They have refreshed George Kennan’s arguments from the 1950s for the institutionalization of U.S. capacity for political warfare, which Kennan defined as:

the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures, and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states. 44

Kennan’s definition of political warfare is misleading. His concept has little to do with warfare per se ; it is largely about non-military efforts associated with subversion or counter-subversion. While these can have a political element to them, in terms of aiding political groups and factions, the range of efforts involved goes beyond the diplomatic and political sphere.

But there is little doubt that unconventional warfare and the types of techniques included in Kennan’s definition of political warfare are relevant to the 21st century. 45 Unlike other forms of warfare in the proposed spectrum of conflict, unconventional warfare does not fit easily within a spectrum in terms of the scale of violence. Moreover, unconventional warfare can occur concurrently with other methods in both peace and war. Thus, it is depicted in Figure 1 as ranging across the entire spectrum, not just by the intensity of violence.

This concept would seem to have great merit as a response to both Russian and Chinese actions in gray zone conflicts, since neither state embraces the idea that war and peace are binary conditions. Both of them, as well as other strategic cultures, envision a more complex continuum of cooperation, competition, collaboration, and conflict. Moreover, many other nations do not organize their government institutions with the same black-and-white military and non-military distinctions as the U.S. maintains.There is evidence that some components of the U.S. military are devoting intellectual capital to this issue, 46 and Congress has shown interest in assessing U.S. capabilities in this domain. By its nature, a U.S. capacity for unconventional warfare would involve the ability to develop and execute a strategy that tightly integrated measures needed to counter the subversion, propaganda, and political actions of gray area conflict short of actual warfare.

Experience with the Russians, both during the Cold War and more recently, suggests that the admixture of political/economic/subversive activity remains an element of their operational art and one that we would be well advised to begin studying so that we can counter it. 47 For example, the information domain will be increasingly contested. Both states and non-state groups will exploit the Internet and other forms of social media across the conflict spectrum. 48 We can expect to see cyber insecurity and information warfare attacks as part of any serious challenger’s portfolio, with such tools rapidly evolving to the point where they should be considered a “combat arm” of the unconventional threat. 49

Limited Conventional War

To the right of hybrid conflicts on the spectrum, we next consider “limited” wars. These are generally fought between state actors using conventional military means but are bounded by such limiting considerations as geographic boundaries, types of targets, or disciplined use of force.

When considering objectives being pursued with military means, one man’s limited war is admittedly another’s total war. As an example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was conceived and executed within the limited category. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime by conventional force of arms was an absolute objective, and Hussein’s efforts to prevent its achievement made the war an unlimited event fought for survival, but the conduct of the war by the U.S. was highly disciplined in target selection, geographic setting, initial objectives, and the way in which military force was used.

Sir Lawrence Freedman has applied the term “limited conventional war” to describe the Ukrainian conflict, 50 but there are two problems with this classification in this instance.

First, as a concept emanating from Cold War–era discussions of the application of nuclear weapons, it addresses Moscow’s objectives but says little about the details of Russia’s strategy or methods. In fact, most wars are inherently limited by objective or means of fighting. Clausewitz’s theoretical ideal of “absolute wars” is rarely pursued. Thus, the term has little intellectual value or granularity since it makes few useful distinctions other than stating the obvious: that Russia is not actively using the full range of its strategic arsenal. More particularly, it says little about Kiev’s perspective, as the dismemberment of Ukraine is hardly a limited matter for that government.

Second, limited wars are generally conventional wars, conducted by state actors that are relatively open about operating short of their full military capacity in pursuit of limited aims. This is something that, because of Russia’s deliberate ambiguity and opaqueness in its activities, is not terribly relevant or accurate with regard to the character of conflict in eastern Ukraine or the methods Russia is using to obtain its policy aims.

The challenge of characterizing any conflict aside, this remains a necessary and useful category to describe conflicts between regional powers or by a major power along its borders, if only because it facilitates informed debate on corresponding policies, diplomatic and political responses, and one’s own military efforts.

Major Theater War

After more than 20 years of peace support, stability, and counterinsurgency operations in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, many in the security community have lost sight of the potential for major theater wars. In fact, a lot of pundits mistakenly believe that great-power competition and serious large-scale combat are things of the past. Sadly, they are wrong. There have been positive trends in reduced levels of interstate conflict for a generation, but several key conditions that buttressed that era of strategic stability are being eroded.

The prevailing American-led power structure has contributed to subdued levels of interstate conflict and war. However, that system and its attendant security are being challenged by major powers, abetted by a reduced U.S. presence in key regions and diplomatic affairs relative to the Cold War era and by some regional players who are building up or pursuing nuclear weapons and acquiring other destabilizing weapon systems. Alterations in the current power system by China’s significant economic development and rapid military modernization, or by Russia’s more militaristic approach to its security interests in Europe, the Arctic, and elsewhere, conceivably could produce circumstances in which great-power competition erupts into a war. 51

Even academics favoring a less assertive foreign policy and a smaller U.S. military admit that “[h]istorically, transition periods marked by hegemonic decline and the simultaneous emergence of new great powers have been unstable and prone to war.” 52 The emergence of rising powers generates armed conflict with the existing predominant powers. 53 Major conflict can also be generated by fears of declining powers that may be inclined to take far greater risks to preclude losing prestige or influence. Russia’s actions during the past two years give some clues as to the potentiality for interstate war from a power that cannot resolve its lost capacity to sustain its status or that seeks to deflect public attention from a declining domestic condition.

Great-power conflict is never inevitable, but for evidence of a disturbing trend, it should be noted that while U.S. military budgets are being reduced some 25 percent in real terms, aggregate military spending in Asia is on the rise and is now greater than total spending in Europe. 54 Moreover, spending by European allies of the U.S. is down sharply as they attempt to reestablish their economic growth while holding on to social safety nets.

Declines in the preponderance of U.S. power in the Asia–Pacific theater have reduced conventional deterrence, and China’s military expansion could accelerate instability. The United States is challenged to demonstrate that it retains the ability to conduct military operations in the Asia–Pacific region and fulfill its treaty obligations to its allies. This requires a military capacity—one that is growing increasingly suspect—to achieve two critical U.S. objectives: maintaining freedom of the commons (air, sea, space, and cyberspace) and limiting the potential for large-scale regional conflict through deterrence. The goal, one strategist noted, “is to leave everyone in Asia believing that when it comes to solving regional problems, there are better answers than the force of arms.” 55

In addition to great-power competition, conflicts can be stoked by weak leaders exploiting sectarian tensions for personal political benefit or buttressing their legitimacy by appeals to nationalism. This can produce aggressive or irrational acts. Nationalist fervor can spin out of control, inflating fears or goals beyond cold calculations of national interest and political compromise, which in turn can lead to gross miscalculation and aggressive actions that increase the odds of conflict.The possibility that this might occur in Asia cannot be overlooked. Meanwhile, in Europe, Putin often exploits the deepest chords of Russian nationalism and Orthodox Christianity to buttress his melting political capital. 56

The combination of decreased American engagement and military capacity with the overt aggressiveness of two authoritarian states that do not hesitate to flount accepted norms of international behavior is not helpful. The U.S. is facing the increased potential for major conflict between large states that have advanced and potent military capabilities. Any comprehensive assessment of the overall force size, capabilities, and readiness levels of the U.S. military should raise concerns about the country’s ability to handle such a major crisis, even noting that perceptions of American weakness can prompt militarized opportunism.

America has entered an era in which its technological advantage is rapidly being eroded and its military superiority is increasingly being challenged. This has led to calls from the Pentagon to energize efforts to seek a leap-ahead technology to offset its lost technical dominance. 57

Given the high possibility of sustained small conflicts (gray, irregular, and hybrid), the potential incidence of limited and major conflict also increases, because any American Administration can find itself without adequate means to deter or defeat attacks from opportunists or aggressor states. 58 Moreover, readiness funding levels to cover the full range of training tasks needed for the spectrum of threats for which the military must be prepared are lacking.

The world has enjoyed a holiday from major-power war for quite some time. The aggregate effect of America’s potent strategic deterrent, military preparedness, and robust alliances produced a long peace. All of these contextual conditions are now at risk as a consequence of sequestration and the West’s reduced willingness and capacity to take active measures to sustain an international order that was carefully designed and sustained to preserve peace. As former Pentagon official Dov Zakheim has observed, “The whittling away of American preeminence that we have witnessed over the past decade was not foreordained. It was the product of conscious choices….” 59 We should consciously reset those choices to be better prepared for tomorrow’s conflicts.

The U.S. national security community should avoid narrow categorizations. The black-and-white distinction between war and peace, or traditional war and irregular war, makes for nice, simple boxes, but the real world is not so easily categorized. In fact, some adversaries seek to exploit U.S. paradigms and the gaping institutional seams that they create.

Rather, we need to embrace the fact that future opponents have their own ideas about how to fight, and they tend to mix and match those ideas with deliberate combinations of modes of conflict. Hard-wired and quaint notions of declared wars between states with symmetrically equipped armies and navies facing each other on defined battlegrounds are no longer helpful. The U.S. must expand its definitions and concepts beyond its history, cultural biases, and organizational preferences. Ultimately, its security is predicated upon its national security community’s being aware of the enduring continuities of war and possessing an adaptive ability to counter the many forms that warfare can take.

The United States faces adversaries capable of using strategies and techniques across the entire conflict spectrum. It must not give ground in gray zone conflicts if its interests are challenged. Europe and the Middle East today are a Petri dish of hybrid conflict, 60 and the Defense Department’s current leadership team understands this evolving hybrid challenge. 61 The U.S. needs to prepare for that, and reinvigorating its unconventional conflict capability will help. 62 We should not lose sight of the reality that the “gold standard” for high-end conventional war is based on excellence in joint combined arms warfare.

Large-scale conflict between states is not a relic of history. The potential for interstate war still exists and is arguably increasing. It is the most demanding form of war with the most costly of consequences, and the U.S. is less prepared for it than it should be—a concern raised in the bipartisan Independent QDR Report, which found that the U.S. is seriously shortchanging its national security interests. 63 Appreciating the broad range of challenges and threats we face is the first step toward recognizing a growing danger.

• Hew Strachan, “The Changing Character of War,” lecture delivered at the Graduate Institute of International Relations, Geneva, Switzerland, November 9, 2006, p. 2, http://www.europaeum.org/files/publications/pamphlets/HewStrachan.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).
• For an overview of the debate about generational warfare, see Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare , ed. Terry Terriff, Aaron Karp, and Regina Karp (London: Routledge, 2008). On the frequency and pervasiveness of irregular conflict, see Max Boot, Invisible Armies, An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (New York: Liveright, 2013).
• U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report , February 2010, p. 73, http://www.defense.gov/QDR/QDR%20as%20of%2029JAN10%201600.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015); Japanese Ministry of Defense, Defense of Japan 2010 ( Annual White Paper ), p. 61, http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_paper/2010.html (accessed July 8, 2015).
• For an excellent set of ideas about how to impose costs and counter coercive activities, see Patrick M. Cronin and Alexander Sullivan, “Preserving the Rules: Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia,” Center for a New American Security Maritime Strategy Series , March 2015, http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS%20Maritime%20Strategy%20Series%20Capstone.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• Nadia Schadlow, “Peace and War: The Space Between,” War on the Rocks , August 18, 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/peace-and-war-the-space-between/ (accessed July 8, 2015).
• U.S. Department of Defense, Irregular Warfare (IW) Joint Operating Concept (JCO): Version 1.0 , September 11, 2007, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/concepts/joint_concepts/joc_iw_v1.pdDf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• U.S. Department of Defense, “Irregular Warfare (IW),” Directive No. 3000.07, August 28, 2014, p. 1, http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300007p.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• Jessica Lewis McFate, The ISIS Defense in Iraq and Syria: Countering an Adaptive Enemy , Institute for the Study of War Middle East Security Report No. 27, May 2015, http://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS%20Defense%20in%20Iraq%20and%20Syria%20--%20Standard.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• 22 U.S. Code 2656 f(d)(2). See, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism, “Glossary,” http://www.state.gov/j/ct/info/c16718.htm (accessed July 8, 2015). Other official definitions of terrorism appear in various places in the U.S. Code, including 6 U.S.C. 101(16) and 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(22).
• The term “democratization of violence” relates to the “increased and growing access to lethal capabilities contributing to persistent instability and the rising power of non-state actors. The increased access to a range of small arms, crew served weapons, and indirect fire weapons, and improvised explosive device developments are augmented by the inexpensive, off-the-shelf, innovative technologies being applied by terrorists, rebels, insurgents, protestors and a range of non-state actors such as e.g. small-to-medium size unmanned vehicles/drones, robotics.” See Derek Harvey, “What Is the Democratization of Violence?” October 5, 2014, http://derekharvey.org/2014/10/05/what-is-the-democratization-of-violence/ (accessed July 9, 2015).
• See Ashton B. Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow, “Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger,” Foreign Affairs , Vol. 77, No. 6 (November/December 1998), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1998-11-01/catastrophic-terrorism-tackling-new-danger (accessed July 9, 2015); United States Commission on National Security /21st Century, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, Supporting Research and Analysis (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 15, 1999), http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/nssg/NWR_A.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, “Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, Senate Armed Services Committee,” February 26, 2015, pp. 13–16, http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Unclassified_2015_ATA_SFR_-_SASC_FINAL.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Rohan Gunaratna, “The Global Terrorist Threat: Set to Grow in 2014,” S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, RSIS Commentaries , January 3, 2014, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CO14002.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015).
• David Inserra and James Phillips, “67 Islamist Terrorist Plots Since 9/11: Spike in Plots Inspired by Terrorist Groups, Unrest in Middle East,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4392, April 22, 2015, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/67-islamist-terrorist-plots-since-911-spike-in-plots-inspired-by-terrorist-groups-unrest-in-middle-east .
• The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) describes itself as “a Center of Excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” It is hosted by the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. See START, website, last updated June 2015, http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ (accessed July 9, 2015).
• U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism, “Statistical Information on Terrorism in 2013,” http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224831.htm (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Carol Morello, “Iraq Issues and Syria’s Civil War Cause Spike in Terror, Report Says,” The Washington Post , June 20, 2015, p. A2.
• U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism, Country Reports on Terrorism 2014 , June 2015, http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2014/239416.htm (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Daniel L. Byman, “The Resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq,” testimony in joint hearing, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, December 12, 2013, http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2013/12/12-resurgence-al-qaeda-iraq-byman (accessed July 8, 2015); Seth G. Jones, A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014).
• Ellen Knickmeyer and Hakim Almasmari, “Al Qaeda Poses New Threat in Yemen,” The Wall Street Journal , May 8, 2014, p. A11.
• Bruce Hoffman, “Al Qaeda’s Uncertain Future,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism , Vol. 36, Issue 8 (2013), pp. 635–653; Azeem Ibrahim, The Resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, May 2014); Mary Habeck, “Getting It Right, US National Security Policy and Al Qaeda Since 2011,” American Enterprise Institute Critical Threats Project Report , April 2014.
• William Braniff, testimony in hearing, State of Al Qaeda, Its Affiliates, and Associated Groups: View from Outside Experts , Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, February 4, 2014, http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/hearings-display?ContentRecord_id=F754C1E6-F88A-4C17-92CC-D51B071AEA03 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Haim Malka and William Lawrence, “Jihadi-Salifism’s Next Generation,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Middle East Program Analysis Paper , October 2013, http://csis.org/publication/jihadi-salafisms-next-generation (accessed July 8, 2015); Seth G. Jones, “Back to the Future: The Resurgence of Salafi-Jihadists,” testimony before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, February 4, 2014, http://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT405.html (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Report, Boko Haram: Growing Threat to the U.S. Homeland , prepared by the Majority Staff of the Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives, September 13, 2013, http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/documents/09-13-13-Boko-Haram-Report.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015.
• Thomas Joscelyn, “Boko Haram Pledges Allegiance to the Islamic State,” The Long War Journal , March 8, 2015, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/03/boko-haram-leader-pledges-allegiance-to-the-islamic-state.php (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Charlotte Florance, “Fighting Boko Haram Does Not End with Finding the Girls,” The Daily Signal, May 28, 2014, http://dailysignal.com/2014/05/28/fighting-boko-haram-end-finding-girls/ (accessed July 8, 2015); International Crisis Group, “Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency,” Africa Report No. 216, April 3, 2014, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/west-africa/nigeria/216-curbing-violence-in-nigeria-ii-the-boko-haram-insurgency.aspx (accessed July 8, 2015).
• See, for example, General Charles C. Krulak, USMC, “The Three Block War: Fighting in Urban Areas,” Vital Speeches of the Day , Vol. 64, Issue 5 (December 15, 1997), pp. 139–142.
• William J. Nemeth, Future War and Chechnya: A Case for Hybrid Warfare , unpublished master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, June 2002; James N. Mattis and Frank G. Hoffman, “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings , Vol. 132, No. 11 (November 2005), http://milnewstbay.pbworks.com/f/MattisFourBlockWarUSNINov2005.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); Frank G. Hoffman, “Hybrid Threats: Reconceptualizing the Evolving Character of Modern Conflict,” National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Forum No. 240, April 2009, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lang=en&id=98862 (accessed July 14, 2015).
• Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy , U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, September 2008, http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/web/THE%202006%20LEBANON%20CAMPAIGN.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); David E. Johnson, “Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza,” RAND Corporation Occasional Paper , 2010, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP285.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015).
• Robert M. Gates, “The National Defense Strategy: Striking the Right Balance,” Joint Force Quarterly , Issue 52 (1st Quarter 2009), p. 2–7, http://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-52.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); Leon E. Panetta, Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., October 11, 2011, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4903 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• General James T. Conway, USMC, Admiral Gary Roughead, USN, and Admiral Thad W. Allen, USCG, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower , October 2007, http://ise.gov/sites/default/files/Maritime_Strategy.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); Admiral Gary Roughead, USN, Remarks at the Current Strategy Forum, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 16, 2009; U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 , June 2008, http://www.onr.navy.mil/~/media/Files/About-ONR/usmc_vision_strategy_2025_0809.ashx (accessed July 14, 2015); Admiral J. C. Harvey, Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces, remarks as written, Surface Navy Symposium, January 12, 2010, www.public.navy.mil/usff/.../hybrid_warfare-sna_speech.doc (accessed July 8, 2015); General George C. Casey, U.S. Army, “America’s Army in an Era of Persistent Conflict,” Army Magazine , Vol. 58, No. 10 (October 2008), pp. 19–28, http://www.ausa.org/publications/armymagazine/archive/2008/10/Documents/Casey_1008.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); General Martin Dempsey, U.S. Army, “Versatility as Institutional Imperative,” Small Wars Journal , blog post, March 10, 2009, http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/versatility-as-institutional-imperative (accessed July 14, 2015); General James F. Amos, USMC, Commandant’s Planning Guidance , 2010, http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/35th%20CMC’s%20Planning%20Guidance.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); Raymond T. Odierno, “The U.S. Army in a Time of Transition: Building a Flexible Force,” Foreign Affairs , Vol. 91, No. 3 (May/June 2012), p. 10.
• National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds , December 2012, p. 67, http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/GlobalTrends_2030.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015).
• General Sir Richard Dannatt, Keynote Speech, Royal United Services Institute Land Warfare Conference, June 23–25, 2009, https://www.rusi.org/events/ref:E496B737B57852/info:public/infoID:E4A40D3C888784/#.VZA_BLtRHcs (accessed July 8, 2015); General Lord David Richards, “Reflections on 10 Years of Regional Security Changes,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS Manama Dialogue 2014: 10th Regional Security Summit, December 7, 2014, https://www.iiss.org/en/events/manama%20dialogue/archive/manama-dialogue-2014-3b96/plenary5-845a/richards-f42b (accessed July 14, 2015). See also “Hybrid Insecurity in Developing Countries,” Chapter 2, Part III in International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 2014: The Annual Review of World Affairs (London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 53–64; “Hybrid Warfare: Challenge and Response,” Chapter 1, Part III in International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2015: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and Defence Economics (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 17–20.
• Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, December 2007, pp. 14, 58, http://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/stories/publications/potomac_hybridwar_0108.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015); Frank G. Hoffman, “Hybrid vs. Compound War,” Armed Forces Journal, October 2009, http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/web/4198658.pdf (accessed July 14, 2015).
• Anders Fogh Rasmussen, quoted in Mark Landler and Michael Gordon, “NATO Chief Warns of Duplicity by Putin on Ukraine,” The New York Times , July 8, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/world/europe/nato-chief-warns-of-duplicity-by-putin-on-ukraine.html?_r=0 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Sam Jones, “Ukraine: Russia’s New Art of War,” Financial Times , August 28, 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ea5e82fa-2e0c-11e4-b760-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3O01r9qjy (accessed July 14, 2015); Yuri Drazdow “Modern Hybrid War, by Russia’s Rules,” Minsk Herald , November 3, 2014, http://minskherald.com/2014/11/russian-new-military-doctrine/ (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Robert Strausz-Hupé, William R. Kintner, James E. Dougherty, and Alvin J. Cottrell, Protracted Conflict (New York: Harper & Row for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1959). For modern commentators, see Peter Pomerantsev, “How Putin Is Reinventing Warfare,” Foreign Policy , May 5, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/ (accessed July 15, 2015); S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “The Nature and Content of a New-Generation Warfare,” Military Thought , Issue 4 (2013), pp. 12–23, http://www.eastviewpress.com/Files/MT_FROM%20THE%20CURRENT%20ISSUE_No.4_2013.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).
• General Valeriy Gerasimov, “Nonlinear Warfare,” VPK, February 2013; Janis Berzins, “Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy,” National Defence Academy of Latvia, Center for Security and Strategic Research Policy Paper No. 2, April 2014.
• Rasmussen, quoted in Landler and Gordon, “NATO Chief Warns of Duplicity by Putin on Ukraine.”
• Marc Lindemann, “Laboratory of Asymmetry: The 2006 Lebanon War and the Evolution of Iranian Ground Tactics,” Military Review , May–June 2010, pp. 105–116, http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20100630_art015.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).
• F. G. Hoffman, “‘Hybrid Threats’: Neither Omnipotent nor Unbeatable,” Orbis , Vol. 54, Issue 3 (Summer 2010), pp. 441–455.
• Robert A. Newson, “The 3 Areas Where the Navy Is Adjusting Its Operating Strategy,” Defense One , May 13, 2015, http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/05/3-areas-where-navy-adjusting-its-operating-strategy/112750/ (accessed July 8, 2015).
• For more on this topic, see Frank Hoffman, “On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs Hybrid Threats,” War on the Rocks , July 28, 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfare-political-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/ (accessed July 17, 2015), and David Maxwell, “Do We Really Understand Unconventional Warfare?” Small Wars Journal , October 23, 2014, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/do-we-really-understand-unconventional-warfare (accessed July 17, 2015).
• For Kennan’s policy memo promoting this initiative under the auspices of the State Department, see “Policy Staff Planning Memorandum,” May 4, 1948, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/65ciafounding3.htm (accessed July 15, 2015).
• U.S Army Special Operations Command, “SOF Support to Political Warfare,” White Paper , March 10, 2015, https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6891151/Support%20to%20Political%20Warfare%20White%20Paper%20v2.3-RMT%20%2810MAR2015%29%20%20%20.pdf (accessed July 15, 2015).
• U.S. Army Special Operations Command, “Counter-Unconventional Warfare,” White Paper , September 26, 2014, https://info.publicintelligence.net/USASOC-CounterUnconventionalWarfare.pdf (accessed July 15, 2015).
• David Maxwell, “Taking a Spoon to a Gunfight,” War on the Rocks , April 2, 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/taking-a-spoon-to-a-gunfight/ (accessed July 15, 2015). See also Steven Metz, “In Ukraine, Russia Reveals Its Mastery of Unrestricted Warfare,” World Politics Review , April 16, 2014, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13708/in-ukraine-russia-reveals-its-mastery-of-unrestricted-warfare (accessed July 15, 2015).
• James Jay Carafano, Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012).
• Jolanta Darczewska, “The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare: The Crimean Operation, A Case Study,” Centre for Eastern Studies Point of View No. 42, May 2014, http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/the_anatomy_of_russian_information_warfare.pdf (accessed July 15, 2015).
• Lawrence Freedman, “Ukraine and the Art of Limited Conflict,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy , Vol. 56, Issue 6 (December 2014–January 2015), pp. 7–38, https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/survival/sections/2014-4667/survival--global-politics-and-strategy-december-2014-january-2015-bf83/56-6-02-freedman-6983 (accessed July 15, 2015).
• Dean Cheng, “America Needs a Comprehensive Strategy for Countering China’s Expanding Perimeter of National Interests,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4397, April 28, 2015, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/04/america-needs-a-comprehensive-strategy-for-countering-chinas-expanding-perimeter-of-national-interests .
• Christopher Layne, “Sleepwalking with Beijing,” The National Interest , No. 137 (May/June 2015), p. 45.
• Graham T. Alison, statement in hearing, China, the U.S., and the Asia–Pacific , Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, April 14, 2015, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Allison_04-14-15.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, “Racing Toward Tragedy? China’s Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma,” International Security , Vol. 39, No. 2 (Fall 2014), p. 53, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00176 (accessed July 15, 2015).
• James Jay Carafano, “Avoiding the Unthinkable: Preventing a US–China Nuclear War,” The National Interest , February 9, 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/avoiding-the-unthinkable-preventing-us-china-nuclear-war-12209?page=2 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Joshua Keating, “Russia Gets Religion,” Slate , November 11, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/11/russia_orthodox_church_will_vladimir_putin_eradicate_all_boundaries_between.html (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Chuck Hagel, “The Defense Innovation Initiative,” memorandum, U.S. Department of Defense, November 15, 2014, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/OSD013411-14.pdf (accessed July 15, 2015); “Who’s Afraid of America?” The Economist , June 13, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/international/21654066-military-playing-field-more-even-it-has-been-many-years-big (accessed July 8, 2015).
• See Daniel Gouré, “Building the Right Military for a New Era: The Need for an Enduring Analytic Framework,” in Dakota L. Wood, ed., 2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength : Assessing America’s Ability to Provide for the Common Defense (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2015), pp. 27–36, http://ims-2015.s3.amazonaws.com/2015_Index_of_US_Military_Strength_FINAL.pdf (accessed July 29, 2015).
• Dov S. Zakheim, “Restoring American Supremacy,” The National Interest , No. 136 (March/April 2015), http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/restoring-american-supremacy-12325 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Nadia Schadlow, “The Problem with Hybrid Warfare,” War on the Rocks , April 2, 2015, http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/the-problem-with-hybrid-warfare/ (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Ashton Carter, “Press Availability with Secretary Carter at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium,” June 25, 2015, http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5645 (accessed July 8, 2015).
• The House Armed Services Committee is leaning forward in this area. See Tim Starks, “New House Armed Services Chairman Plans Focus on Unconventional Warfare,” Roll Call , January 14, 2015, http://blogs.rollcall.com/five-by-five/new-house-armed-services-chairman-plans-focus-on-unconventional-warfare/?dcz= (accessed July 8, 2015).
• Introduction, Report of the Independent QDR, The QDR in Perspective: Meeting America’s National Security Needs in the 21st Century , Final Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, United States Institute for Peace, 2010, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/qdr/IntroCompilation.pdf (accessed July 8, 2015).

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What was the main cause of World War I?

World War I began after the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand by South Slav nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914.

What countries fought in World War I?

The war pitted the Central Powers (mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) against the Allies (mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States).

The Allies won World War I after four years of combat and the deaths of some 8.5 million soldiers as a result of battle wounds or disease.

Some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds or disease during World War I. Perhaps as many as 13,000,000 civilians also died. This immensely large number of deaths dwarfed that of any previous war, largely because of the new technologies and styles of warfare used in World War I.

Four imperial dynasties—the Habsburgs of Austria-Hungary, the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the sultanate of the Ottoman Empire , and the Romanovs of Russia—collapsed as a direct result of the war, and the map of Europe was changed forever. The United States emerged as a world power, and new technology made warfare deadlier than ever before.

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World War I , an international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia , the United States , the Middle East , and other regions. The war pitted the Central Powers —mainly Germany , Austria-Hungary , and Turkey —against the Allies—mainly France , Great Britain , Russia, Italy , Japan , and, from 1917, the United States . It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. The war was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused.

World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany , Russia , Austria-Hungary, and Turkey ), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II .

The last surviving veterans of World War I were American serviceman Frank Buckles (died in February 2011), British-born Australian serviceman Claude Choules (died in May 2011), and British servicewoman Florence Green (died in February 2012), the last surviving veteran of the war.

The outbreak of war

With Serbia already much aggrandized by the two Balkan Wars (1912–13, 1913), Serbian nationalists turned their attention back to the idea of “liberating” the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary . Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević , head of Serbia’s military intelligence , was also, under the alias “Apis,” head of the secret society Union or Death , pledged to the pursuit of this pan-Serbian ambition. Believing that the Serbs’ cause would be served by the death of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand , heir presumptive to the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph , and learning that the Archduke was about to visit Bosnia on a tour of military inspection, Apis plotted his assassination . Nikola Pašić , the Serbian prime minister and an enemy of Apis, heard of the plot and warned the Austrian government of it, but his message was too cautiously worded to be understood.

At 11:15 am on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo , Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip . The chief of the Austro-Hungarian general staff , Franz, Graf (count) Conrad von Hötzendorf , and the foreign minister, Leopold, Graf von Berchtold , saw the crime as the occasion for measures to humiliate Serbia and so to enhance Austria-Hungary’s prestige in the Balkans . Conrad had already (October 1913) been assured by William II of Germany ’s support if Austria-Hungary should start a preventive war against Serbia. This assurance was confirmed in the week following the assassination , before William, on July 6, set off upon his annual cruise to the North Cape , off Norway .

The Austrians decided to present an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia and then to declare war, relying on Germany to deter Russia from intervention. Though the terms of the ultimatum were finally approved on July 19, its delivery was postponed to the evening of July 23, since by that time the French president, Raymond Poincaré , and his premier, René Viviani , who had set off on a state visit to Russia on July 15, would be on their way home and therefore unable to concert an immediate reaction with their Russian allies. When the delivery was announced, on July 24, Russia declared that Austria-Hungary must not be allowed to crush Serbia.

Serbia replied to the ultimatum on July 25, accepting most of its demands but protesting against two of them—namely, that Serbian officials (unnamed) should be dismissed at Austria-Hungary’s behest and that Austro-Hungarian officials should take part, on Serbian soil, in proceedings against organizations hostile to Austria-Hungary. Though Serbia offered to submit the issue to international arbitration, Austria-Hungary promptly severed diplomatic relations and ordered partial mobilization.

Home from his cruise on July 27, William learned on July 28 how Serbia had replied to the ultimatum. At once he instructed the German Foreign Office to tell Austria-Hungary that there was no longer any justification for war and that it should content itself with a temporary occupation of Belgrade . But, meanwhile, the German Foreign Office had been giving such encouragement to Berchtold that already on July 27 he had persuaded Franz Joseph to authorize war against Serbia. War was in fact declared on July 28, and Austro-Hungarian artillery began to bombard Belgrade the next day. Russia then ordered partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary, and on July 30, when Austria-Hungary was riposting conventionally with an order of mobilization on its Russian frontier, Russia ordered general mobilization. Germany, which since July 28 had still been hoping, in disregard of earlier warning hints from Great Britain, that Austria-Hungary’s war against Serbia could be “localized” to the Balkans, was now disillusioned insofar as eastern Europe was concerned. On July 31 Germany sent a 24-hour ultimatum requiring Russia to halt its mobilization and an 18-hour ultimatum requiring France to promise neutrality in the event of war between Russia and Germany.

Both Russia and France predictably ignored these demands. On August 1 Germany ordered general mobilization and declared war against Russia, and France likewise ordered general mobilization. The next day Germany sent troops into Luxembourg and demanded from Belgium free passage for German troops across its neutral territory. On August 3 Germany declared war against France.

In the night of August 3–4 German forces invaded Belgium. Thereupon, Great Britain , which had no concern with Serbia and no express obligation to fight either for Russia or for France but was expressly committed to defend Belgium, on August 4 declared war against Germany.

Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 5; Serbia against Germany on August 6; Montenegro against Austria-Hungary on August 7 and against Germany on August 12; France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on August 10 and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.

Romania had renewed its secret anti-Russian alliance of 1883 with the Central Powers on February 26, 1914, but now chose to remain neutral. Italy had confirmed the Triple Alliance on December 7, 1912, but could now propound formal arguments for disregarding it: first, Italy was not obliged to support its allies in a war of aggression; second, the original treaty of 1882 had stated expressly that the alliance was not against England .

On September 5, 1914, Russia, France, and Great Britain concluded the Treaty of London , each promising not to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. Thenceforth, they could be called the Allied , or Entente, powers, or simply the Allies .

The outbreak of war in August 1914 was generally greeted with confidence and jubilation by the peoples of Europe, among whom it inspired a wave of patriotic feeling and celebration. Few people imagined how long or how disastrous a war between the great nations of Europe could be, and most believed that their country’s side would be victorious within a matter of months. The war was welcomed either patriotically, as a defensive one imposed by national necessity, or idealistically, as one for upholding right against might, the sanctity of treaties, and international morality .

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Military conflict : essays in the institutional analysis of war and peace

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100+ Suggested War Essay Topics for Your Research

Updated 30 Aug 2024

Essays on war & conflict can be portrayed from different perspectives. Thus, your paper may deal with the war in terms of politics, heroism, or describe its impact on ordinary people’s life. Besides, you might be asked for a more precise topic for your History class essay, for instance, about diplomacy, tactics, propaganda, weapons, and the causes and effects of such conflicts. This is where our essay help service comes in!

Whether your research paper is about WWI, WW2, Civil, Vietnam or Iraq War, you first need to decide what period to describe and approach to use and then to choose some specific war essay topics for your writing. To be certain that your topic is just right, make sure that:

• Your topic is not too broad (for instance, it concentrates on WW2 in general);
• Your topic is not too narrow (if it deals with one political figure only);
• You can find some research material online including videos, thematic websites, etc), it means that your subject is topical and discussed;
• You can find books about your topic in your local library;
• The topic is catchy and interesting (not only for your professor but for other students as well);
• The topic covers one of the burning issues in history;
• You can answer the question of the topic (if any) in the essay.

Covering all these seven steps is vital if you want to come up with a great topic, as it’s a half-way to a successful academic essay. After all, we all write essays intending to resolve some burning issues and catch the reader’s attention.

✍️ Tips for Writing a War Essay

College students who are required to create an essay on this topic should first be well acquainted with the historical background of the conflict they intend to write about. Secondly, they should make sure that essays are informative and cover the causes, consequences, and deprivation that the war caused.

To write a good war essay, consider the following tips:

• Do extensive research on the topic before you start writing your essay.  The easiest thing you can do is simply google your desired topic and check whether there are discussions and materials on the topic available. You’ll need to make your topic argumentative, so make sure there are enough reliable sources you can use when writing your essay.
• Choose a compelling topic that will grab the reader’s attention.  Once you’ve done research you might want to change the angle of your topic slightly and then move on to creating an outline for your writing.
• Start your essay from the main body.  We recommend starting with the main problems your future essay will be concentrated on. Provide arguments, support them with evidence and corresponding citations, and make emphasis on structuring your paper properly.
• “Frame” and proofread you final essay.  Introduction and conclusion sections frame your writing making it complex and complete. Writing then at the very end will help you to concentrate more on the context of your writing and include only those aspects that matter. Then, proofread your essay, making sure it has a nice flow.

📝 List of General War Essay Topics

Here’s a list of creative topic ideas that can help you understand what to write about. They are listed in no particular historical or chronological order:

• The concept of "just war" and its ethical implications.
• The impact of war on civilian populations.
• The role of women in war throughout history.
• The psychological effects of war on soldiers and societies.
• The evolution of warfare technology and its impact on strategy.
• The role of diplomacy in preventing and ending wars.
• The impact of war on the environment.
• The portrayal of war in film and literature.
• The role of child soldiers in contemporary conflicts.
• The impact of war on economic development.
• The role of international law in regulating warfare.
• The impact of war on cultural heritage and historical sites.
• The role of media in shaping public perception of war.
• The ethics of drone warfare and targeted killings.
• The role of mercenaries and private military companies in conflicts.
• The impact of war on global migration and refugee crises.
• The role of peacekeeping forces in post-conflict regions.
• The challenges of post-war reconciliation and nation-building.
• The role of war memorials in remembering and interpreting conflict.
• The impact of cyber warfare on national security.

📜 Civil War Research Topics

The topics dedicated to this historical period are probably the most popular ones. The Civil War was a stepping stone that showed just how much the place and time influence people’s views and how different opinions on this can sometimes make a solid ground for some major conflicts.

• The economic factors leading to the American Civil War.
• The role of slavery in precipitating the Civil War.
• The impact of the Emancipation Proclamation on the war's course.
• The significance of the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War.
• The contributions of African American soldiers in the Civil War.
• The effects of the Civil War on civilian life in the North and South.
• The role of women during the Civil War.
• The influence of foreign powers on the outcome of the Civil War.
• The evolution of military technology in the Civil War.
• The reconstruction era: Successes and failures post-Civil War.
• The legacy of the Civil War in American memory and culture.
• The impact of the Civil War on the American political system.
• The role of naval warfare in the Civil War.
• The significance of the Gettysburg Address in American history.
• The psychological effects of the Civil War on soldiers and families.
• The use of propaganda during the Civil War.
• The role of espionage and intelligence in the Civil War.
• The impact of the Civil War on American literature and art.
• The treatment of prisoners of war during the Civil War.
• The role of railroads in the Civil War logistics and strategy.

📖 Cold War Paper Topics

• The origins of the Cold War: Ideological differences between the US and USSR.
• The impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis on Cold War dynamics.
• The role of espionage and intelligence in the Cold War.
• The influence of the Cold War on global decolonization movements.
• The effects of the Cold War on American domestic policy.
• The significance of the Berlin Wall in Cold War history.
• The role of nuclear arms race in escalating Cold War tensions.
• The impact of the Cold War on the development of space exploration.
• The role of the United Nations during the Cold War.
• The influence of the Cold War on popular culture and media.
• The Korean War as a proxy battle of the Cold War.
• The Vietnam War and its significance in the Cold War context.
• The role of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the Cold War.
• The impact of the Cold War on the Middle East.
• The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
• The role of propaganda in shaping public opinion during the Cold War.
• The impact of the Cold War on science and technology.
• The role of non-aligned movement countries during the Cold War.
• The effects of the Cold War on Africa's political landscape.
• The legacy of the Cold War in contemporary international relations.

Vietnam War Essay Ideas

• The causes of the Vietnam War and its justification.
• The impact of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion.
• The role of media coverage in shaping the narrative of the Vietnam War.
• The effects of Agent Orange and other chemical warfare.
• The experiences of Vietnamese civilians during the war.
• The anti-war movement in the United States and its influence on policy.
• The legacy of the Vietnam War on American military and foreign policy.
• The psychological effects of the war on returning veterans.
• The role of the Viet Cong and guerrilla warfare tactics.
• The significance of the Paris Peace Accords in ending the Vietnam War.
• The impact of the war on Vietnamese society and economy.
• The role of women in the Vietnam War.
• The influence of the Cold War on the Vietnam conflict.
• The challenges of post-war reconciliation and recovery in Vietnam.
• The portrayal of the Vietnam War in film and literature.
• The strategic mistakes made by the United States in Vietnam.
• The role of international allies and support for both sides.
• The impact of the war on American public and political life.
• The use of music as a form of protest and expression during the Vietnam era.
• The lessons learned from the Vietnam War for future conflicts.

🌎 World War I Essay Topics

• The causes of World War I: Nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and alliances.
• The impact of trench warfare on military strategy and soldier experiences.
• The role of technology and innovation in World War I.
• The effects of World War I on the home front: Women, work, and society.
• The significance of the Battle of the Somme.
• The consequences of World War I on the global political landscape.
• The Treaty of Versailles: Terms, criticisms, and long-term effects.
• The role of propaganda in World War I.
• The impact of World War I on art and literature.
• The experiences of colonial troops in World War I.
• The role of the Russian Revolution in World War I.
• The impact of World War I on the Middle East.
• The legacy of World War I in contemporary international relations.
• The role of naval warfare in World War I.
• The psychological effects of World War I on soldiers.
• The use of chemical weapons in World War I.
• The role of the United States in World War I.
• The impact of World War I on medical advancements.
• The economic consequences of World War I.
• The role of aviation in World War I.

🌍 World War II Essay Topics

When you choose to write about World War 2, always check the dates and the facts. Remember that it is an important topic to explore, which is why you can compare and check with how it is explored in Europe or in Russia to get more information. Remember to provide citations for each resource used.

• The causes of World War II: The failure of peace efforts and the rise of dictatorships.
• The role of the Holocaust in World War II.
• The significance of the Battle of Stalingrad.
• The impact of World War II on women and minorities.
• The use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Justifications and consequences.
• The role of intelligence and code-breaking in World War II.
• The impact of World War II on the formation of the United Nations.
• The experiences of soldiers in different theaters of World War II.
• The role of propaganda in World War II.
• The impact of World War II on post-war European reconstruction.
• The significance of the D-Day invasion.
• The role of resistance movements in World War II.
• The impact of World War II on colonial empires.
• The legacy of World War II in contemporary international relations.
• The psychological effects of World War II on survivors.
• The role of technology and innovation in World War II.
• The impact of World War II on civilian populations.
• The role of the United States in World War II.
• The economic consequences of World War II.
• The trials of war criminals and the establishment of international law.

- What are some examples of powerful war research topics?

A research essay topic can be considered successful in case it is topical and well-researched. Historical events have a tendency to repeat from time to time, so that modern politicians and ordinary people can treat them as valuable lessons. A powerful topic is the one that can help us understand our past and make an output for the future; the impact of conflicts on our history, propaganda approaches, things that cause wars are some nice examples of timeless topics.

- What's the best way to start a war essay?

The beginning of each lengthy essay should clearly state what major concerns the essay will cover. If you are making a comparison between WW1 and the Cold War, you should tackle both in the introduction and focus on each of them separately in the body of the essay. In case your topic is connected with the importance of technological progress on weapons, make this statement in the paper’s intro.

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Israel’s Hunt for the Elusive Leader of Hamas

Yahya Sinwar’s ability to evade capture or death has denied Israel a military success in a war that began after he planned the Oct. 7 attacks.

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By Mark Mazzetti Ronen Bergman Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman

Mark Mazzetti and Julian Barnes reported from Washington. Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman reported from Tel Aviv and Rafah.

In January, Israeli and American officials thought they had caught a break in the hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men.

Israeli commandos raided an elaborate tunnel complex in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 31 based on intelligence that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, was hiding there, according to American and Israeli officials.

He had been, it turned out. But Mr. Sinwar had left the bunker beneath the city of Khan Younis just days earlier, leaving behind documents and stacks of Israeli shekels totaling about $1 million. The hunt went on, with a dearth of hard evidence on his whereabouts.

Since the deadly Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that he planned and directed, Mr. Sinwar has been something of a ghost: never appearing in public, rarely releasing messages for his followers and giving up few clues about where he might be.

He is by far Hamas’s most important figure, and his success in evading capture or death has denied Israel the ability to make a foundational claim: that it has won the war and eradicated Hamas in a conflict that has decimated the group’s ranks but also destroyed the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of civilians.

American and Israeli officials said Mr. Sinwar abandoned electronic communications long ago, and he has so far avoided a sophisticated intelligence dragnet. He is believed to stay in touch with the organization he leads through a network of human couriers. How that system works remains a mystery.

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Military Conflicts at the Civil War Essay

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Introduction

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Military conflicts are an unpleasant but unchanging reality of the modern world. Civil wars tend to flare up in certain regions, and many aid agencies are aware of problems in specific countries. People who have to face the consequences of armed attacks have often received humanitarian assistance. However, in the case of Somalia, where civilians first received remittances, it is possible to trace a new way of supporting civilians involved in military conflict. The article “Cash is Replacing Other Forms of Aid, Even in Conflict Zones” presents a new picture of providing humanitarian aid.[1 1 ]

It is carried out through the movement of funds into the country instead of the standard sets of products and essential items. As a justification for this measure, economists cite statistical data confirming the relevance of the new aid regime and its effectiveness in difficult situations that are complicated by conflicts within the country. The movement of cash flows in states experiencing armed conflict may be a form of assistance to the civilian population as effective as humanitarian aid, provided that preliminary analysis of risk factors has been conducted.

Utility Concept

Based on the facts presented, it would appear that the evidence in favor of using the new approach to helping the civilian population is reliable. The concept of utility, which is the satisfaction of market demand for relevant goods and products, is taken into account when using financial flows as a mechanism to support people. According to the article in question, the funds transferred directly to cell phone-linked accounts have become an effective aid to the civilian population of Somalia, thereby preventing famine.[2 2 ] If agencies had not taken this step, it is possible that any humanitarian aid in the form of food or medicine would have been stolen by rebels. Consequently, it is possible to talk about citizens’ satisfaction with the availability of the form of support now being provided to the population.

Nevertheless, based on an evaluation of the material, it can be noted that some agencies did not analyze preliminary risk factors. This is an omission, since in case of the unexpected loss of funds, such as thefts from mobile accounts, humanitarian agencies would lose $35 million.[3 2 ] Risk factors such as the threat of inflation or the depreciation of money, the loss of currency in transactions, and other important aspects should have been better assessed. According to Crost, Felter, and Johnston, the evaluation of the financial market in a country in a state of war is an essential activity if money is transferred to the accounts of civilians.[4 3 ] Consequently, the officials should have investigated this aspect in more detail in order to secure funds.

Production Theory

With regard to the case of humanitarian assistance to the people of Somalia, it is important to consider the factor of the effectiveness of the measures taken in terms of their impact on the domestic market. According to the text of the article, recipients have the opportunity to choose where they can spend the money, and local stores and merchants derive significant benefits.[5 2 ] However, based on the current needs of the population, the unprofitability of certain areas should be mentioned. If a local market has an oversupply of trade services, this will have a negative effect on other industries, such as medicine or agriculture.

Therefore, appropriate planning is desirable so that recipients of financial assistance from humanitarian agencies can allocate money more prudently in order to avoid an oversaturation of the market.

Another of the article’s points that deserves attention is the call for experimenting with the provided funds. The example of the Philippine assistance program, where humanitarian agencies allocated money to promote education and medicine, provides an opportunity to draw attention to the most important areas for investment.[6 4 ] In Somalia, where official representatives have offered to provide small business loans, the situation probably does not favor large-scale trade. Therefore, local authorities should pay more attention to the inherent needs of the population.

The preliminary analysis of risk factors is an obligatory measure for the transfer of funds as humanitarian aid to countries whose residents are experiencing civil war. To assess possible threats, it is essential to secure financial transactions to prevent theft. Also, the authorities should allocate resources wisely to avoid the oversaturation of one sector of the economy and the lack of investment in another one. In a state of martial law, local governments should effectively oversee the most important spheres of economic activity.

“ Cash is Replacing Other Forms of Aid, Even in Conflict Zones. ” The Economist , 2018. Web.

Crost, Benjamin, Joseph H. Felter, and Patrick B. Johnston. “Conditional Cash Transfers, Civil Conflict and Insurgent Influence: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines.” Journal of Development Economics 118 (2016): 171-182.

• “Cash is Replacing Other Forms of Aid, Even in Conflict Zones.” The Economist , 2018. Web.
• Benjamin Crost, Joseph H. Felter, and Patrick B. Johnston. “Conditional Cash Transfers, Civil Conflict and Insurgent Influence: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines,” Journal of Development Economics 118 (2016): 171.
• Benjamin Crost, Joseph H. Felter, and Patrick B. Johnston. “Conditional Cash Transfers, Civil Conflict and Insurgent Influence: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines,” Journal of Development Economics 118 (2016): 173.
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IvyPanda. (2021, July 14). Military Conflicts at the Civil War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/military-conflicts-at-the-civil-war/

"Military Conflicts at the Civil War." IvyPanda , 14 July 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/military-conflicts-at-the-civil-war/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Military Conflicts at the Civil War'. 14 July.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Military Conflicts at the Civil War." July 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/military-conflicts-at-the-civil-war/.

1. IvyPanda . "Military Conflicts at the Civil War." July 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/military-conflicts-at-the-civil-war/.

IvyPanda . "Military Conflicts at the Civil War." July 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/military-conflicts-at-the-civil-war/.

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Israel kills a top militant in its deadliest West Bank raids since the Gaza war began

The Israeli military is pressing ahead with what appears to be the deadliest military operation in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.

Palestinians stand outside a heavily damaged mosque following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Al-Faraa, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Mourners take part in a funeral of four Palestinians who died during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Al-Faraa, near Tubas, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Mourners pray as they attend the funeral of four Palestinians, wrapped in Palestinian flags, who died during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Al-Faraa, near Tubas, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

A man waves a Palestinian flag as an Israeli armored vehicle moves on a street during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

A man takes a picture of a wall displaying photos of Palestinians, who died during previous clashes, following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Al-Faraa, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

A photo of Agan Berger, who was kidnapped during Hamas militants attack on Oct. 7, hangs on a fence of the kibbutz Nirim as relatives and friends of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip take part in a protest calling for their release in southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Members of Israeli forces patrol a street during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Israeli armoured vehicles move on a street during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

A woman sits next to a fence as relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group take part in a protest calling for their release in the kibbutz Nirim, southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group take part in a protest calling for their release as they walk on an area outside the kibbutz Nirim, southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Rachel Goldberg, left, and Jon Polin center, parents of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Polin-Goldberg, along with other relatives of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group take part in a protest calling for their release in the Kibbutz Nirim, southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

A bulldozer from the Israeli forces moves on a street during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Paramedics carry the body of Ayed Abu Al-Hija, 64, a Palestinian who died during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Members of Israeli forces prepare to enter in an armoured vehicle during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Osama al-Taweel holds the bodies of his grandchildren who were killed during an Israel airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as he arrives at the hospital morgue in Deir al Balah, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

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TULKAREM, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military said it killed five more West Bank militants, including a local commander, as it pressed ahead Thursday with its deadliest operation in the occupied territory since the start of the war in Gaza .

Israel says the raids across the northern West Bank — which have killed a total of 16 people, nearly all militants, since late Tuesday — are aimed at preventing attacks. The Palestinians see them as a widening of the war in Gaza and an effort to perpetuate Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.

The raids drew alarm from the United Nations and neighboring Jordan, as well as from British and French leaders, who stressed the urgency of cease-fire in Gaza after nearly 11 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Medics at al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza said Thursday nine Palestinians from the same family — including two women and five young children — were killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment building in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Israel did not immediately offer comment on the intended target of its attack.

Beginning Sunday, Israel will pause some military operations in Gaza to allow health workers to begin administering polio vaccines to some 650,000 Palestinian children, the U.N. World Health Organization said Thursday. A case was discovered earlier this month for the first time in 25 years.

In the West Bank, the Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed that Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, was killed during a raid in the city of Tulkarem. He became a hero for many Palestinians earlier in the year when he was reported killed in an Israeli operation, only to make a surprise appearance at the funeral of other militants, where he was hoisted onto the shoulders of a cheering crowd.

Palestinians municipality workers check a damaged house following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Al-Faraa, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Israel said he was killed Thursday along with four other militants in a shootout after the five had hidden inside a mosque. It said Abu Shujaa was linked to numerous attacks on Israelis, including a deadly shooting in June, and was planning more.

Israel’s search-and-arrest raids continued for hours Thursday, including the city of Jenin.

Firefights also erupted in Fara’a, a Palestinian urban refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley, where the Israeli army said it struck and killed a group of militants traveling in a car. Their militant affiliations were not immediately clear.

The army also said it uncovered caches of weapons, explosive devices and other military equipment inside a mosque in Fara’a and arrested another militant in Tulkarem, where a member of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police was lightly wounded.

Israel’s latest operation in the West Bank began late Tuesday in several locations, and Hamas confirmed 10 of its fighters were killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported an 11th death on Wednesday, without saying whether he was a fighter or a civilian.

The U.N. secretary-general, António Guterres, called for an immediate halt to the raids, asking Israel’s government to comply with its obligations under international law and to take measures to protect civilians.

“These dangerous developments are fueling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority,” he said in a statement from his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric.

The overall toll of 16 killed in less than two days makes it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel that ignited the war.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war. Most appear to have been militants killed in gunbattles during Israeli operations like the one this week, but civilian bystanders and rock-throwing protesters have also been killed, and the territory saw a surge of Jewish settler violence .

Attacks against Israeli citizens have also risen since the start of the war.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.

The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering towns and cities. Over 500,000 Israelis live in well over 100 settlements across the territory that most of the international community considers illegal.

The raids have focused on refugee camps that date back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, in which around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel. Many of the camps are militant strongholds.

Hamas repeated its calls for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up, calling the raids part of a larger plan to expand the war in Gaza. The militant group has urged security forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which cooperate with Israel , to “join the sacred battle of our people.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also condemned the Israeli raids, but his forces were not expected to get involved.

The war in Gaza erupted when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and rampaged through army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. The militants are still holding 108 hostages , around a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were released during a November cease-fire.

Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians , according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants. Around 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, and Israeli bombardment and ground operations have caused vast destruction.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to mediate a cease-fire that would see the remaining hostages released. But the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a lasting cease-fire and a full withdrawal from the territory.

Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Israel war on Gaza updates: Strike on Gaza school kills eight

These were the updates on Israel’s war on Gaza for Wednesday, August 28.

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