essay on global war

• Senior Fellows
• Research Fellows
• Submission Guidelines
• Media Inquiries
• Commentary & Analysis

Upcoming Events

• Past Events
• October 2021 War Studies Conference
• November 2020 War Studies Conference
• November 2018 War Studies Conference
• March 2018 War Studies Conference
• November 2016 War Studies Conference
• Class of 1974 MWI Podcast
• Urban Warfare Project Podcast
• Social Science of War
• Urban Warfare Project
• Project 6633
• Shield Notes
• Rethinking Civ-Mil
• Book Reviews

Select Page

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.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The articles and other content which appear on the Modern War Institute website are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

The Modern War Institute does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Rather, the Modern War Institute provides a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Comments will be moderated before posting to ensure logical, professional, and courteous application to article content.

Announcements

• We’re Looking for Officers to Join the Modern War Institute and the Defense and Strategic Studies Program!
• Call for Applications: MWI’s 2024–25 Research Fellows Program
• Join Us Friday, April 26 for a Livestream of the 2024 Hagel Lecture, Featuring Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary Jeh Johnson
• Announcing the Modern War Institute’s 2023–24 Senior and Research Fellows

• All Articles
• Books & Reviews
• Anthologies
• Audio Content
• Author Directory
• This Day in History
• War in Ukraine
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Artificial Intelligence
• Climate Change
• Biden Administration
• Geopolitics
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Vladimir Putin
• Volodymyr Zelensky
• Nationalism
• Authoritarianism
• Propaganda & Disinformation
• West Africa
• North Korea
• Middle East
• United States
• View All Regions

Article Types

• Capsule Reviews
• Review Essays
• Ask the Experts
• Reading Lists
• Newsletters
• Customer Service
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Subscriber Resources
• Group Subscriptions
• Gift a Subscription

The Next Global War

How today’s regional conflicts resemble the ones that produced world war ii, by hal brands.

The post-Cold War era began, in the early 1990s, with soaring visions of global peace. It is ending, three decades later, with surging risks of global war. Today, Europe is experiencing its most devastating military conflict in generations. A brutal fight between Israel and Hamas is sowing violence and instability across the Middle East. East Asia, fortunately, is not at war. But it isn’t exactly peaceful, either, as China coerces its neighbors and amasses military power at a historic rate. If many Americans don’t realize how close the world is to being ravaged by fierce, interlocking conflicts, perhaps that’s because they’ve forgotten how the last global war came about.

When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II —or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on a global battlefield. But World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history of this period reveals the darker aspects of strategic interdependence in a war-torn world. It also illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts.

The United States isn’t facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won’t see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn’t remotely ready for the challenge.

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

American memories of World War II are indelibly marked by two unique aspects of the U.S. experience. First, the United States entered the war very late—more than two years after Hitler rocked Europe by invading Poland, and more than four years after Japan initiated the Pacific War by invading China. Second, the United States joined the fight in both theaters simultaneously. World War II was thus globalized from the moment the United States entered it; from December 1941 onward, the conflict featured one multicontinent coalition, the Grand Alliance, fighting another multicontinent coalition, the Axis, on multiple fronts. (The exception was that the Soviet Union remained at peace with Japan from 1941 until 1945.) This was a world war in its fullest, most comprehensive sense. Yet history’s most terrible conflict didn’t start that way.

World War II was the aggregation of three regional crises: Japan’s rampage in China and the Asia-Pacific; Italy’s bid for empire in Africa and the Mediterranean; and Germany’s push for hegemony in Europe and beyond. In some ways, these crises were always linked. Each was the work of an autocratic regime with a penchant for coercion and violence. Each involved a lunge for dominance in a globally significant region. Each contributed to what U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt , in 1937, called a spreading “epidemic of world lawlessness.” Even so, this wasn’t an integrated mega-conflict from the outset.

The fascist powers initially had little in common except illiberal governance and a desire to shatter the status quo. In fact, the vicious racism that pervaded fascist ideology could work against the cohesion of this group: Hitler once  derided the Japanese as “lacquered half-monkeys.” And although these countries, beginning in 1936, would seal a series of overlapping security pacts, through the late 1930s they were as often rivals as allies. Hitler’s Germany and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s Italy worked at cross-purposes in crises over Austria in 1934 and Ethiopia in 1935. As late as 1938, Germany was supporting China in its war of survival against Japan; the next year, it signed a tacit alliance with the Soviet Union, then fighting an undeclared conflict against Tokyo in Asia. (Moscow and Tokyo later signed a nonaggression pact in April 1941, which held until 1945.) Only gradually did regional crises merge, and rival coalitions cohere, because of factors that might sound familiar today.

First, whatever their specific—and sometimes conflicting—aims, the fascist powers had a more fundamental similarity of purpose. All were seeking a dramatically transformed global order, in which “have not” powers carved out vast empires through brutal tactics—and in which brutal regimes surpassed the decadent democracies they despised. “In the battle between democracy and totalitarianism,” Japan’s foreign minister declared in 1940, “the latter . . . will without question win and will control the world.” There was a basic geopolitical and ideological solidarity among the world’s autocracies, which thrust them—and the conflicts they sowed—closer together over time.

World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions.

Second, the world developed a perverse form of interdependence, as instability in one region exacerbated instability in another. By humiliating the League of Nations and showing that aggression could pay, Italy’s assault on Ethiopia in 1935 paved the way for Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. Germany then paid it forward in 1940 by crushing France, putting the United Kingdom on the brink, and creating a golden opportunity for Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia. Particular tactics also migrated from theater to theater; the use of terror from the air by Italian forces in Ethiopia, for instance, prefigured its use by German forces in Spain and Japanese forces in China. Not least, the sheer number of challenges to the existing order disoriented and debilitated its defenders: the United Kingdom had to tread carefully in dealing with Hitler in crises over Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 because Japan threatened its imperial holdings in Asia and its Mediterranean lifelines were vulnerable to Italy.

These two factors contributed to a third, which was that programs of extreme aggression polarized the world and divided it into rival camps. In the late 1930s, Germany and Italy banded together for mutual protection against Western democracies that might try to frustrate their respective ambitions. In 1940, Japan joined the party in hopes of deterring the United States from interfering with its expansion in Asia. Through multiple, mutually reinforcing programs of regional revisionism, the three countries declared, they would create a “new order of things” in the world.

This new Tripartite Pact didn’t ultimately deter Roosevelt, but it did convince him, as he wrote in 1941, that “the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict.” Indeed, as the Axis cohered and its aggression intensified, it gradually forced a vast array of countries into a rival alliance dedicated to frustrating those designs. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declared war on Washington, they brought the United States into conflicts in Europe and the Pacific—and turned those regional clashes into a global struggle.

PAST IS PRESENT

The parallels between this earlier era and the present are striking. Today, as in the 1930s, the international system is facing three sharp regional challenges. China is rapidly amassing military might as part of its campaign to eject the United States from the western Pacific—and, perhaps, become the world’s preeminent power. Russia’s war in Ukraine is the murderous centerpiece of its long-standing effort to reclaim primacy in eastern Europe and the former Soviet space .  In the Middle East, Iran and its coterie of proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and many others—are waging a bloody struggle for regional dominance against Israel, the Gulf monarchies, and the United States. Once again, the fundamental commonalities linking the revisionist states are autocratic governance and geopolitical grievance; in this case, a desire to break a U.S.-led order that deprives them of the greatness they desire. Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are the new “have not” powers, struggling against the “haves”: Washington and its allies.

Two of these challenges have already turned hot. The war in Ukraine is also a vicious proxy contest between Russia and the West; Russian President Vladimir Putin is buckling down for a long, grinding struggle that could last for years. Hamas’s attack on Israel last October—enabled, if perhaps not explicitly blessed, by Tehran—triggered an intense conflict that is creating violent spillover across that vital region. Iran, meanwhile, is creeping toward nuclear weapons, which could turbocharge its regional revisionism by indemnifying its regime against an Israeli or U.S. response. In the western Pacific and mainland Asia, China is still relying mostly on coercion short of war. But as the military balance shifts in sensitive spots such as the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, Beijing will have better options—and perhaps a bigger appetite—for aggression.

As in the 1930s, the revisionist powers don’t always see eye-to-eye. Russia and China both seek preeminence in Central Asia. They are also pushing into the Middle East, in ways that sometimes cut across Iran’s interests there. If the revisionists do eventually push their common enemy, the United States, out of Eurasia, they might end up fighting among themselves over the spoils—just as the Axis powers, had they somehow defeated their rivals, surely would have then turned on one another. Yet for now, the ties between revisionist powers are flourishing and Eurasia’s regional conflicts are becoming more tightly interlinked.

Russia and China are drawing closer through their “no limits” strategic partnership, which features arms sales, deepening defense-technological cooperation, and displays of geopolitical solidarity such as military exercises in global hot spots. And just as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 once allowed Germany and the Soviet Union to rampage through eastern Europe without risking conflict with each other, the Sino-Russian partnership has pacified what was once the world’s most militarized border and enabled both countries to focus on their contests with Washington and its friends. More recently, the war in Ukraine has also enhanced other Eurasian relationships—between Russia and Iran, and Russia and North Korea—while intensifying and interweaving the challenges the respective revisionists pose.

Eurasia’s regional conflicts are becoming more tightly interlinked.

Drones, artillery ammunition, and ballistic missiles provided by Tehran and Pyongyang—along with economic succor provided by Beijing—have sustained Moscow in its conflict against Kyiv and its Western backers. In exchange, Moscow appears to be transferring more sensitive military technology and know-how: selling advanced aircraft to Iran, reportedly offering aid to North Korea’s advanced weapons programs, perhaps even helping China build its next-generation attack submarine. Other regional tussles are revealing similar dynamics. In the Middle East, Hamas is fighting Israel with Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean weapons that it has been accumulating for years. Since October 7, Putin has declared that conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are part of a single, larger struggle that “will decide the fate of Russia, and of the entire world.” And in another echo of the past, tensions across Eurasia’s key theaters stretch U.S. resources thin by confronting the superpower with multiple dilemmas simultaneously. The revisionist powers aid each other simply by doing their own things.

One crucial difference between the 1930s and today is the scale of the revisionism. As bad as Putin and Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are, they haven’t devoured huge chunks of crucial regions. Another crucial difference is that East Asia still enjoys a tenuous peace. But with U.S. officials warning that China could become more belligerent as its capabilities mature—perhaps as soon as the second half of this decade—it is worth considering what would happen if that region erupted.

Such a conflict would be catastrophic in multiple respects. Chinese aggression against Taiwan could well trigger a war with the United States, pitting the world’s two most powerful militaries—and their two nuclear arsenals—against each other. It would wrench global commerce in ways that make the dislocations provoked by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza look trivial. It would further polarize global politics as the United States seeks to rally the democratic world against Chinese aggression—pushing Beijing into a tighter embrace with Russia and other autocratic powers.

Most critically, if combined with ongoing conflicts elsewhere, a war in East Asia could create a situation unlike anything since the 1940s, in which all three key regions of Eurasia are ablaze with large-scale violence at once. This might not become a single, all-encompassing world war. But it would make for a world plagued by war as the United States and other defenders of the existing order confronted multiple, interlocking conflicts spanning some of the most important strategic terrain on earth.

GATHERING STORMS

There are lots of reasons that this scenario might not happen. East Asia could remain at peace, because the United States and China have immense incentives to avoid a horrific war. The fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East could subside. But thinking through the nightmare scenario is still worthwhile, since the world could be as little as one mishandled crisis away from pervasive Eurasian conflict—and because the United States is so unprepared for this eventuality.

Right now, the United States is straining to support Israel and Ukraine simultaneously. The demands of these two wars—fights in which Washington is not yet a principal combatant—are stretching U.S. capabilities in areas such as artillery and missile defense. Deployments to the waters around the Middle East, meant to deter Iran and keep critical sea-lanes open, are taxing the resources of the U.S. Navy. Strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen are consuming assets, such as Tomahawk missiles, that would be at a premium in a U.S.-Chinese conflict. These are all symptoms of a bigger problem: the shrinking ability and capacities of the U.S. military relative to its numerous, interrelated challenges.

During the 2010s, the Pentagon gradually shifted away from a military strategy meant to defeat two rogue-state adversaries at the same time, opting instead for a one-war strategy aimed at defeating a single great-power rival, China, in a high-intensity fight. In one sense, this was a sensible response to the extreme demands such a conflict would entail. But it has also left the Pentagon ill equipped for a world in which a combination of hostile great powers and serious regional threats are menacing multiple theaters at once. It has also, perhaps, emboldened more aggressive U.S. adversaries, such as Russia and Iran, which surely realize that an overstretched superpower—with a military desperate to focus on China—has limited ability to respond to other probes.

Of course, the United States wasn’t ready for global war in 1941, but it eventually prevailed through a world-beating mobilization of military and industrial might. President Joe Biden evoked that achievement late last year, saying the United States must again be the “arsenal of democracy.” His administration has invested in expanding the production of artillery ammunition, long-range missiles, and other important weapons. But the harsh reality is that the defense industrial base that won World War II and then the Cold War no longer exists, thanks to persistent underinvestment and the broader decline of U.S. manufacturing. Shortages and bottlenecks are pervasive; the Pentagon recently  acknowledged “material gaps” in its ability to “rapidly scale production” in a crisis. Many allies have even weaker defense industrial bases.

The world could be as little as one mishandled crisis away from pervasive Eurasian conflict.

Thus, the United States would have great difficulty mobilizing for a multitheater war, or even mobilizing for protracted conflict in a single region while keeping allies supplied in others. It might struggle to generate the vast magazines of munitions needed for great-power conflict or to replace ships, planes, and submarines lost in the fighting. It would surely be hard-pressed to keep pace with its most potent rival in a potential war in the western Pacific; as a Pentagon  report puts it, China is now “the global industrial powerhouse in many areas—from shipbuilding to critical minerals to microelectronics,” which could give it a crucial mobilization advantage in a contest with the United States. If war does engulf multiple theaters of Eurasia, Washington and its allies might not win.

It isn’t helpful to pretend that there is an obvious, near-term solution to these problems. Focusing U.S. military power and strategic attention overwhelmingly on Asia, as some analysts advocate, would take a toll on American global leadership in any circumstances. At a time when the Middle East and Europe are already in such profound turmoil, it could be tantamount to superpower suicide. But although dramatically ramping up military spending to drive down global risk is strategically essential, it seems politically inexpedient, at least until the United States suffers a more jarring geopolitical shock. In any case, it would take time—time Washington and its friends might not have—for even sizable increases in defense outlays to have a tangible military effect. The Biden administration’s approach seems to involve muddling through in Ukraine and the Middle East, making only marginal, selective increases in military spending, and betting the house that China doesn’t become more bellicose—a policy that could work well enough but could also fail disastrously.

The international scene has darkened dramatically in recent years. In 2021, the Biden administration could envision a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia—until that country invaded Ukraine in 2022. In 2023, U.S. officials deemed the Middle East quieter than at any time this century—just before a devastating, regionally destabilizing conflict broke out. U.S.-Chinese tensions aren’t particularly febrile at the moment, but sharpening rivalry and a shifting military balance make for a dangerous mix. Great catastrophes often seem unthinkable until they happen. As the strategic environment deteriorates, it’s time to recognize how eminently thinkable global conflict has become.

You are reading a free article.

Subscribe to foreign affairs to get unlimited access..

• Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives
• Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading
• Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles
• HAL BRANDS is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a co-author of The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China .
• More By Hal Brands

Most-Read Articles

Israel and the coming long war.

To Defeat Iran’s Resistance Axis, the IDF Needs a New Strategy—and a Unified Country

Assaf Orion

America is fighting the wrong trade war.

The China Shock Is Over—and More Tariffs Will Not Help Workers

Niccolò W. Bonifai, Nita Rudra, Rodney Ludema, and J. Bradford Jensen

How corruption fuels inequality in china.

Graft on a Staggering Scale Warps the Country’s Economy

Branko Milanovic and Li Yang

The deep roots of trump’s isolationism.

Democrats Need Their Own “America First” Agenda

Charles Kupchan

Recommended articles, how the war in gaza revived the axis of resistance.

Iran and Its Allies Are Fighting With Missiles and Memes

Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr

America can’t surpass china’s power in asia.

But It Can Still Prevent Chinese Hegemony

Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh

Stay informed., thank you for signing up. stay tuned for the latest from foreign affairs ..

How the Great War Shaped the World

The trauma of 1914–18 forever changed geopolitical boundaries, the science of killing, and the meaning of war.

The First World War, George Kennan wrote decades after it ended, was the ur‑catastrophe of the 20th century. The first conflict among industrialized global powers killed 10 million soldiers and mutilated over 21 million more.

Explore the World War I Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Both the war and the peace that followed have marked our world in indelible ways. Especially Europe. The deaths of more than 110,000 Americans in uniform, half to the Spanish flu, were equivalent to just one-quarter of the death toll in the French army alone during the first four months of the war. Europe suffered a bloodbath such as the world had never seen. Two million German soldiers died, along with about 1 million British troops, counting those from the colonies and dominions. Proportionately higher losses were suffered in Russia, Serbia, and Ottoman Turkey, where a war of 20th-century firepower was fought under 19th-century sanitary conditions.

The contrast between American and European perceptions of the world order in the 20th and 21st centuries is incomprehensible without considering the catastrophe of 1914–18. Ever since, Europe has felt an underlying pessimism, a sense of danger and disorder that the United States hasn’t shared. Americans have continued to believe that progress is built into history. Most Europeans, other than Marxists, dropped this notion once the Great War began.

Europeans still call it the Great War—not only because it was huge and momentous, but also because it changed the nature of war itself.

How so? First, by obliterating the distinction between civilian and military targets. After the early battles of 1914 resulted in a bloody stalemate, the conditions of civilian life behind the lines of occupying armies deteriorated. The Great War created internment camps all over Europe and beyond, to house enemy aliens in the wrong country at the wrong time. Still worse was the treatment of ethnic minorities suspected of disloyalty. After a series of defeats in 1915, the Russian army sent hundreds of thousands of Jews in Galicia from the battlefront to the interior, in case they might welcome German invaders. Armenians in Turkey fared still worse; more than 1 million died in the 20th century’s first European genocide.

The bombardment of cities by artillery and aircraft also brought the war to civilians. The German naval warfare against civilian shipping ultimately drew the United States into the war. The Allied blockade of European ports, which continued after the armistice in 1918, was a clear violation of international law.

And consider the changes in mood the war wrought in the United States. The 20 years before the war had seen waves of immigrants arrive from central and eastern Europe, inspiring the use of an epithet—“hyphenated Americans”—that intensified in the course of the war. The loyalties of German Americans, in particular, were thrown into question. The intolerance of wartime continued and grew more vitriolic once a prosperous peace returned. Government witch hunts conducted after the war, such as the so‑called Palmer raids against suspected radicals and anarchists, many of them foreign-born, had their origins in the war itself.

Nine months after the war broke out, the fighting turned even uglier. In April 1915, modern chemical warfare was born on the battlefields of Belgium, and soon became a tolerated (although never legalized) form of weaponry used by all combatants on a frightening scale. In 1918, one of every four shells fired on the western front contained poison gas.

The clouds of chlorine, then phosgene, then mustard gas did not bring any tactical or strategic breakthrough. For one thing, their effectiveness depended on the wind’s direction and the absence of precipitation. When it rained, as it did frequently in Flanders, the gas never rose above ankle level, meaning a soldier could survive if he stayed on his feet. But gas warfare changed the rules of engagement. Gas masks were rudimentary, and left men (and animals) in no-man’s-land without adequate protection. Gas didn’t change the balance of power, but it did change the balance of horror that soldiers faced on the battlefield.

Later, poison gas was used outside Europe—allegedly in Iraq as early as the 1920s, then in Manchuria and Ethiopia in the 1930s. Fear of retaliation, stemming from military leaders’ firsthand experience of gas as soldiers themselves during the Great War, apparently deterred its use against soldiers in World War II, although the Nazis employed Zyklon B, previously known as a powerful pesticide, in concentration camps.

Might gas warfare have come into widespread use without the Great War? Perhaps, but the huge investment in weapons of mass destruction in 1914–18 left a precedent that could not be eradicated. The use of poison gas is with us still, notably in Syria.

The peace treaties signed at the end of the war left a damaged world with an impossible legacy: they handed over control of German colonies in Africa and the Pacific to the victorious powers and inspired hope around the world that Woodrow Wilson’s notion of self-determination for subject peoples would lead to the end of empires. Not quite. Self-determination was the property of the former nations, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia—all predominantly Caucasian—embedded in the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman Turkish, and Russian empires. Populations of color would have to wait until, under the mandate of the imperial powers, they reached the “maturity” needed for self-government. When would that be? Nobody could say.

Besides, no matter what was decided during the postwar peace conference at Versailles, the imperial powers had already made their own plans for the Middle East. In 1915, the British high commissioner in Egypt promised the keeper of the holy sites in Mecca independence for Arabs in return for their participation in fighting the Ottoman empire. Two years later, Britain’s Balfour Declaration promised Zionists the opposite: a Jewish homeland in Palestine. And these incompatible promises were complicated even more by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, which divided the post-Ottoman Middle East between French and British spheres of influence and drew arbitrary borders—in Iraq, for instance—that have caused instability and conflict ever since.

As a result, violence exploded outside of Europe in 1919–21, when people who had served the Allied cause militarily and otherwise discovered that their recompense would be pious words and nothing more. This happened first in Egypt, then India, then Korea, then China. The wartime collapse of the Ottoman empire brought down its sultan, the all-powerful caliph, and created a crisis in Islam, which lost its spiritual center; Muslim-dominated countries remained colonies ruled (often poorly) by imperial powers under the aegis of the League of Nations. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 to counter Western exploitation of the Islamic world, was the precursor to al-Qaeda.

The Great War cast its geopolitical shadow across the Far East as well. The extent to which the war fueled the continuing hostility between China and Japan is rarely recognized. The problem arose from the Treaty of Versailles. Both nations, traditionally rivals, were among the victorious delegations. China, however, was the weaker power, plagued by internal strife after its 1911 revolution. Japan had helped the Allies during the war, by convoying Australia’s and New Zealand’s troops across the Indian Ocean and by sending naval cruisers to protect the west coast of Canada. At Versailles, Japan tried to exploit its newly acquired leverage, proposing that the charter of the League of Nations include a commitment to racial equality. President Wilson, as a southern-born politician, knew that any such language would ensure the treaty’s defeat in the U.S. Senate. To prevent the Japanese from walking out of the peace negotiations once their request was turned down, the leaders of Britain, France, and the United States backed Japan’s proposal to grant it temporary control—until 1922, as it turned out—of the Chinese province of Shandong, south of Beijing, which the Germans had controlled during the war.

So much for the principle of self-determination. When push came to shove, Wilson chose to reward Japanese naval power and ignore political justice. When Wellington Koo, a Chinese delegate in Paris, sent home the decision on Shandong, students in Beijing responded with shock and outrage, quickly calling for a mass demonstration at Tiananmen Gate to protest the treaty. At a rally the next day, they formed a new organization called the May Fourth Movement, out of which emerged China’s Communist Party. Ponder this: Woodrow Wilson was its godfather.

Next year, China will host the 22nd Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences. Where? In the city of Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong, a choice likely intended to remind historians that both Japan and the West have a history of humiliating China. Those days are over, but the memories linger.

Beyond the advances in the science of murder and the geopolitical reworkings, the Great War created a deep shift in the public attitude toward war itself. The Great War discredited the concept of glory, a word that many Europeans simply could not swallow. The British poet Wilfred Owen, killed late in the war, wrote that anyone who witnessed a soldier suffocating slowly from poison gas would never repeat “to children ardent for some desperate glory / the old Lie” that it was noble to die for one’s country.

The “old Lie” had been told time and again in the popular press and public rhetoric. The use of literature and painting in the service of war was mocked mercilessly in the nonsense verse of the Dada movement and in the nightmare paintings of the surrealists. To clean away the damage that propaganda had done to the literary arts—and indeed to language itself—radical steps were necessary. No longer could dismembered or mangled corpses be sanitized as “the fallen,” nor the butchery of the trenches portrayed as heroic. Artists throughout Europe denounced the obscenities of a war fought for what the poet Ezra Pound called a “botched civilization.” The millions of men slaughtered deserved more than elevated prose; they deserved the unadulterated truth.

At the same time, the arts saw a counterrevolution, a movement back in time that highlighted the power of classical, religious, and romantic forms to memorialize the dead. Modernism excited, shocked, and stimulated, but it did not help people mourn. For that, a bereaved generation turned to the classical art of Edwin Lutyens’s cenotaph in London, the religious art of Rouault, and the sculptures and lithographs of mothers mourning their dead sons created by the German artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose own son had been killed in Belgium in 1914.

After the war, a generation of soldiers wrote their memoirs, which sold by the millions. The story they told was binary—the jarring contrast between innocence and experience, between hope and disillusionment. It depicted the unimaginable awfulness of the war, during which the millions of men in the trenches entered a world as inhospitable and desolate as the dark side of the moon. There they encountered artillery fire—the great killer of the Great War—on a scale the world had never seen before.

As a consequence, 5 million of the men who died in the war have no known graves. The stalemated war on the western front meant that unceasing bombardments pulverized the corpses buried in makeshift cemeteries. On the eastern front, the war was so fluid and covered such distances that finding bodies, let alone identifying and burying them, wasn’t possible. In effect, war had been transformed from a killing machine into a vanishing act.

For fully half the men who were killed in the war, nothing was left but their names. That, and the scarier, shakier, more intolerant world that the war to end all wars created.

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

For this ring, I thee sue 

Speech is never totally free

EVs fight warming but are costly. Why aren’t we driving $10,000 Chinese imports?

A Russian T-72 tank destroyed in the city of Chernihiv, Ukraine.

Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via AP

How war in Ukraine is reshaping global order

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Former U.S. envoy sees NATO getting stronger, more unified, with Russia on track to become diminished, pariah state, China in tough spot

The political, economic, national security, and humanitarian reverberations from the eight weeks of war between Russia and Ukraine are already beginning to reshape the global order as the conflict enters a brutal new chapter, with fighting concentrated in the southeast of Ukraine. To better understand the changes taking place, the Gazette spoke with Ambassador Douglas Lute , M.P.A. ’83, a decorated (retired) U.S. Army lieutenant general who from 2013 to 2017 served as U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, where he played a leading role in NATO’s responses to its top European security challenges. Lute has been a longtime fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School. Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Douglas Lute

GAZETTE: How is the Russian invasion changing NATO? Sweden and Finland appear poised to become members after decades of inaction. If they join, what effect would that have on Russia?

LUTE:  We’re only two months into this and NATO is a big 30-nation bureaucracy, so it doesn’t move swiftly. But some things are already apparent. First, one of the effects will be that NATO will posture NATO forces on NATO territory farther east, and in larger numbers, than they had previously. After the Russian invasion [of Crimea] in 2014, NATO put modest forces in the three Baltic states and Poland. And now, I think, it will do so south of those four, in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. So, there’ll be this sort of eastward shift and eastward strengthening of NATO forces.

The second thing is that it’s entirely likely that by the NATO Summit at the end of June this year, Sweden and Finland will be invited to join. The process begins some months down the road that results in them being added to the membership, but the initial steps will become probably the most historic deliverables of the Madrid summit. So, I think we’ll go from 30 allies to 32 this summer. That’s a long-lasting, nearly permanent change.

Defense spending and defense investment among the 30 allies today is likely to spike. Most prominent is German defense spending. The largest economy in Europe has probably committed to change perhaps a 30-year pattern of marginal defense spending, and they’ve agreed to move their defense spending up by €100 billion this year and then, in out years, annually spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, which would make them the largest defense budget in Europe and would really energize European defense spending, something successive American presidents have argued for going back as far as Eisenhower.

Finally, outside of the NATO realm, but also significant in terms of security, is that I think we’ll see a steady movement away from Russian energy sources. The EU is still deliberating on whether and how fast to cut its current reliance on Russian resources, oil and gas in particular. Those would be major enhancements of the sanctions regime against Russia. I am hopeful that our European friends and partners and allies will take that step.

“Going forward, it’s quite clear that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, will be a pariah state,” says Douglas Lute. “It will be as isolated politically and economically as we can make it …”

Courtesy of Belfer Center

GAZETTE:  Would any of these actions have taken place if Russia had not invaded Ukraine?

LUTE:  It is safe to say that none of this would have occurred. From President Putin’s list of demands before the invasion in February, you can see the kind of strategic effects he’s had. He complained about NATO enlarging its membership to the east, and now he’s going to achieve two more states joining that list. He argued against NATO force deployments, and he’s going to see more of that. So, he’s had a decidedly non-strategic impact on his own interests by way of this invasion.

GAZETTE:  In what ways is this conflict starting to reshape the global order? Which factors will be most determinative of that outcome?

LUTE:  It’s very early, so these strategic moves take a while. But in my view, this invasion and the Western response to it will be as significant a geostrategic inflection point as the 9/11 attacks were 20 years ago. I think we’re going to be living with the repercussions of this invasion for perhaps 10 or 20 years.

Going forward, it’s quite clear that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, will be a pariah state. It will be as isolated politically and economically as we can make it and will not return to anything that looks like pre-invasion [Russia]. This will be equally evident in the economic arena. Obviously, Russia depends for revenues on gas and oil, and there’s going to be a major market shift away from the Western markets. Now, it’s too soon to know what that means. It may mean that prices spike and, in the near term Russia increases its revenues. In fact, we’ve seen a bit of that in the first two months. You could also see the Chinese and others who are not abiding by the Western-imposed sanctions, they could benefit from this by way of energy deals, trying to make up for the deals that Putin has lost elsewhere.

A really important thing to watch will be the countries that are sitting on the fence. So, as this persists and as evidence of atrocities continues, as the refugees continue to flow out of Ukraine, and who knows what lies ahead in terms of Russian actions — what’s the impact on China, most significantly, but also important states like India and Brazil, and so forth. There are important players here who haven’t yet actually declared their hand. Among those three, China, India and Brazil, China is probably most closely, at least rhetorically, aligned with Putin, so far.

GAZETTE:  Most of the fighting has migrated to eastern and southeastern Ukraine. Do you see anything happening that could accelerate or even upend any of the trend lines that you’ve been talking about?

LUTE:  We’re transitioning from Phase One, which was in and around Kyiv and which the Ukrainians won, and Phase Two, in the so-called Donbas region. We’re between phases right now, with both sides catching their breath. Going forward, we can expect that the Ukrainians will continue to outperform Russia on the battlefield. And I say this, despite, on paper, the physical advantage of the Russian forces. But I’m reminded of the old military tenet that when in war, the moral is to the physical as 3 is to 1. That’s a Napoleon quote. What he meant was that the non-quantifiable, the intangible factors, like morale, cohesion, leadership, discipline, and so forth, typically outweigh the physical factors, like numbers of tanks, number of fighter aircraft, and so forth. And in all those factors, Ukraine has a quite decided advantage. So, I think the Ukrainians will win out. The question is, how ugly is it? How brutal is it? What’s the cost and where do we end up? Do we end up with a frozen conflict where the battlefield is stalemated, Russian forces continue to occupy parts of territorial Ukraine, or are Ukrainian forces able to evict Russian forces from the east and the south? It’s just too soon to tell.

GAZETTE:  If Russia becomes a pariah state, like North Korea, what does Russia’s future look like?

LUTE:  By pariah state, I mean that virtually all meaningful economic contacts, market connections and so forth with Russia would be broken, which would devastate the Russian economy. We would be unwinding 30 years of economic integration of Russia into the global economy.

More like this

Would Russia have invaded if it wasn’t just one man making call? Possibly

Russian actions speak louder than withdrawal promises, analyst says

Bearing witness to Ukraine war through eyes of refugees

GAZETTE:  Haven’t the sanctions since February already done significant damage?

LUTE:  We’re two months into that, but there are things we haven’t done. Our European allies, EU partners, have not ended their energy dependence on Russia. That would be huge and that’s a major step. We’ve cut off some financial channels with some Russian banks, but not completely. As bad as it is, and these are historically severe economic sanctions, there are more steps we can take on the economic front. And then politically, their leadership will not be able to travel outside of Russia. They will be completely isolated for as long as Putin is president. I don’t see that changing.

Militarily, this will have an interesting impact which will be worth watching. Because of the incompetence of the Russian forces in Ukraine, I think Russia will increasingly rely on nuclear forces as the ultimate “guarantor” of its security. And Russian threats against Finland joining NATO seem now kind of hollow because Russia is being defeated by Ukraine. So, what conventional threat does Russia pose to NATO? And does this allow NATO to shift to the next generation of emerging technologies, to spring ahead and take advantage of the fact that Russia’s demonstrated that they’re not 10 feet tall?

GAZETTE:  How will a diminished Russia impact the countries that seem, at least for now, to be standing by Russia, like China, India, Brazil, and several in the Middle East?

LUTE:  The biggest potential impact is on China and China’s relationship with others. It’s conceivable that China would look at the unified Western response against Russia and take that as a warning that any overt aggression would face a similar unified Western response. And, of course, the Chinese economy is just as dependent on the global economy as the Russian economy was before the invasion. I am hopeful that President Xi [Jinping] and the Chinese Communist Party are watching this and this may have a deterrent effect on China if it has ambitions of territorial aggression. I ran the math recently: The international sanctions regime includes 44 countries and 60 percent of global GDP. That’s huge. And this is without China, which is about another 20 percent of global GDP. So, you can imagine President Xi and his economic team sitting down and saying, “Wait a second. We don’t want to be in that position.”

GAZETTE:  No country, not even China, can survive if cut off from 60 percent of the global economy, I would imagine.

LUTE:  No, they can’t. And so, if Professor Joe Nye has been right for the last 20 years, that interdependence and these interconnections in the world serve not only for prosperity and well-being, but also serve a deterrent effect against major aggression, then maybe we’re going to see that play out in this episode.

Share this article

You might like.

Unhappy suitor wants $70,000 engagement gift back. Now court must decide whether 

Cass Sunstein suggests universities look to First Amendment as they struggle to craft rules in wake of disruptive protests

Experts say tension between trade, green-tech policies hampers climate change advances; more targeted response needed

Harvard releases race data for Class of 2028

Cohort is first to be impacted by Supreme Court’s admissions ruling

Parkinson’s may take a ‘gut-first’ path

Damage to upper GI lining linked to future risk of Parkinson’s disease, says new study

Professor tailored AI tutor to physics course. Engagement doubled.

Preliminary findings inspire other large Harvard classes to test approach this fall

Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > Journals
• > Journal of Global History
• > Volume 6 Issue 3
• > The Cold War as a historical period: an interpretive...

Article contents

The cold war as a historical period: an interpretive essay *.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2011

As a historical period, the Cold War may be seen as a rivalry between two nuclear superpowers that threatened global destruction. The rivalry took place within a common frame of reference, in which a new historical relationship between imperialism and nationalism worked in remarkably parallel ways across the superpower divide. The new imperial–national relationship between superpowers and the client states also accommodated developments such as decolonization, multiculturalism, and new ideologies, thus producing a hegemonic configuration characterizing the period. The models of development, structures of clientage, unprecedented militarization of societies, designs of imperial enlightenment, and even many gender and racial/cultural relationships followed similar tracks within, and often between, the two camps. Finally, counter-hegemonic forces emerged in regions of the non-Western world, namely China and some Islamic societies. Did this portend the beginning of the end of a long period of Western hegemony?

Access options

1 Paul Ricoeur, Time and narrative , 3 vols, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984–88. See also his ‘Narrative time’, Critical Inquiry 7, 1, 1980, pp. 169–90. For my arguments, see Prasenjit Duara, ‘Transnationalism and the challenge to national histories’, in Bender , Thomas , ed. Rethinking American history in a global age , Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA : University of California Press , 2002 , pp. 25–46 CrossRef Google Scholar . See also Duara , Prasenjit , Rescuing history from the nation: questioning narratives of modern China , Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press , 1995 . CrossRef Google Scholar

2 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in Bouchard , Donald F. , ed. Language, counter-memory, practice , trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 1977 , pp. 139–64 Google Scholar . Latour , Bruno , We have never been modern , trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 1993 . Google Scholar

3 Hobsbawm , Eric , Nations and nationalism since 1780 , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1990 Google Scholar ; Hannah Arendt, The origins of totalitarianism , New York and London: Harcourt Brace, 1973 (first published 1951).

4 William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson, ‘Empire preserv’d: how the Americans put anti-communism before anti-imperialism’, in Duara , Prasenjit , ed. Decolonization: perspectives from now and then , London : Routledge , 2004 , pp. 155–7. Google Scholar

5 Arendt, Origins of totalitarianism , pp. 152–3.

6 As quoted in Marshall , D. Bruce , The French colonial myth and constitution-making in the Fourth Republic , New Haven, CT : Yale University Press , 1973 , p. 44 Google Scholar . See also Prasenjit Duara, ‘The imperialism of “free nations”: Japan, Manchukuo, and the history of the present’, in Stoler , Ann , McGranahan , Carole , and Perdue , Peter , eds. Imperial formations and their discontents , Santa Fe, NM : School of American Research Press , 2007 . Google Scholar

7 The Oxford English Dictionary, http://dictionary.oed.com (consulted 19 July 2011), defines the Roman client as ‘A plebeian under the patronage of a patrician, in this relation called a patron ( patronus ), who was bound, in return for certain services, to protect his client’s life and interests.’ See also Duara , Prasenjit , Sovereignty and authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian modern , Boulder, CO : Rowman and Littlefield , 2003 . Google Scholar

8 Doyle , Michael W. , Empires , Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 1986 , pp. 129–30 Google Scholar ; Johnson , Chalmers , The sorrows of empire: militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic , New York : Henry Holt , 2004 , 29 Google Scholar . For Heinrich Triepel and a summary of the debate, see Münkler , Herfried , The logic of world domination from Ancient Rome to the United States , trans. Patrick Camiller, Cambridge : Polity Press , 2007 , pp. 43–4 Google Scholar .

9 Tsang , Steve , The Cold War’s odd couple: the unintended partnership between the ROC and the UK, 1950–1958 , London : I.B. Tauris , 2006 , pp. 10, 194 Google Scholar .

10 See Paul Marer and Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, ‘Costs of domination, benefits of subordination’, in Triska , Jan F. , ed. Dominant powers and subordinate states: the United States in Latin America and the Soviet Union in eastern Europe , Durham, NC : Duke University Press , 1986 , pp. 371–99. Google Scholar

11 Robert Freeman Smith, ‘Republican policy and the Pax Americana , 1921–1932’, in Williams , William Appleman , ed. From colony to empire: essays in the history of American foreign relations , New York : John Wiley , 1972 , pp. 273–5. Google Scholar

12 Bacevich , Andrew J. , American empire: the realities and consequences of U.S. diplomacy , Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 2002 , pp. 115–16. Google Scholar

13 Quoted in Smith, ‘Republican policy’, p. 271.

14 Carl Parrini, ‘The age of ultraimperialism’, Radical History Review , 57, 1993, pp. 7–9.

15 Giovanni Arrighi, Po-keung Hui, Ho-fung Hung, and Mark Selden, ‘Historical capitalism, East and West’, in Arrighi , G. , Hamashita , T. , and Selden , M. , eds. The resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives , London : Routledge , 2003 , pp. 259–333 Google Scholar ; quotation on p. 301. See also Münkler, Logic of world domination , pp. 149–50.

16 Hinds , Allister , Britain’s sterling colonial policy and decolonization, 1939–1958 , Westport, CT : Greenwood Press , 2001 , pp. 11, 29–30, 196–7 Google Scholar ; Louis and Robinson, ‘Empire preserv’d’, pp. 152–61.

17 Louis and Robinson, ‘Empire preserv’d’, esp. p. 157 for the nuclear sabre-rattling exchange.

18 Johnson Sorrows of empire , pp. 23–37.

19 Linda Carty, ‘Imperialism: historical periodization or present-day phenomenon?’ Radical History Review , 57, 1993, p. 43; Moon , Katherine H. S. , Sex among allies: military prostitution in U.S.–Korea relations , New York : Columbia University Press , 1997 , pp. 17–18. Google Scholar

20 Hanhimäki , Jussi M. and Westad , Odd Arne , The Cold War: a history in documents and eyewitness accounts , Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2003 , pp. 245–7 Google Scholar ; Ferenc Cseresnyés, ‘The ’56 exodus to Austria’, Hungarian Quarterly 40, 154, 1999, pp. 86–101, http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no154/086.html (consulted 20 July 2011); Williams , Kieran , The Prague Spring and its aftermath: Czechoslovak politics, 1968–1970 , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1997 , esp. pp. 3–28 CrossRef Google Scholar .

21 For the Soviet Union, see Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘Nationality policies’, in Action , Edward , Cherniaev , Vladimir I. , and Rosenberg , William G. , eds. Critical companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1915 , Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN : Indiana University Press , 1997 , pp. 659–66 Google Scholar . For China, see Rhoads , Edward J. M. , Manchus and Han: ethnic relations and political power in late Qing and early republican China, 1861–1928 , Seattle, WA : University of Washington Press , 2000 , pp. 226–7. Google Scholar

22 J.V. Stalin, ‘Marxism and the national question’, Prosveshcheniye , 3–5, March–May 1913, transcribed by Carl Kavanagh.

23 Hirsch , Francine , Empire of nations: ethnographic knowledge and the making of the Soviet Union , Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 2005 , pp. 6–8 Google Scholar .

24 Tominaga Tadashi, Manshūkoku no minzoku mondai (The nationality problem of Manchukuo) , Shinkyō, 1943, pp. 43–5.

25 Hirsch, Empire of nations , pp. 316–18.

26 Brubaker , Rogers , Nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in the new Europe , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1996 , pp. 18–24 CrossRef Google Scholar .

27 Hirsch, Empire of nations , p. 318.

28 Northrop , Douglas , Veiled empire: gender and power in Stalinist Central Asia , Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 2004 . Google Scholar

29 Katherine Verdery, ‘Nationalism and national sentiment in post-socialist Romania’, Slavic Review , 52, 1993, pp. 179–203.

30 See for instance Nkrumah , Kwame , Neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism , London : Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd. , 1965 . Google Scholar

31 Klein , Christina , Cold War orientalism: Asia in the middlebrow imagination, 1945–1961 , Berkeley, CA : University of California Press , 2003 , pp. 7–16. Google Scholar

32 Yuko Kikuchi, ‘Russel Wright and Japan: bridging Japonisme and good design through craft design’, Journal of Modern Craft , 1, 3, 2008, p. 372.

33 Klein, Cold War orientalism , pp. 253–63.

34 Oppenheim , L. , International Law , vol. 1, London : Longmans, Green, and Co. , 1905 Google Scholar , cited in Nele Matz, ‘Civilization and the mandate system under the League of Nations as origin of trusteeship’, in von Bogdandy , A. and Wolfrum , R. , eds. Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law , vol. 9, Leiden : Koninklijke Brill NV , 2005 , p. 61. Google Scholar

35 Tilly , Charles , Coercion, capital and European states, ad 990–1992 , Cambridge, MA, and Oxford : Blackwell , 1992 , pp. 209, 221 Google Scholar . For some examples from Southeast Asia, see Reid , Anthony , Imperial alchemy: nationalism and political identity in Southeast Asia , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2009 . CrossRef Google Scholar

36 Stephen Daggett, ‘Costs of major U.S. wars’, CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RS22926, 24 July 2008, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/108054.pdf (consulted 21 July 2011), p. CRS-2.

37 Jian , Chen , Mao’s China and the Cold War , Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press , 2001 , p. 229. Google Scholar

38 Szonyi , Michael , Cold War island: Quemoy on the front line , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2008 . Google Scholar

39 Rouquié , Alain , The military and the state in Latin America , trans. Paul E. Sigmund, Berkeley, CA : University of California Press , 1987 , pp. 2, 131 (Rockefeller Report cited on p. 138) Google Scholar .

40 Greg Grandin, ‘Off the beach: the United States, Latin America, and the Cold War’, in Agnew , Jean-Christophe and Rosenzweig , Roy , eds. A companion to post-1945 America , Oxford : Blackwell Publishing , 2002 , pp. 431–3 Google Scholar . See also Hanhimäki and Westad, The Cold War , pp. 379–80.

41 Rabe , Stephen G. , Eisenhower and Latin America: the foreign policy of anti-communism , Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press , 1988 , 45 Google Scholar .

42 Ibid ., p. 58.

43 Grandin, ‘Off the beach’, pp. 434, 441.

44 Hamza Alavi, ‘The origins and significance of the Pakistan–US military alliance’, http://hamzaalavi.com/?p=102 (consulted 21 July 2011).

45 Hanhimäki and Westad, The Cold War , p. 167.

46 Westad , Odd Arne , The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2007 , chs. 7 and 8 Google Scholar .

47 Nils Gilman, ‘Modernization theory, the highest stage of American intellectual history’, in Engerman , David C. , Gilman , Nils , Haefele , Mark , and Latham , Michael E. , eds. Staging growth: modernization, development, and the global Cold War , Amherst, MA : University of Massachusetts Press , 2003 , pp. 48–51, 60 Google Scholar ; Rostow , W. W. , The stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1960 . Google Scholar

48 Scott , James C. , Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed , New Haven, CT : Yale University Press , 1998 Google Scholar . See also Szonyi, Cold War island .

49 Richard Madsen, ‘Secularism, religious renaissance, and social conflict in Asia’, Martin Marty Center Web Forum, September 2008, http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/092008/index.shtml (consulted 21 July 2011).

50 For the development state, see Ziya Oni, ‘The logic of the development state’, Comparative Politics , 24, 1, 1991, pp. 109–26. For its historical legacy, see Duara, ‘Imperialism of “free nations”’.

51 Berger , Mark , The battle for Asia: from decolonization to globalization , London : Routledge , 2004 , pp. 225–9 CrossRef Google Scholar .

52 T. Y. Kwak, ‘The legacies of Korean participation in the Vietnam War: the rise of formal dictatorship’, unpublished paper for annual meeting of the American Studies Association, 24 May 2009, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p113675_index.html (consulted 21 July 2011).

53 Cited in Tilly, Coercion, capital and European states , 213.

54 Curtis Anderson Gayle, ‘Progressive representations of the nation: early post-war Japan and beyond’, Social Science Japan Journal , 4, 1, 2001, p. 9.

55 Victor Koschman, ‘Modernization and democratic values: the “Japanese model” in the 1960s’, in Engerman et al., Staging growth , p. 242.

56 Quoted in Gilman, ‘Modernization theory’, p. 64.

57 Chen Jian, Mao’s China , p. 6; Yang Kuisong, ‘The Sino-Soviet alliance and nationalism: a contradiction’, in Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, The Cold War History of Sino-Soviet Relations , June 2005, http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/publications/areastudies/documents/sinosov/Kuisong.pdf (consulted 21 July 2011); Shen Zhihua, ‘Guanyu Zhong-Su tiaoyue tanpan yanjiuzhongde jige zhengyi wenti … (Several controversial questions in the study of the Sino-Soviet treaty negotiations …)’, Shixue yuekan , 8, 2004, pp. 64–6. See also Heinzig , Dieter , The Soviet Union and communist China 1945–1950: the arduous road to the alliance , Armonk, NY : M.E. Sharpe , 2004 . Google Scholar

58 Ross , Robert S. and Changbin , Jiang , eds. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.–China diplomacy, 1953–1973 , Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 2002 , pp. 300–1 Google Scholar .

59 This was the view in the CIA and State Department in 1969: see Komine , Yukinori , Secrecy in US foreign policy: Nixon, Kissinger and the rapprochement with China , Aldershot : Ashgate , 2008 , pp. 118, 130 Google Scholar . See also Ross and Jiang, Re-examining the Cold War , pp. 16, 67–9.

60 Ross and Jiang, Re-examining the Cold War , pp. 70, 67–9.

61 Shirley Kan, U.S.–China military contacts: issues for Congress , CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RL32496, updated 10 May 2005, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/48835.pdf (consulted 21 July 2011). For the effects of the arms race and SDI on the Soviet Union, see Eric Ringmar, ‘The recognition game: Soviet Russia against the West’, Cooperation and Conflict , 37, 2, 2002, p. 130; also Hanhimäki and Westad, The Cold War , pp. 274–5.

62 Coll , Steve , Ghost wars: the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 , New York : Penguin Press , 2004 . Google Scholar

63 Jalal Al-i Ahmad, ‘Diagnosing an illness’, in Duara, Decolonization , pp. 56–63, quotation on p. 62.

This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref .

• Google Scholar

View all Google Scholar citations for this article.

Save article to Kindle

To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

• Volume 6, Issue 3
• Prasenjit Duara (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022811000416

Save article to Dropbox

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save article to Google Drive

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Reply to: Submit a response

- No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted

Your details

Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests.

Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Conflict Studies
• Development
• Environment
• Foreign Policy
• Human Rights
• International Law
• Organization
• International Relations Theory
• Political Communication
• Political Economy
• Political Geography
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Sexuality and Gender
• Qualitative Political Methodology
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Security Studies
• Share Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

The conduct and consequences of war.

• Alyssa K. Prorok Alyssa K. Prorok Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• , and  Paul K. Huth Paul K. Huth Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.72
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017
• This version: 25 June 2019
• Previous version

The academic study of warfare has expanded considerably over the past 15 years. Whereas research used to focus almost exclusively on the onset of interstate war, more recent scholarship has shifted the focus from wars between states to civil conflict, and from war onset to questions of how combatants wage and terminate war. Questioned as well are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarship has also shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are attentive to individual-level motives and explanations of spatial variation in wartime behavior by civilians and combatants within a country or armed conflict. Today, research focuses on variations in how states and rebel groups wage war, particularly regarding when and how wars expand, whether combatants comply with the laws of war, when and why conflicts terminate, and whether conflicts end with a clear military victory or with a political settlement through negotiations. Recent research also recognizes that strategic behavior continues into the post-conflict period, with important implications for the stability of the post-conflict peace. Finally, the consequences of warfare are wide-ranging and complex, affecting everything from political stability to public health, often long after the fighting stops.

• interstate war
• laws of war
• civilian victimization
• war termination
• war severity
• post-conflict peace

Updated in this version

Updated introduction, subheadings, references, and substantial revision throughout.

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Three simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the early 2000s. First, studies of the dynamics of civil war have proliferated. Second, war is conceptualized as a series of inter-related stages in which the onset, conduct, and termination of wars as well as post-war relations are analyzed theoretically and empirically in a more integrated fashion. Third, studies have shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are sensitive to spatial variation in behavior within a country or conflict.

This article reviews and assesses this body of recent scholarship, which has shifted the focus from war onset to questions of how combatants wage war and what are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarly research examines the conduct and consequences of both interstate and civil wars.

The analysis is organized into three main sections. It begins with research on how states and rebel groups wage war, with particular attention given to questions regarding war expansion, compliance with the laws of war, and war severity. Section two turns to the literature on war duration, termination, and outcomes. Different explanations are discussed, for when and why wars come to an end; then, the question of how war’s end influences the prospects for a stable post-war peace is considered. In section three, recent scholarship is examined on the consequences of war for post-war trends in political stability and public health. The concluding discussion addresses some of the important contributions associated with recent scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war as well as promising directions for future research.

The Waging of Civil and International Wars

What accounts for the nature of the wars we see? This broad question drives a new research tradition in conflict studies that compliments traditional analyses of war onset by shifting the focus to state behavior during war. This research goes beyond understandings of why states fight one another to engaging questions of why states join ongoing wars, when and why they follow the laws of war, and what explains the severity of wars. Taken together, these questions open the black box of wartime behavior.

Intervention and the Expansion of Interstate Wars

Research on war expansion developed as a natural outgrowth of analyses of war onset: scholars studying why states initiate conflict shifted focus to understand why third parties join ongoing wars. The link between alliances and joining behavior has been central to studies of war expansion, spawning a broad research tradition that focuses on alliances and geography, differences among types of alliances, and the characteristics of alliance members. Siverson and Starr ( 1991 ), for example, find a strong interaction effect between geography and alliances, in that a warring neighbor who is an ally increases the likelihood of a state joining an existing conflict. Leeds, Long, and Mitchell ( 2000 ) also find that the specific content of alliance obligations is critical to understanding when states choose to intervene, and that states uphold the terms of their alliance commitments nearly 75% of the time. Most recently, Vasquez and Rundlett ( 2016 ) found that alliances are essentially a necessary condition for war expansion, highlighting the importance of this factor in explaining joining behavior.

Alliance behavior is also an important topic in the study of democratic wartime behavior. While Choi ( 2004 ) presents findings suggesting that democracies are particularly likely to align with one another, Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) provide counter-evidence that democracies are willing to align with non-democracies when it serves their strategic interests. Given the tendency to uphold alliance obligations, and empirical evidence showing that war initiators are more successful when their adversary does not receive third-party assistance (Gartner & Siverson, 1996 ), recent theoretical research suggests that states, understanding joining dynamics, might manipulate war aims to reduce the likelihood of outside intervention (Werner, 2000 ).

These studies suggest that war expansion should be understood as the consequence of a decision calculus undertaken by potential joiners. While much of the contemporary literature focuses on alliance behavior, this only indirectly gets at the question of who will join ongoing conflicts. A full explanation of war expansion from this perspective would also require that we explain when states form alliances in the first place. Further, the analyses of Gartner and Siverson ( 1996 ) and of Werner ( 2000 ) suggest that strategic thinking must be the focus of future research on war expansion. Recent research begins to address this issue: DiLorenzo and Rooney ( 2018 ) examine how uncertainty over estimates of third party resolve influence war-making decisions of states, finding that rival states are more likely to initiate conflict when domestic power shifts in potential joiner states (i.e., allies) increase uncertainty over the strength of that alliance commitment. Future research should continue to investigate the links between expectations of third-party behavior and initial war initiation decisions, as this research highlights important selection processes that empirical research has not yet fully explored.

Finally, recent research goes further to connect war initiation and expansion by arguing that commitment problems—one of the key bargaining failures leading to war initiation—also helps explain war expansion. Shirkey ( 2018 ) finds that wars caused by commitment rather than information problems are more likely to expand, as they are generally fought over greater war aims, are more severe, and last longer. These factors generate risks and rewards for intervention that encourage expansion.

The literature on interstate war expansion has made progress in the last decade with much closer attention to modeling strategic calculations by combatants and potential interveners. The result has been a better understanding of the interrelationship between onset and joining behavior and the realization that the timing and the sequence in which sides intervene is critical to war expansion (Joyce, Ghosn, & Bayer, 2014 ).

Expansion of Civil Wars

The analog to studies of war expansion in the interstate context has traditionally been the study of intervention in the civil war context. Research in this field treats the decision to intervene in much the same way as the war expansion literature treats the potential joiner’s decision calculus. That is, intervention is the result of a rational, utility-maximizing decision calculus in which potential interveners consider the costs and benefits of intervention as well as the potential for achieving desired outcomes. Understood in these terms, both domestic and international strategic considerations affect the decision to intervene, with the Cold War geopolitical climate much more conducive to countervailing interventions than the post-Cold War era has been (Regan, 2002a ), and peacekeeping-oriented interventions most likely in states with ethnic, trade, military, or colonial ties to the intervening state (Rost & Greig, 2011 ).

Whether states are most likely to intervene in easy or hard cases is a central question. While Aydin ( 2010 ) showed that states will delay intervention when previous interventions by other states have failed to influence the conflict, Rost and Grieg ( 2011 ) showed that state-based interventions for peacekeeping purposes are most likely in tough cases—long ethnic wars and conflicts that kill and displace large numbers of civilians. Finally, Gent ( 2008 ) shows that the likelihood of success may not affect the intervention decision equally for government and opposition-targeted interventions. He finds that both types of intervention are more likely when governments face stronger rebel groups, thus implying that intervention in support of rebel groups occurs when the likelihood of success is highest, but intervention supporting governments is most likely when states face their most intense challenges.

There are two likely sources of the discrepancies in this literature. First, most analyses have focused exclusively on the intervener’s decision calculus, or the supply side, failing to account for variation in the demand for intervention. Second, there is significant inconsistency in the literature’s treatment of the goals of interveners. Some analyses assume that states intervene to end conflicts, while others don’t make this limiting assumption but still fail to distinguish among interventions for different purposes.

Newer research takes important strides to address these issues. First, Salehyan, Skrede Gleditsch, and Cunningham ( 2011 ) developed a theory of third party support for insurgent groups that explicitly modeled both supply-side and demand-side factors driving the intervention decision. They found that demand is greatest among weak rebel groups, but supply is greatest for strong groups. Second, research by Cunningham ( 2010 ) explicitly measured whether third party states intervene with independent goals, and Stojek and Chacha ( 2015 ) theorized that intervention behavior is driven by economic motivations. Trade ties increase the likelihood of intervention on the side of the government.

Finally, Kathman ( 2010 ) focused on contiguous state interveners in examining motives for intervention. He developed a measure of conflict infection risk that predicts the likelihood of conflict spreading to each contiguous state. Empirically, he finds that, as the risk of contagion increases, so does the probability of intervention by at-risk neighbors. This research develops a convincing mechanism and empirical test to explain a subset of interventions and provides a clear link from intervention research to recent research on civil conflict contagion. While the contagion literature is too broad to review here, mechanisms posited for civil war expansion across borders range from refugee flows (Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2006 ), to ethnic kinship ties (Forsberg, 2014 ), to increased military expenditures in neighboring states (Phillips, 2015 ).

The literature on intervention into civil wars has grown significantly over the past decade as internationalization of civil conflicts has become common and often results in escalatory dynamics that are of deep concern to analysts and policymakers.

Compliance With the Laws of War

Scholars have recently begun studying the conditions under which compliance with the laws of war is most likely and the mechanisms most important in determining compliance. This research shifts the focus toward understanding state behavior during war and the strategic and normative considerations that influence decision-making processes of states. Two key questions drive scholarship in this tradition; first, does international law constrain state behavior, even when the state is threatened by severe conflict, and second, can observed compliance be attributed to ratification status, or is it instead a result of strategic decision making?

Scholars have yet to provide conclusive answers to these questions; while compliance is observed in many circumstances, most scholars attribute observed restraint to factors other than international law. Legro ( 1995 ), for example, found that international agreements had limited impact on Britain and Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, and chemical weapons during WWII. In analyses of civilian targeting during interstate war, Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2006 ) also found that international law itself has little impact on a state’s propensity for civilian targeting. Downes argued that civilian targeting occurs most often when states are fighting protracted wars of attrition and desire to save lives on their own side, or when they intend to annex enemy territory with potentially hostile civilians. Valentino et al. ( 2006 ) similarly found that the decision to target civilians is driven by strategic considerations and is unconstrained by treaty obligations relating to the laws of war. Finally, Fazal and Greene ( 2015 ) found that observed compliance is explained by identity rather than law; violations are much more common in European vs. non-European dyads than in other types of dyads.

While these analyses suggest that international law has little effect on state behavior and that observed compliance is incidental, Price ( 1997 ) and Morrow ( 2014 ) argued that law does exert some influence on compliance behavior. Price attributed variation in the use of chemical weapons to the terms of international agreements, arguing that complete bans are more effective than partial bans. Morrow ( 2014 ), however, demonstrated that law’s impact varies depending upon issue area, regime characteristics, and adversary identity. Of eight issue areas, he found the worst compliance records on civilian targeting and prisoners of war, which perhaps accounts for the largely negative conclusions drawn by Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2006 ). Additionally, Morrow found, unlike Valentino et al., that democratic states are more likely to comply after ratification than before, suggesting that obligations under international law do affect state behavior, at least in democracies. Finally, he demonstrated that compliance increases significantly when an adversary has also ratified a given treaty, arguing this effect is due to reciprocity.

More recent scholarship expands this research, showing that law may affect state behavior through additional mechanisms that previous research had not considered. For example, Kreps and Wallace ( 2016 ) and Wallace ( 2015 ) found that public support for state policies as diverse as drone strikes and torture of prisoners of war are critically influenced by international law. International condemnation of U.S. policies reduces public support most when such condemnation focuses on legal critiques. This suggests that international law influences state behavior in democracies through its effect on public opinion, not through liberal norms of nonviolence. Additionally, Appel and Prorok ( 2018 ) and Jo and Thompson ( 2014 ) showed that external constraints influence states’ compliance behavior. Specifically, Appel and Prorok showed that states target fewer civilians in interstate war when they are embedded in alliance and trade networks dominated by third party states who have ratified international treaties prohibiting the abuse of non-combatants during war. Jo and Thompson showed that states are more likely to grant international observers access to detention centers when they are more reliant upon foreign aid. These findings suggest that international law can influence state behavior indirectly, through pressure exerted by international donors and backers.

Scholarship on compliance with the laws of war in interstate wars has made considerable progress over the past decade. We now know much more about the contingent support of democratic state leaders and publics for compliance with the laws of war. This key finding opens up new areas of research on the strategic efforts of political and military leaders to convince publics of their commitment to international law and whether those strategies are likely to be successful.

Civilian Targeting in Civil War

The mistreatment and deliberate targeting of civilian populations is an active area of research by scholars who study civil wars (Hultman, 2007 ; Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006 ; Kalyvas, 2006 ; Valentino et al., 2004 ; Weinstein, 2007 ; Wickham-Crowley, 1990 ). Most research on this topic treats the use of violence against civilians as a strategic choice; that is, combatants target civilians to induce their compliance, signal resolve, weaken an opponent’s support base, or extract resources from the population. In his seminal work on the topic, Kalyvas ( 2006 ) demonstrated that combatants resort to the use of indiscriminate violence to coerce civilian populations when they lack the information and control necessary to target defectors selectively. Similarly, Valentino ( 2005 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2004 ) found that incumbents are more likely to resort to mass killing of civilians when faced with strong insurgent opponents that they are unable to defeat through more conventional tactics.

More recent analyses have built upon these earlier works, adding levels of complexity to the central theories developed previously and examining new forms of violence that previous studies did not. Balcells ( 2011 ) brought political considerations back in, finding that direct violence is most likely in areas where pre-conflict political power between state and rebel supporters was at parity, while indirect violence is most likely in locations where the adversary’s pre-war political support was highest. Wood ( 2010 ) accounted for the impact of relative strength and adversary strategy, finding that weak rebel groups, lacking the capacity to protect civilian populations, will increase their use of violence in response to state violence, while strong rebel groups display the opposite pattern of behavior. Lyall ( 2010a ) also found conditionalities in the relationship between state behavior and insurgent reactions, demonstrating that government “sweep” operations are much more effective at preventing and delaying insurgent violence when carried out by forces of the same ethnicity as the insurgent group. Finally, Cohen ( 2016 ) advanced research by focusing on wartime sexual violence. She found that rape, like other forms of violence, is used strategically in civil war. Specifically, armed groups use rape as a socialization tactic: groups that recruit through abduction engage in rape at higher rates, to generate loyalty and trust between soldiers.

This large body of research provides many insights into the strategic use of violence against civilians during civil war. However, until recently, little research addressed questions of compliance with legal obligations. With the recent formation of the International Criminal Court, however, states and rebel groups are now subject to legal investigation for failure to comply with basic principles of the laws of war.

Emerging research suggests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international law more generally do affect the behavior of civil war combatants. For example, Hillebrecht ( 2016 ) found that ICC actions during the Libyan civil war reduced the level of mass atrocities committed in the conflict, while Jo and Simmons ( 2016 ) found that the ICC reduces civilian targeting by governments and rebel groups that are seeking legitimacy, suggesting international legal institutions can reduce violations of humanitarian law during civil war. These findings should be tempered, however, by recent research suggesting that ICC involvement in civil wars can, under certain conditions, extend ongoing conflicts (Prorok, 2017 ).

Finally, beyond the ICC, Stanton ( 2016 ) and Jo ( 2015 ) both demonstrated that international law constrains civil war actors by establishing standards against which domestic and international constituencies judge the behavior of governments and rebel groups. Particularly when rebels are seeking legitimacy, Jo argues, they are more likely to comply with international legal standards in a variety of areas, from protection of civilian populations to child soldiering. This research suggests that even without direct intervention by the ICC, international law can influence the behavior of governments and rebels engaged in civil war.

While recent research has shown that the laws of war can influence civilian targeting in civil wars, the large loss of civilian life in the Syrian civil war highlights how fragile the commitment to international law can be. It points to important future research questions about when threats of various sanctions by the international community against non-compliance are actually credible and which actors can apply effective coercive pressure.

Losses Suffered in Wars

Recent scholarship has taken up the issue of war severity. Empirical research suggests that the tactics and strategies used by states during war, and the political pressures that compel them to adopt those policies, affect the severity of conflict. Biddle ( 2004 ), for instance, argued that war-fighting strategies influence the magnitude of losses sustained during war, and found that states employing the modern system of force reduce their exposure to lethal firepower, thus limiting losses. Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2010 ) examined the reasons behind different strategic choices, arguing that democratic sensitivity to the costs of war pressure democratic leaders to adopt military policies designed to limit fatalities. They found that increasing military capabilities decreases civilian and military fatalities, while reliance on guerrilla or attrition strategies, as well as fighting on or near one’s own territory, increases fatalities. They reported that democracies are significantly more likely to join powerful alliances and less likely to use attrition or guerrilla strategies, or to fight on their own territory.

Speaking to the conventional wisdom that interstate warfare is on the decline, recent research by Fazal ( 2014 ) suggests that modern medical advances mean that, while war has become less fatal, it has not necessarily become less severe. This raises questions about common understandings of broad trends in conflict frequency and severity as well as questions about best practices for measuring conflict severity. Future research should grapple with both of these issues.

Civil war studies have recently begun to focus more on conflict severity as an outcome in need of explanation. Many key explanatory factors in early research mirrored those in interstate war research, making comparison possible. For example, like interstate war, civil war scholarship consistently finds that democracies suffer less severe conflicts than nondemocracies (Heger & Salehyan, 2007 ; Lacina, 2006 ; Lujala, 2009 ). Regarding state military strength, research by Lujala ( 2009 ) demonstrated that relative equality between government and rebel forces leads to the deadliest conflicts, as rebels with the strength to fight back will likely inflict more losses than those without the ability to sustain heavy engagement with government forces. Finally, recent research by Balcells and Kalyvas ( 2014 ) mirrored work on interstate war by focusing on how the military strategies adopted by combatants affect conflict intensity. They found that civil conflicts fought via conventional means tend to be more lethal than irregular or symmetric nonconventional (SNC) wars, as only the former involve direct confrontations with heavy weaponry. While research on conflict severity is still developing, these studies suggest that democracy, military strength, and strategy are consistent predictors of conflict severity, although the mechanisms posited for the effects of these variables sometimes differ between civil and interstate war.

What this research does not provide clear answers on is how battle losses trend throughout the course of conflict, as most factors examined in the above research are static throughout a conflict. As our ability to measure conflict severity at a more micro temporal and spatial level has improved, emerging research is beginning to address these questions. For example, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2014 ) find that increasing UN troop presence decreases battlefield deaths by increasing the costs of perpetrating violence. Dasgupta Gawande, and Kapur ( 2017 ) also found reductions in insurgent violence associated with implementation of development programs, though the pacifying effects of such programs are conditional upon local state capacity. Additional research shows that trends in violence in Islamist insurgencies vary predictably, with violence suppressed due to anticipated social disapproval during important Islamic holidays (Reese, Ruby, & Pape, 2017 ). Recent research also suggests local variation in cell-phone coverage affects local levels of insurgent violence, as increasing cell-phone communication improves the state’s ability to gather information and monitor insurgent behavior, thereby reducing insurgent violence (Shapiro & Weidmann, 2015 ). These recent studies represent an important trend in conflict severity research that more carefully examines the dynamics of escalation and de-escalation within given conflicts, both spatially and temporally. We encourage additional research in this vein.

The Duration, Termination, and Outcome of War

What accounts for the duration, termination, and outcomes of interstate and civil wars, and the durability of the peace that follows these conflicts? These questions represent a central focus of contemporary conflict studies, and are closely linked in terms of their explanations. A major innovation in this literature in the past 10 to 15 years has been the extension of the bargaining model of war from its original application in the context of war onset (Blainey, 1973 ; Fearon, 1995 ) to its use in the context of war duration, termination, and outcome.

The turn to bargaining models has placed relative military capabilities and battlefield developments at the center of much of the theoretical literature in this area. This focus, however, has spawned a backlash in recent years, as patterns that contradict the implications of bargaining models are detected and theorized. The bargaining approach and its critiques are discussed in the following sections.

Duration of Wars

Understood within the bargaining framework, war duration is closely linked to factors that influence the relative strength of combatants. Theoretical and empirical research suggests that longer wars occur when opponents of relatively equal strength cannot achieve breakthroughs on the battlefield (Bennett & Stam, 1996 ; Filson & Werner, 2007b ; Slantchev, 2004 ), although this pattern does not hold for wars involving non-state actors where a large asymmetry in power increases war duration (Sullivan, 2008 ).

Additional research suggests, however, that relative military strength may not be the best predictor of war duration. Bennett and Stam ( 1996 ), for example, demonstrated that military strategy has a large impact on war duration, independent of military strength, with attrition and punishment strategies leading to longer wars than maneuver strategies. The type of political objectives sought by a war initiator may also offset the impact of military strength, as war aims that require significant target compliance generally lead to longer wars (Sullivan, 2008 ). Still others argue that domestic political sensitivity to concessions-making increases conflict duration, while domestic cost sensitivity leads to shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007a ; Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Thus, democracies are expected to fight shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007b ), whereas mixed regimes will fight longer wars as they gamble for resurrection in the face of high domestic costs for war losses (Goemans, 2000 ). Research by Lyall ( 2010b ), however, suggests that this relationship is conditional upon conflict type, as he found no relationship between democracy and war duration in the context of counterinsurgency wars.

Biddle ( 2004 ) more directly challenged bargaining models of war duration by comparing the predictive power of models including traditional measures of relative military capabilities to those accounting for combatants’ methods of force employment. Biddle demonstrated that models taking force employment into account generate more accurate predictions of war duration than those assuming an unconditional relationship between military power and war duration. A second important challenge to traditional applications of bargaining models comes from Reiter ( 2009 ). He demonstrated that the argument that decisive battlefield outcomes promote quick termination is conditional upon the absence of commitment problems. When compliance fears dominate information asymmetries, battle losses and the expectation of future losses may not be sufficient to end conflict, as belligerents will continue fighting in pursuit of absolute victory to eliminate the threat of the losing state defecting from post-war settlements. Reiter thus demonstrates that commitment problems and information asymmetries have varying effects on war duration, and both must be accounted for in models of conflict duration and termination.

Despite these critiques, more recent research continues to approach the question of war duration from the bargaining perspective. Shirkey ( 2012 ), for example, argued that late third-party joiners to interstate conflicts lengthen those disputes by complicating the bargaining process. Joiners add new issues to the war and increase uncertainty about relative power among combatants, thus requiring additional fighting to reveal information and find a bargained solution. Weisiger ( 2016 ) similarly focused on information problems, but attempts to unpack the mechanism by focusing on more specific characteristics of battlefield events. Using new data on the timing of battle deaths for specific war participants, Weisiger found that settlement is more likely after more extensive fighting, and that states are more likely to make concessions after their battle results have deteriorated. Finally, recent research has also begun to problematize resolve, considering how variation in actors’ resolve affects their willingness to stay in a fight or cut losses (Kertzer, 2017 ). This represents a fruitful area for future research, as conceptually and empirically unpacking resolve will shed new light on costs of war and how they relate to war onset, duration, and termination.

Scholars studying the duration of civil wars also commonly apply a rationalist perspective. Factors that increase the costs of sustaining the fight generally shorten wars, while those that raise the costs of making concessions tend to lengthen conflicts. Along these lines, research suggests that the availability of contraband funding for rebel groups lengthens conflicts by providing rebels with the economic resources to sustain their campaigns (Fearon, 2004 ). However, additional research demonstrates that the influence of contraband is mitigated by fluctuations in its market value (Collier, Hoeffler, & Söderbom, 2004 ), by how rebels earn funding from resources (through smuggling versus extortion; Conrad, Greene, Igoe Walsh, & Whitaker, 2018 ), and by the composition of state institutions (Wiegand & Keels, 2018 ).

Research suggests that structural conditions also affect civil war duration, such as the stakes of war, ethnic divisions, and the number of combatants involved. For example, ethnic conflicts over control of territory are generally longer than those fought over control of the central government (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon, 2004 ). Regarding the role of ethnicity, Wucherpfennig, Metternich, Cederman, and Skrede Gleditsch ( 2012 ) demonstrated that the effect of ethnic cleavages is conditional on their relationship to political institutions. Regarding the complexity of the conflict, Cunningham ( 2011 ) found that civil wars with a greater number of combatants on each side are longer than those with fewer combatants. Findley ( 2013 ), however, showed that the number of conflict actors has varying effects across different stages of conflict, encouraging cooperation early on while impeding lasting settlement.

Third party intervention has also received significant attention in the civil war duration literature, with scholars generally arguing that intervention affects duration by augmenting the military strength of combatants. Empirical findings in early studies are mixed, however; while results consistently show that unbiased intervention or simultaneous intervention on both sides of a conflict increase war duration (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, & Joyce, 2008 ; Regan, 2002b ), biased interventions generate more inconsistent results.

In a valuable study addressing limitations of earlier research, Cunningham ( 2010 ) focused on the goals of third parties, and found that when interveners pursue agendas that are independent of those of the internal combatants, wars are more difficult to terminate due to decreased incentives to negotiate and a higher likelihood that commitment problems stymie settlements. This suggests that the empirical finding that intervention lengthens war may be driven by a subset of cases in which third parties intervene with specific goals. Ultimately, analyses focused on intervention do not account for the potential selection effect that influences when states will intervene. If Gent ( 2008 ) is correct, biased intervention should be most likely when the power ratio between government and rebel forces is close to parity, a factor which, if ignored, may bias the results of these analyses.

More recent studies have continued to unpack intervention, demonstrating that there are important distinctions beyond the biased versus balanced debate. Sawyer, Cunningham, and Reed ( 2015 ), for example, showed that different types of external support affect rebel fighting capacity differently. Specifically, fungible types of support like financial and arms transfers are particularly likely to lengthen conflict because they increase uncertainty over relative power. Similarly, Narang ( 2015 ) also focused on the uncertainty induced by external support. He showed that humanitarian assistance inadvertently increases both actors’ uncertainty over relative power, thereby prolonging civil war.

Until recently, this literature suffered from a major weakness in that it relied empirically on state-level variables that did not fully capture the dyadic nature of its theoretical propositions. Cunningham, Skrede Gleditsch, and Salehyan ( 2013 ) new dyadic data represents an important contribution to the field, as it explicitly measures the relative strength, mobilization capacity, and fighting capacity of rebel groups and applies a truly dyadic empirical approach. New research in this field should continue to approach questions of war duration and outcome with dyadic data and theory along with more micro-level studies that seek to explain variation in rebel and state fighting across different geographic locations and over time (e.g., Greig, 2015 ).

Ending Wars as a Bargaining Process

Interstate wars rarely end in the complete destruction of the defeated party’s military forces. Instead, new information is revealed through combat operations and negotiating behavior which enables belligerents to converge on a mutually agreeable settlement short of total war. Wittman ( 1979 ) provided the first formal articulation of the bargaining model in the context of war termination. He argued theoretically that war continues until both adversaries believe they can be made better off through settlement. Subsequent analyses have focused on both the battlefield conditions and strategies of negotiations leading states to believe settlement is the better option.

These analyses show that, as a state’s resources are depleted from battle losses, it has incentives to negotiate a settlement more acceptable to its adversary rather than suffer total defeat (Filson & Werner, 2002 ; Smith & Stam, 2004 ). Further, fighting battles reduces uncertainty by revealing information about resolve, military effectiveness, and the true balance of power between adversaries, causing expectations on the likely outcome of the war to converge, and making settlement possible (Wagner, 2000 ). Wartime negotiations provide adversaries with additional information, which Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued makes war termination more likely.

Challenging traditional notions regarding the likelihood of termination in the face of large asymmetries in capabilities, Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued that war termination depends upon states’ abilities to both impose and bear the costs of fighting. If a weaker state can minimize the costs it bears while forcing its adversary to expand its war effort, the benefits of fighting relative to its costs are reduced, and the stronger state may choose termination. The implication of this argument relates closely to Biddle’s ( 2004 ) empirical critique of the bargaining literature, which finds modern methods of force employment can mitigate losses during war, thereby shifting the balance of costs and benefits independent of relative military capabilities. Reiter’s ( 2009 ) critique of bargaining approaches also has implications for war termination. While traditional approaches argue that fighting battles reveals information and increases the likelihood of termination, Reiter suggested that this is only the case if belligerents expect their opponent to comply with the post-war status quo. If commitment problems are severe, information revealed during battles and war-time negotiations will have little effect on termination.

Biddle’s argument that country-year measures of military capabilities are inexact and crude proxies for the concepts advanced in theoretical models is a strong one that should be taken seriously by scholars. We therefore appreciate the contributions of Ramsay ( 2008 ) and Weisiger ( 2016 ), which use more fine-grained battle trend data rather than country-level measures of military capabilities to empirically test the implications of bargaining theories of war termination, and advocate future research adopting this strategy for testing the implications of bargaining theories.

Much of the literature on civil war termination also focuses on how battlefield developments affect the termination of civil wars. Collier et al. ( 2004 ) built on the idea of war as an information revelation mechanism, arguing that the probability of settlement should increase as war duration increases and more information is revealed regarding the relative strength of each side. Others focus on the costs of battle, with research showing that settlements are more likely when the costs of battle are high and the relative payoffs from victory decrease (Walter, 2002 ). Also, a relatively equal balance of power between combatants creates a mutually hurting stalemate, in which neither side can achieve victory, and settlement becomes more likely (Walter, 2002 ).

Empirical results support many of these theoretical predictions. Several scholars show that the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to terminate (Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon,, 2004 ; Regan, 2002b ), and that the probability of negotiated settlement increases as conflict duration increases (Mason, Weingarten, & Fett, 1999 ). The magnitude of conflict, measured as total war deaths, also correlates positively with the probability of adversaries initiating negotiations (Walter, 2002 ). Finally, Walter ( 2002 ) found that military stalemates significantly increase the likelihood of negotiations as well as the implementation of a ceasefire.

While these results support the theoretical predictions surrounding “hurting stalemates,” Walter’s coding of stalemates does not account for the timing of the stalemate or the number of stalemates that occur throughout the course of conflict. We therefore see great value in more recent research that uses new micro-level data to more closely capture actual battle dynamics and incorporate more information at the conflict and group-level. For example, Hultquist ( 2013 ) used a novel troop strength measure to better capture relative strength between rebel and government forces. He found that relative power parity increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement, while power imbalances extend civil war. Making use of fine-grained data on battle event dates and locations, Greig ( 2015 ) showed that the location, and changes in location over time, of battle events relays information to combatants that, in turn, affects their willingness to negotiate and settle their conflicts. We encourage additional research in this vein moving forward.

Domestic-Level Factors and War Termination

Recent research suggests that domestic political conditions influence war termination. Specifically, domestic political accountability, the domestic audience’s expectations, and cost-sensitivity affect leaders’ decisions to continue fighting versus settling on specific terms (Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Along these lines, Goemans ( 2000 ) argued that the postwar fate of leaders influences their choice between terminating and continuing a war. The threat of severe punishment by domestic actors increases the costs of war losses for leaders of semi-repressive regimes, leading them to continue fighting a war they are losing in the hope of achieving victory. Thus, war termination does not follow strictly from battle trends.

Empirically, Goemans ( 2000 ) found that losing mixed regimes suffer significantly more battle deaths than democratic or autocratic losers, and that wars fought against losing mixed regimes last, on average, almost twice as long as those fought against either democratic or autocratic losers. Taken together, these results suggest that mixed regime leaders are likely to sustain rather than terminate a losing war, and more generally, that regime type significantly influences war termination. Croco ( 2015 ) refined Goemans’s work by arguing that the individual responsibility of leaders for involving their country in a war has important effects on war termination patterns, with culpable leaders more likely to fight for victory in order to avoid being punished domestically for poor wartime performance. Croco and Weeks ( 2013 ) refined this logic further, showing that only culpable leaders from democracies and vulnerable nondemocracies face increased punishment risk from war losses. Koch and Sullivan ( 2010 ) provide another take on the relationship between domestic politics and war termination, demonstrating that partisanship significantly affects democratic states’ war termination decisions. Faced with declining approval for military interventions, their results demonstrate, right-leaning governments will continue the fight, while left-leaning executives will be more likely to end their military engagements.

The analog to studying domestic-level factors in interstate conflict would be to examine the effect of internal state and rebel characteristics on civil war termination. Traditionally, civil war studies have focused only on state characteristics, as data on rebel groups’ organization and internal characteristics has been unavailable. Early research argued that state capacity, regime characteristics, and ethnic/religious divisions influenced war termination by influencing the balance of power, accountability of leaders, and stakes of conflict, but empirical results provided mixed support for these theories (e.g., DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ; Svensson, 2007 ; Walter, 2002 ).

More recent research has made significant strides in understanding how internal characteristics of combatants affect civil conflict termination by using new data to explore how the composition and practices (i.e., leader characteristics, governance, and internal cohesion) of rebel groups influence civil conflict dynamics. This research demonstrates that some of the same leader-accountability mechanisms that affect interstate war termination also influence civil conflict. For example, Prorok ( 2016 ) used novel data on rebel group leaders to show that culpable leaders are less willing to terminate or settle for compromise outcomes than their non-culpable counterparts in civil wars, just like in interstate conflicts. Heger and Jung ( 2017 ) also advanced existing research by using novel data on rebel service provision to civilian populations to explore how good rebel governance affects conflict negotiations. They found that service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and to achieve favorable results, arguing that this reflects the lower risk of spoilers from groups with broad support and centralized power structures. Finally, Findley and Rudloff ( 2012 ) examined rebel group fragmentation’s effects on conflict termination and outcomes. Using computational modeling, they find that fragmentation only sometimes increases war duration (on fragmentation, also see Cunningham, 2014 ).

These studies underscore the value of exploring rebel group internal structures and practices in greater detail in future research, as they have an important impact on how, and when, civil wars end.

Victory/Defeat in Wars

Recent scholarship on victory and defeat in war suggests, as in the duration and termination literatures, that domestic politics, strategies of force employment, military mechanization, and war aims mediate the basic relationship between military strength and victory. Empirical results show that strategy choices and methods of force employment have a greater impact on war outcomes than relative military capabilities (Biddle, 2004 ; Stam, 1996 ), that high levels of mechanization within state militaries actually increase the probability of state defeat in counterinsurgency wars (Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ), and that weak states win more often when they employ an opposite-strategy approach in asymmetric conflicts (Arreguin-Toft, 2006 ) or when the stronger party’s war aims require high levels of target compliance (Sullivan, 2007 ). High relative losses and increasing war duration also decrease the likelihood of victory for war initiators, even if prewar capabilities favored the aggressor (Slantchev, 2004 ).

More recent research focuses on counter-insurgent conflicts, using new micro-level data and modeling techniques to address questions of counterinsurgent effectiveness in these complex conflicts. For example, Toft and Zhukov ( 2012 ) evaluated the effectiveness of denial versus punishment strategies, finding that denial (i.e., increasing the costs of expanding insurgent violence) is most effective, while punishment is counterproductive. Relatedly, Weidmann and Salehyan ( 2013 ) used an agent-based model applied to the U.S. surge in Baghdad to understand the mechanisms behind the surge’s success. They found that ethnic homogenization, rather than increased counterinsurgent capacity, best accounts for the surge’s success. Finally, Quackenbush and Murdie ( 2015 ) found that, counter to conventional wisdom, past experiences with counterinsurgency or conventional warfare have little effect on future success in conflict. States are not simply fighting the last war.

An important area of research that has fostered significant debate among scholars focuses on explaining the historical pattern of high rates of victory by democracies in interstate wars. The strongest explanations for the winning record of democracies center on their superior battlefield initiative and leadership, cooperative civil-military relations, and careful selection into wars they have a high probability of winning (Reiter & Stam, 2002 ). Challenging these results both theoretically and empirically, however, Desch ( 2002 ) argues that “democracy hardly matters,” that relative power plays a more important role in explaining victory. This debate essentially comes down to the relative importance of realist-type power variables versus regime type variables in explaining military victory; while scholars such as Lake ( 1992 ) and Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) argued that regime type matters more, Desch asserted that relative power is the more important determinant of military victory.

Ultimately, we find Desch’s objections to the relevance of democracy to be overstated and his theoretical and empirical justifications to be largely unconvincing. First, Desch’s analysis is biased against Reiter and Stam’s argument because it is limited to dyads that Desch labels “fair fights,” that is, dyads with relatively equal military capabilities. This does not allow Desch to test the selection effect that Reiter and Stam discuss. Second, Desch failed to recognize that many of the realist variables he attributes the greatest explanatory power to are actually influenced by the foreign and military policies adopted by democratic leaders (Valentino et al., 2010 ). Democracy thus has both a direct and an indirect effect on war outcomes, and because Desch ignores the latter, he underestimates democracy’s total impact. Finally, the impacts of power variables may be overstated, as recent research demonstrates that military power’s influence is conditional upon method of force employment and military mechanization (Biddle, 2004 ; Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ).

More recent research examines some of the mechanisms suggested for the unique war-time behavior of democracies, raising some questions about existing mechanisms and suggesting alternatives to explain democratic exceptionalism. For example, Gibler and Miller ( 2013 ) argued that democracies tend to fight short, victorious wars because they have fewer territorial (i.e., high salience) issues over which to fight, rather than because of their leaders’ political accountability. Once controlling for issue salience, they find no relationship between democracy and victory. Similarly, using novel statistical techniques that allow them to account for the latent abilities of states, Renshon and Spirling ( 2015 ) showed that democracy only increases military effectiveness under certain conditions, and is actually counterproductive in others. Finally, new research by Bausch ( 2017 ) using laboratory experiments to test the mechanisms behind democracy and victory suggested that only some of these mechanisms hold up. Specifically, Bausch found that democratic leaders are actually more likely to select into conflict and do not mobilize more resources for war once involved, contrary to the selection and war fighting stories developed by Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ). He did find, however, that democratic leaders are less likely to accept settlement and more likely to fight to decisive victory once conflict is underway, and that democratic leaders are more likely to be punished than autocrats for losing a war. Thus, the debate over the democratic advantage in winning interstate wars continues to progress in productive directions.

Theoretical arguments regarding civil war outcomes focus on state/rebel strength, positing that factors such as natural resource wealth, state military capacity, and third-party assistance influence relative combatant strength and war outcomes. Empirical studies find that increasing state military strength decreases the likelihood of negotiated settlement and increases the probability of government victory (Mason et al., 1999 ). Characteristics of the war itself also affect outcomes, with the probability of negotiated settlement increasing as war duration increases (Mason et al., 1999 ; Walter, 2002 ), and high casualty rates increasing the likelihood of rebel victory (Mason et al., 1999 ).

Debate remains over how third-party interventions affect civil war outcomes. UN intervention decreases the likelihood of victory by either side while increasing the probability of negotiated war terminations (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ). This impact is time sensitive, however (Mason et al., 1999 ). Further, the impact of unilateral interventions is less clear. While Regan ( 1996 ) found intervention supporting the government to increase the likelihood of war termination, Gent ( 2008 ) found military intervention in support of rebels to increase their chance of victory but that in support of governments to have no significant impact. More recent research by Sullivan and Karreth ( 2015 ) helps explain this discrepancy. They argued that biased intervention only alters the chances for victory by the supported side if that side’s key deficiency is conventional war-fighting capacity. Empirically, they show that because rebels are generally weaker, military intervention on their behalf increases their chance of victory. For states, however, military intervention only increases their odds of victory if the state is militarily weaker than or at parity with the rebels.

Additional new research by Jones ( 2017 ) also represents an important step forward in understanding the effects of intervention in civil war. By examining both the timing and strategy of intervention, Jones demonstrated that the effects of intervention on conflict outcomes are much more complex than previous research suggests.

Post-War Peace Durability

As with studies on war duration, termination, and outcomes, much of the literature on the stability of post-war peace grows from extensions of the bargaining model of war. For these scholars, recurrence is most likely under conditions that encourage the renegotiation of the terms of settlement, including postwar changes in the balance of power (Werner, 1999 ) and externally forced ceasefires that artificially terminate fighting before both sides agree on the proper allocation of the spoils of war (Werner & Yuen, 2005 ). Building off of commitment problem models, Fortna ( 2004b ) argued that strong peace agreements that enhance monitoring, incorporate punishment for defection, and reward cooperation help sustain peace. Specific measures within agreements, however, affect the durability of peace differently. For example, troop withdrawals and the establishment of demilitarized zones decrease the likelihood of war resumption, while arms control measures have no significant impact (Fortna, 2004b , p. 176).

Postwar intervention is also expected to increase peace duration by ameliorating commitment problems, as peacekeepers act as a physical barrier and reduce security fears, uncertainty, and misperceptions between former adversaries (Fortna, 2004a ). Empirical results support this theoretical prediction, and while the size of the force is not significant, both monitoring and armed forces missions increase the durability of post-war peace (Fortna, 2004a ).

The debate that remains in this literature is whether or not peace agreements can effectively mitigate the influence of relative power variables. Recent research by Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter ( 2008 ) suggests that they cannot. They demonstrated that cease-fire agreement strength has almost no significant impact on post-war peace duration, while factors encouraging renegotiation receive partial support. While discrepancies in results may be in part attributable to differences in time periods covered, this result essentially confirms Warner and Yuen’s ( 2005 ) finding that externally imposed war termination invites resumption of conflict, regardless of the presence of strong cease-fire agreements.

If, at the end of a civil conflict, each side maintains its ability to wage war, issues of credibility can undermine the peace and cause the conflict to resume. Thus, wars ending in negotiated settlements are more likely to recur than those ending with a decisive victory because both sides have the ability to resume fighting to gain greater concessions and neither can credibly commit to the peace (Licklider,, 1995 ; Walter, 2002 ). More recent research confirms that conflicts ending in military victory are less likely to recur than those ending in settlement (Caplan & Hoeffler, 2017 ; Toft, 2009 ), though Toft suggested that this is particularly true for rebel victories.

This understanding of post-war peace in terms of the bargaining model’s commitment problem has led scholars to examine three primary avenues through which commitment problems might be overcome and peace maintained. First, partition has been advanced as a possible solution to post-war instability. The separation of warring factions is expected to reduce security fears by creating demographically separate, militarily defensible regions (Kaufmann, 1996 ). Empirical evidence generally supports this strategy. Partitions that successfully separate warring ethnic groups significantly reduce the risk of renewed conflict (Johnson, 2008 ), while those that do not achieve demographic separation increase the risk of renewed hostilities (Tir, 2005 ). Further, relative to de facto separation, autonomy arrangements, or maintenance of a unitary state, partition is significantly less likely to lead to war recurrence (Chapman & Roeder, 2007 ).

Second, third-party intervention is expected to play a role in ameliorating the security dilemma arising from commitment problems in post-conflict states (Fearon, 2004 ; Walter, 2002 ). Empirical results confirm that third-party security guarantees are critical to the signing and durability of peace settlements (Walter, 2002 ). Once settlement has been reached, third-party guarantees and international peacekeeping establish punishments for defection (Fortna, 2008 ; Walter, 2002 ), thereby reducing incentives for and increasing costs of renewed conflict. More recent research that employs more fine-grained data on the size and composition of UN peacekeeping forces suggests, however, that this type of third-party guarantee is most effective when it has the military power to enforce the peace. Specifically, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2016 ) found that increasing UN troop presence increases peace durability, but the presence of other types of UN monitors has little effect on peace duration. By using more fine-grained data, this study makes an important contribution by allowing us to parse the mechanisms driving the role of third party guarantees in promoting peace.

Third, the incorporation of power-sharing arrangements that guarantee the survival of each side into the postwar settlement is also expected to solve post-civil war commitment problems (Walter, 2002 ). These arrangements allow adversaries to generate costly signals of their resolve to preserve the peace, thus ameliorating security fears (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ). Empirical results indicate that given a negotiated settlement, the agreement’s ability to ameliorate security concerns is positively associated with the preservation of peace. Thus, the more regulation of coercive and political power included in an agreement, and the greater the number of dimensions (political, territorial, military, economic) of power sharing specified, the more likely agreements are to endure (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ).

More recently, scholars have begun to extend this research by focusing more broadly on settlement design. Whereas previous research tended to simply count the number of power-sharing dimensions, newer analyses focus on issues such as the quality of the agreement (Badran, 2014 ) and equality in the terms of settlement (Albin & Druckman, 2012 ). Martin ( 2013 ), for example, found that provisions that share power at the executive level are less effective than those that regulate power at the level of rank-and-file or the public, as elite-level power-sharing is relatively easy for insincere actors to engage in at a relatively low cost. Cammett and Malesky ( 2012 ) found that proportional representation provisions are particularly effective at stabilizing post-conflict peace because of their ability to promote good governance and service provision, while Joshi and Mason ( 2011 ) similarly found that power-sharing provisions that expand the size of the governing coalition result in more stable peace. These analyses suggest that delving further into the design and content of settlement agreements is a positive avenue for future research. Future research should also examine how implementation of peace agreements proceeds, and how the timing and sequencing of implementation affects the durability of peace (e.g., Langer & Brown, 2016 ).

Finally, emerging research on civil war recurrence also shifts focus toward rebel groups and how their composition and integration affect post-conflict peace. For example, new research finds that rebel group fragmentation hastens the recurrence of civil war (Rudloff & Findley, 2016 ), while greater inclusion of former rebels in government improves prospects for post-conflict peace (Call, 2012 ; Marshall & Ishiyama, 2016 ). Emerging research on post-conflict elections also represents an important area for further study, as debate remains over how elections affect conflict recurrence. While some argue that they destabilize the peace (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ), others suggest they actually reduce the risk of conflict recurrence (Matanock, 2017 ).

The Longer-Term Consequences of Wars

What are the political, economic, and social consequences of interstate and civil wars, and what explains these postwar conditions? As Rasler and Thompson ( 1992 ) recognized, the consequences of war are often far-reaching and complex. Given this complexity, much of the literature varies significantly in quality and coverage; while post-war political change has received significant attention from political scientists, the social and health-related consequences of war are less well-known.

Post-War Domestic Political Stability and Change

Scholarship on post-war political stability focuses on both regime and leadership change, positing political accountability as a central mechanism in both cases. Interstate war has been theorized to induce internal revolution both indirectly (Skocpol, 1979 ) and directly (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ; Goemans, 2000 ). Empirical results support the accountability argument, as war losses and increasing costs of war increase the likelihood of post-war leadership turnover (Bueno De Mesquita & Siverson, 1995 ) as well as violent regime overthrow (Bueno De Mesquita, Siverson, & Woller, 1992 ). Related work shows that accountable leaders are also more likely to face foreign-imposed regime change at the hands of war victors (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ).

A central focus of recent research has been the conditional relationship between war outcomes and regime type. In his seminal study, Goemans, 2000 ) found that leaders of mixed and democratic regimes are more likely to be removed from office as a result of moderate losses in war than are leaders of autocracies. These findings, however, have been challenged by recent scholarship. Colaresi ( 2004 ) finds no difference in leadership turnover rates across all regimes types under conditions of moderate war losses, and Chiozza and Goemans ( 2004 ), employing a different measure of war outcomes and discounting the impact of termination over time, find that defeat in war is most costly for autocratic leaders and has no significant impact on tenure for democratic leaders.

Recently, research in the civil war literature has begun to focus more on post-war democratization, elections, and how groups transition from fighting forces to political parties. Much of the early work in this area focused on the link between war outcomes and the development of democratic institutions in the post-war period, specifically arguing that negotiated settlements facilitate democratization by requiring the inclusion of opposition groups in the decision-making process (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ; Gurses & Mason, 2008 ). More recent research, however, challenges this conventional wisdom, showing that the benefits of negotiated settlement are limited to the short-term and that economic factors are better predictors of post-war democratization (Fortna & Huang, 2012 ).

Recognizing that not all negotiated settlements are created equal, scholars have also begun to examine how variation in power-sharing provisions influences democratization. Debate remains on this topic as well, however. While some argue that power-sharing facilitates democratization by generating costly signals that create the stability necessary for democratization (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2005 ), others argue that they undermine democratization by reifying wartime cleavages, incentivizing political parties to seek support only from their own wartime constituencies, and undermining public confidence in governmental institutions (Jung, 2012 ). However, after accounting for non-random selection into power-sharing, Hartzell and Hoddie ( 2015 ) found that the inclusion of multiple power-sharing provisions in peace agreements increases post-civil war democratization. Future research should delve further into this debate, and consider more carefully whether specific types of provisions or institutional designs vary in their ability to promote democracy. Joshi ( 2013 ) represents an important first step in this direction, finding that institutional designs that favor inclusivity (e.g., parliamentary systems and proportional representation) are more successful at producing democracy.

Debate also continues over the effects of international intervention on post-conflict democratization. While some scholars expect intervention to facilitate postwar democratization by mitigating commitment problems and raising the costs of defection (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ), others suggest it is used as a tool by interveners to impose amenable, generally non-democratic, institutions in the target country (Bueno De Mesquita & Downs, 2006 ). Doyle and Sambanis ( 2006 ) found multidimensional UN missions incorporating economic reconstruction, institutional reform, and election oversight, to be significantly and positively correlated with the development of postwar democracy. However, Gurses and Mason ( 2008 ) and Fortna and Huang ( 2012 ) challenged this finding, reporting no significant relationship between UN presence and postwar democratization, and Paris ( 2004 ) and Bueno de Mesquita and Downs ( 2006 ) showed that peacebuilding missions and UN interventions actually decrease levels of democracy.

Future research should attempt to reconcile many of these open debates in both the interstate and civil conflict literatures. It should also build upon emerging research on post-conflict elections (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ; Matanock, 2017 ) and rebel governance (Huang, 2016 ). Huang’s work on rebel governance, in particular, shows that how rebels interact with civilian populations during conflict has important implications for post-conflict democratization.

Public Health Conditions in the Aftermath of Wars

Social scientists have recently begun to study the consequences of war for the postwar health and well-being of civilian populations. Theoretical arguments developed in this literature generally do not distinguish between interstate and civil war, instead developing mechanisms that apply to both types of conflict. The most direct public health consequence of war, of course, results from the killing and wounding of civilian populations. Scholars argue, however, that more indirect mechanisms cause longer-term public health problems as well. War, for example, is expected to undermine long-term public health by exposing populations to hazardous conditions through the movement of refugees and soldiers as vectors for disease (Ghobarah, Huth, & Russett, 2003 ; Iqbal, 2006 ), damaging health-related facilities and basic infrastructure (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Plümper & Neumayer, 2006 ), and reducing government spending and private investment on public health (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ).

Many empirical analyses, unfortunately, do not directly address the mechanisms outlined above. Overall, findings indicate that both civil and interstate war increase adult mortality in the short and long term (Li & Wen, 2005 ) and decrease health-adjusted life-expectancy in the short term (Iqbal, 2006 ). Conflict severity is also influential; while low-level conflict has no significant effect on mortality rates, severe conflict increases mortality and decreases life-expectancy in the long run (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Hoddie & Smith, 2009 ; Iqbal, 2006 ). Comparing the health impacts of interstate and civil wars, analysts have found interstate conflict to exert a stronger, negative impact on long-term mortality rates than civil war, despite the finding that civil war’s immediate impact is more severe (Li & Wen, 2005 ). Finally, many analysts have found that the negative, long-term effects of war are consistently stronger for women and children (Ghobarah, et al., 2003 ; Plümper & Neumayer ( 2006 ) than for men.

This developing field provides important new insights into the civilian consequences of war, but remains underdeveloped in many respects. First, while some evidence suggests that civil and interstate war might affect public health differently, the mechanisms behind these differences require further elaboration. Research by Hoddie and Smith, represented an important contribution in this respect, as it distinguishes between different conflict strategies, finding that conflicts involving extensive violence against noncombatants have more severe health consequences than those in which most fatalities are combat-related. Second, theoretical models are generally much more developed and sophisticated than the data used to test them. While data availability is limited, efforts should be made to more closely match theory and empirics.

Third, analyses that employ disaggregated measures of health consequences (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ) provided a more thorough understanding of the specific consequences of war and represent an important avenue for additional theoretical and empirical development. Iqbal and Zorn ( 2010 ) thus focus specifically on conflict’s detrimental impact on the transmission of HIV/AIDS, while Iqbal ( 2010 ) examines the impact of conflict on many different health-based metrics, including infant mortality, health-associated life expectancy, fertility rates, and even measles and diphtheria vaccination rates. These studies represent important advances in the literature, which should be explored further in future research to disentangle the potentially complex health effects of civil and interstate conflict.

Finally, recent research has begun to conceptualize health more broadly, accounting for the psychological consequences of wartime violence. Building upon research in psychology, Koos ( 2018 ) finds that exposure to conflict-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone generates resilience: affected households display greater cooperation and altruism than those unaffected by such violence during conflict. Bauer et al. ( 2016 ) similarly find that conflict fosters greater social cohesion and civic engagement in the aftermath of war. This is an important area for future research. As conceptions of conflict-related violence broaden, our conceptualizations of the consequences of violence should also expand to include notions of how conflict affects psychological health, community cohesion, and other less direct indicators of public health.

This final section highlights some of the contributions generated by scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war, as well as some of the gaps that remain to be addressed. First, this body of scholarship usefully compliments the large and more traditional work of military historians who study international wars, as well as the work of contemporary defense analysts who conduct careful policy analyses on relevant issues such as wartime military tactics and strategy as well as weapon system performance. The bargaining model of war has also proven a useful theoretical framework in which to structure and integrate theoretical analyses across different stages in the evolution of war.

Second, a number of studies in this body of work have contributed to the further development and testing of the democratic peace literature by extending the logic of political accountability models from questions of war onset to democratic wartime behavior. New dependent variables, including civilian targeting, imposition of regime change, the waging of war in ways designed to reduce military and civilian losses, and victory versus defeat in war have been analyzed. As a result, a number of new arguments and empirical findings have improved our understanding of how major security policy decisions by democratic leaders are influenced by domestic politics.

Third, this literature has advanced scholarship on international law and institutions by examining questions about compliance with the laws of war and the role played by the UN in terminating wars and maintaining a durable post-war peace. The impact of international law and institutions is much better understood on issues relating to international political economy, human rights, and international environmental governance than it is on international security affairs. As a result, studies of compliance with the laws of war, the design of ceasefire agreements, or international peace-building efforts address major gaps in existing literature.

Fourth, this new body of research has explicitly focused on the consequences of war for civilian populations, a relatively neglected topic in academic research. Research on questions such as the deliberate targeting of civilians during wars and the longer-term health consequences of war begin to address this surprising gap in research. As such, this new literature subjects the study of terrorism to more systematic social science methods and also challenges the common practice of restricting terrorism to non-state actors and groups when, in fact, governments have resorted to terrorist attacks on many occasions in the waging of war.

While this literature has advanced scholarship in many ways, there remain several theoretical and empirical gaps that future research should aim to address, two of which are highlighted here. First, while research on interstate war duration and termination is more theoretically unified than its civil war counterpart, the dominance of the bargaining model in this literature is currently being challenged. Recent research on asymmetric conflict suggests that the basic tenants of the bargaining model may not hold for non-symmetric conflict, while research on force employment and mechanization suggest that traditional power measures exert a conditional impact at best. Additional research is needed to determine the conditions under which bargaining logic applies and its relative importance in explaining wartime behavior and war outcomes.

Second, the accumulation of knowledge on civil war’s conduct and consequences has lagged behind that on interstate war, partially because the civil war literature is younger, and partially because sub-national level data is only now becoming more readily available. While bargaining logic is often applied to civil war, we have little cross-national information on relative capabilities and battle trends, and thus a very limited understanding of the way in which these variables affect civil war duration and outcomes. New micro-level data and studies that are beginning to address these problems represent a promising direction forward for civil conflict research.

• Albin, C. , & Druckman, D. (2012). Equality matters: Negotiating an end to civil wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 56 (2), 155–182.
• Appel, B. J. , & Prorok, A. K. (2018). Third-party actors and the intentional targeting of civilians in war . British Journal of Political Science .
• Arreguin-Toft, I. (2006). How the weak win wars: A theory of asymmetric conflict . Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
• Aydin, A. (2010). Where do states go? Strategy in civil war intervention. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 27 (1), 47–66.
• Badran, R. (2014). Intrastate peace agreements and the durability of peace. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 31 (2), 193–217.
• Balcells, L. (2011). Continuation of politics by two means: Direct and indirect violence in civil war. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 55 (3), 397–422.
• Balcells, L. , & Kalyvas, S. N. (2014). Does warfare matter? Severity, duration, and outcomes of civil wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 58 (8), 1390–1418.
• Balch-Lindsay, D. , & Enterline, A. J. (2000). Killing time: The world politics of civil war duration, 1820–1992. International Studies Quarterly 44 (4), 615–642.
• Balch-Lindsay, D. , Enterline, A. J. , & Joyce, K. A. (2008). Third-party intervention and the civil war process. Journal of Peace Research , 45 (3), 345–363.
• Bauer, M. , Blattman, C. , Chytilová, J. , Henrich, J. , Miguel, E. , & Mitts, T. (2016). Can war foster cooperation? Journal of Economic Perspectives , 30 (3), 249–274.
• Bausch, A. W. (2017). Democracy and war effort: An experiment. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 61 (4), 814–838.
• Bennett, S. D. , & Stam, A. C. (1996). The duration of interstate wars, 1816–1985. American Political Science Review , 90 (2), 239–257.
• Biddle, S. D. (2004). Military power: Explaining victory and defeat in modern battle . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Blainey, G. (1973). The causes of war . New York, NY: Free Press.
• Bueno De Mesquita, B. , & Downs, G. W. (2006). Intervention and democracy. International Organization , 60 (3), 627–649.
• Bueno De Mesquita, B. , & Siverson, R. M. (1995). War and the survival of political leaders: A comparative study of regime types and political accountability . The American Political Science Review , 89 (4), 841.
• Bueno De Mesquita, B. , Siverson, R. M. , & Woller, G. (1992). War and the fate of regimes: A comparative analysis. American Political Science Review , 86 (3), 638–646.
• Bueno De Mesquita, B. , Smith, A. , Morrow, J. D. , & Siverson, R. M. (2003). The Logic of Political Survival . Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
• Call, C. T. (2012). Why peace fails: The causes and prevention of civil war recurrence . Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
• Cammett, M. , & Malesky, E. (2012). Power sharing in postconflict societies: Implications for peace and governance. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 56 (6), 982–1016.
• Caplan, R. , & Hoeffler, A. (2017). Why peace endures: An analysis of post-conflict stabilisation. European Journal of International Security , 2 (2), 133–152.
• Chapman, T. , & Roeder, P. G. (2007). Partition as a solution to wars of nationalism: The importance of institutions. American Political Science Review , 101 (4), 677–691.
• Chiozza, G. , & Goemans, H. E. (2004). International conflict and the tenure of leaders: Is war still ex post inefficient? American Journal of Political Science , 48 (3), 604–619.
• Choi, A. (2004). Democratic synergy and victory in war, 1816–1992. International Studies Quarterly , 48 (3), 663–682.
• Cohen, D. K. (2016). Rape during civil war . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Colaresi, M. (2004). Aftershocks: Postwar leadership survival, rivalry, & regime dynamics. International Studies Quarterly , 48 (4), 713–727.
• Collier, P. , Hoeffler, A. , & Söderbom, M. (2004). On the duration of civil war. Journal of Peace Research , 41 (3), 253–273.
• Conrad, J. M. , Greene, K. T. , Igoe Walsh, J. , & Whitaker, B. E. (2018). Rebel natural resource exploitation and conflict duration. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 3 (3), 591–616.
• Croco, S. E. (2015). Peace at what price? Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Croco, S. E. , & Weeks, J. L. (2013). Willing and able: Culpability, vulnerability and leaders’ sensitivity to war outcomes. Typescript . Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
• Cunningham, D. (2010). Blocking resolution: How external states can prolong civil wars. Journal of Peace Research , 47 (2), 115–127.
• Cunningham, D. (2011). Barriers to peace in civil war . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Cunningham, D. , Skrede Gleditsch, K. , & Salehyan I. (2013). Non-state actors in civil wars: A new dataset. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 30 (5), 516–531.
• Cunningham, K. G. (2014). Inside the politics of self-determination . Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
• Dasgupta, A. , Gawande, K. , & Kapur, D. (2017). (When) do antipoverty programs reduce violence? India’s rural employment guarantee and Maoist conflict. International Organization , 71 (3), 605–632.
• DeRouen, K. , & Sobek, D. (2004). The dynamics of civil war duration and outcome. Journal of Peace Research , 41 (3), 303–320.
• Desch, M. C. (2002). Democracy and victory: Why regime type hardly matters. International Security , 27 (2), 5–47.
• DiLorenzo, M. , & Rooney, B. (2018). Domestic uncertainty, third-party resolve, and international conflict. Journal of Peace Research , 55 (4), 445–459.
• Downes, A. B. (2006). Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: The Causes of Civilian Victimization in War. International Security , 30 (4), 152–195.
• Doyle, M. W. , & Sambanis, N. (2006). Making war and building peace: United Nations peace operations . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Fazal, T. M. (2014). Dead Wrong? Battle deaths, military medicine, and exaggerated reports of war’s demise. International Security , 39 (1), 95–125.
• Fazal, T. M. , & Greene, B. C. (2015). A particular difference: European identity and civilian targeting. British Journal of Political Science , 45 (4), 829–851.
• Fearon, J. D. (1995). Rationalist explanations for war. International Organization , 49 (3), 379–414.
• Fearon, J. D. (2004). Why do some civil wars last so much longer than others? Journal of Peace Research , 41 (3), 275–301.
• Filson, D. , & S. Werner . (2002). A bargaining model of war and peace: Anticipating the onset, duration, and outcome of war. American Journal of Political Science , 46 (4), 819–837.
• Filson, D. , & Werner S. (2007a). Sensitivity to costs of fighting versus sensitivity to losing the conflict: Implications for war onset, duration, and outcomes. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 51 (5), 691–714.
• Filson, D. , & Werner S. (2007b). The dynamics of bargaining and war. International Interactions , 33 (1), 31–50.
• Findley, Michael G. (2013). Bargaining and the Interdependent Stages of Civil War Resolution. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 57 (5), 905–932.
• Findley, M. , & Rudloff, P. (2012). Combatant fragmentation and the dynamics of civil wars. British Journal of Political Science , 42 (4), 879–901.
• Flores, T. E. , & Nooruddin, I. (2012). The effect of elections on postconflict peace and reconstruction. The Journal of Politics , 74 (2), 558–570.
• Forsberg, E. (2014). Transnational transmitters: Ethnic kinship ties and conflict contagion 1946–2009. International Interactions , 40 (2), 143–165.
• Fortna, V. P. (2004a). Interstate peacekeeping: Causal mechanisms and empirical effects. World Politics , 56 (4), 481–519.
• Fortna, V. P. (2004b). Peace time: Cease-fire agreements and the durability of peace . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Fortna, V. P. (2008). Does peacekeeping work? Shaping belligerents’ choices after civil war . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Fortna, V. P. , & Huang R. (2012). Democratization after civil war: a brush-clearing exercise. International Studies Quarterly , 56 (4), 801–808.
• Gartner, S. S. , & Siverson, R. M. (1996). War expansion and war outcome. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 40 (1), 4–15.
• Gent, S. E. (2008). Going in when it counts: military intervention and the outcome of civil conflicts. International Studies Quarterly , 52 (4), 713–735.
• Ghobarah, H. A. , Huth, P. K. , & Russett, B. (2003). Civil wars kill and maim people: Long after the shooting stops. American Political Science Review , 97 (2), 189–202.
• Gibler, D. M. , & Miller, S. V. (2013). Quick victories? Territory, democracies, and their disputes. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 57 (2), 258–284.
• Goemans, H. E. (2000). War and punishment: The causes of war termination and the First World War . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Greig, J. M. (2015). Rebels at the gates: Civil war battle locations, movement, and openings for diplomacy. International Studies Quarterl y, 59 (4), 680–693.
• Gurses, M. , &. Mason, T. D. (2008). Democracy out of anarchy: The prospects for post-civil-war democracy. Social Science Quarterly , 89 (2), 315–336.
• Hartzell, C. , & Hoddie, M. (2007). Crafting peace: Power-sharing institutions and the negotiated settlement of civil wars . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Hartzell, C. , & Hoddie, M. (2015). The art of the possible: Power sharing and post-civil war democracy. World Politics , 67 (1), 37–71.
• Heger, L. L. , & Jung, D. F. (2017). Negotiating with rebels: The effect of rebel service provision on conflict negotiations. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 61( 6), 1203–1229.
• Heger, L. L. , & Salehyan, I. (2007). Ruthless rulers: Coalition size and the severity of civil conflict. International Studies Quarterly , 51 (2), 385–403.
• Hillebrecht, C. (2016). The deterrent effects of the international criminal court: Evidence from Libya. International Interactions , 42 (4), 616–643.
• Hoddie, M. , & Hartzell, C. (2005). Power sharing in peace settlements: Initiating the transition from civil war. In P. G. Roeder & D. Rothchild , (Eds.), Sustainable peace: Power and democracy after civil wars (pp. 83–106). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Hoddie, M. , & Smith, J. M. (2009). Forms of civil war violence and their consequences for future public health. International Studies Quarterly , 53 (1), 175–202.
• Huang, R. (2016). The wartime origins of democratization: Civil war, rebel governance, and political regimes Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge. University Press.
• Hultman, L. , Kathman, J. D. , & Shannon, M. (2016). United Nations peacekeeping dynamics and the duration of post-civil conflict peace. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 33 (3), 231–249.
• Hultman, L. , Kathman, J. , & Shannon, M. (2014). Beyond keeping peace: United Nations effectiveness in the midst of fighting . American Political Science Review , 108 (04), 737–753.
• Hultman, Lisa . (2007). Battle losses and rebel violence: Raising the costs of fighting. Terrorism and Political Violence , 19 (2), 205–222.
• Hultquist, P. (2013). Power parity and peace? The role of relative power in civil war settlement. Journal of Peace Research , 50 (5), 623–634.
• Humphreys, M. , & Weinstein, J. (2006). Handling and manhandling civilians in civil war. American Political Science Review , 100 (3), 429–447.
• Iqbal, Z. (2006). Health and human security: The public health impact of violent conflict. International Studies Quarterly , 50 (3), 631–649.
• Iqbal, Z. (2010). War and the Health of Nations . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Iqbal, Z. , & Zorn, C. (2010). Violent conflict and the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The Journal of Politics , 72 (1), 149–162.
• Jo, H. (2015). Compliant rebels . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Jo, H. , & Simmons, B. A. (2016). Can the International Criminal Court deter atrocity? International Organization , 70 (3), 443–475.
• Jo, H. , & Thomson, C. P. (2014). Legitimacy and compliance with international law: Access to detainees in civil conflicts, 1991–2006. British Journal of Political Science , 44 (2), 323–355.
• Johnson, C. (2008). Partitioning to peace: Sovereignty, demography, and ethnic civil wars. International Security , 32 (4), 140–170.
• Jones, B. T. (2017). Altering capabilities or imposing costs? Intervention strategy and civil war outcomes. International Studies Quarterly , 61 (1), 52–63.
• Joshi, M. (2013). Inclusive institutions and stability of transition toward democracy in post-civil war states. Democratization , 20 (4), 743–770.
• Joshi, M. , & Mason, T. D. (2011). Civil war settlements, size of governing coalition, and durability of peace in post-civil war states. International Interactions , 37 (4), 388–413.
• Joyce, K.A. , Ghosn, F. , & Bayer, R. (2014). When and whom to join: The expansion of ongoing violent interstate conflicts. British Journal of Political Science , 44 (1), 205–238.
• Jung, J. K. (2012). Power-sharing and democracy promotion in post-civil war peace-building. Democratization , 19 (3), 486–506.
• Kalyvas, S. N. (2006). The logic of violence in civil war . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Kathman, J. D. (2010). Civil war contagion and neighboring interventions. International Studies Quarterly , 54 (4), 989–1012.
• Kaufmann, C. (1996). Possible and impossible solutions to ethnic civil wars. International Security , 20 (4), 136–175.
• Kertzer, J. D. (2017). Resolve, time, and risk. International Organization , 71 (S1), S109–S136.
• Koch, M. T. , & Sullivan, P. (2010). Should I stay or should I go now? Partisanship, approval, and the duration of major power democratic military interventions. The Journal of Politics , 72 (3), 616–629.
• Koos, C. (2018). Decay or resilience? The long-term social consequences of conflict-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone. World Politics , 70 (2), 194–238.
• Kreps, S. E. , & Wallace, G. P. R. (2016). International law, military effectiveness, and public support for drone strikes. Journal of Peace Research , 53 (6), 830–844.
• Lacina, B. (2006). Explaining the severity of civil wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 50 (2), 276–289.
• Lake, D. A. (1992). Powerful pacifists: Democratic states and war. American Political Science Review , 86 (1), 24–37.
• Langer, A. , & Brown, G. K. (2016). Building sustainable peace: Timing and sequencing of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding . Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
• Leeds, B. A. , Long, A. G. , & Mitchell, S. M. (2000). Reevaluating alliance reliability: Specific threats, specific promises. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 44 (5), 686–699.
• Legro, J. (1995). Cooperation under fire: Anglo-German restraint during World War II . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Li, Q. , & Wen, M. (2005). The immediate and lingering effects of armed conflict on adult mortality: A time-series cross-national analysis. Journal of Peace Research , 42 (4), 471–492.
• Licklider, R. (1995). The consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945–1993. American Political Science Review , 89 (3), 681–690.
• Lo, N. , Hashimoto, B. , & Reiter, D. (2008). Ensuring peace: Foreign-imposed regime change and postwar peace duration, 1914–2001. International Organization , 62 (4), 717–736.
• Lujala, P. (2009). Deadly combat over natural resources: Gems, petroleum, drugs, and the severity of armed civil conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 53 (1), 50–71.
• Lyall, J. (2010a). Are coethnics more effective counterinsurgents? Evidence from the second Chechen War. American Political Science Review , 104 (1), 1–20.
• Lyall, J. (2010b). Do democracies make inferior counterinsurgents? Reassessing democracy’s impact on war outcomes and duration. International Organization , 64 (1), 167–192.
• Lyall, J. , & Wilson, I. (2009). Rage against the machines: Explaining outcomes in counterinsurgency wars. International Organization , 63 (1), 67–106.
• Marshall, M. C. , & Ishiyama, J. (2016). Does political inclusion of rebel parties promote peace after civil conflict? Democratization , 23 (6), 1009–1025.
• Martin, P. (2013). Coming together: Power-sharing and the durability of negotiated peace settlements. Civil Wars , 15 (3), 332–358.
• Mason, T. D. , Weingarten, J. P. , & Fett, P. J. (1999). Win, lose, or draw: Predicting the outcome of civil wars. Political Research Quarterly , 52 (2), 239–268.
• Matanock, A. M. (2017). Electing peace: From civil conflict to political participation . Cambridge , U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Mattes, M. , & Morgan, T. C. (2004). When do they stop? Modeling the termination of war . Conflict Management and Peace Science , 21 (3), 179–193.
• Morrow, J. D. (2014). Order within anarchy: The laws of war as an international institution . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Narang, Neil . (2015). Assisting Uncertainty: How Humanitarian Aid Can Inadvertently Prolong Civil War. International Studies Quarterly , 59 (1), 184–195.
• Paris, Roland . (2004). At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict . Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
• Phillips, B. J. (2015). Civil war, spillover and neighbors’ military spending. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 32 (4), 425–442.
• Plümper, T. , & Neumayer, E. (2006). The unequal burden of war: The effect of armed conflict on the gender gap in life expectancy. International Organization , 60 (3), 723–754.
• Price, R. M. (1997). The chemical weapons taboo . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Prorok, A. K. (2016). Leader incentives and civil war outcomes. American Journal of Political Science , 60 (1), 70–84.
• Prorok, A. K. (2017). The (in)compatibility of peace and justice? The International Criminal Court and civil conflict termination. International Organization , 71 (2), 213–243.
• Quackenbush, S. L. , & Murdie, A. (2015). We always fight the last war? Prior experiences in counterinsurgency and conventional warfare and war outcomes. International Interactions , 41 (1), 183–200.
• Ramsay, K. W. (2008). Settling it on the field: Battlefield events and war termination. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 52 (6), 850–879.
• Rasler, K. A. , & W. R. Thomas . (1992). Assessing the costs of war: A preliminary cut. In G. Ausenda (Ed.), Effects of war on society (pp. 245–280). Rochester, NY: Boydell Press.
• Reese, M. J. , Ruby, K. G. , & Pape, R. A. (2017). Days of action or restraint? How the Islamic calendar impacts violence. American Political Science Review , 111 (3), 439–459.
• Regan, P. M. (1996). Conditions of successful third-party intervention in intrastate conflicts. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 40 (2), 336–359.
• Regan, P. M. (2002a). Civil wars and foreign powers: Outside intervention in intrastate conflict . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Regan, P. M. (2002b). Third-party interventions and the duration of intrastate conflicts. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 46 (1), 55–73.
• Reiter, D. (2009). How wars end . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Reiter, D. , & Stam, A. C. (2002). Democracies at war . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Renshon, J. , & Spirling, A. (2015). Modeling “effectiveness” in international relations. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 59 (2), 207–238.
• Rost, N. , & Greig, J. M. (2011). Taking matters into their own hands: An analysis of the determinants of state-conducted peacekeeping in civil wars. Journal of Peace Research , 48 (2), 171–184.
• Rudloff, P. , & Findley, M. G. (2016). The downstream effects of combatant fragmentation on civil war recurrence. Journal of Peace Research , 53 (1), 19–32.
• Salehyan, I. & Skrede Gleditsch, K. (2006). Refugees and the Spread of Civil War. International Organization , 60 (2), 335.
• Salehyan, I. , Skrede Gleditsch, K. & Cunningham, D. E. (2011). Explaining external support for insurgent groups. International Organization , 65 (04), 709–744.
• Sawyer, K. , Cunningham, K. G. , & Reed, W. (2015). The role of external support in civil war termination . Journal of Conflict Resolution .
• Shapiro, J. N. , & Weidmann, N. B. (2015). Is the phone mightier than the sword? Cellphones and insurgent violence in Iraq. International Organization , 69 (2), 247–274.
• Shirkey, Z. C. (2012). When and how many: The effects of third party joining on casualties and duration in interstate wars. Journal of Peace Research , 49 (2), 321–334.
• Shirkey, Z. C. (2018). Which wars spread? Commitment problems and military intervention . Conflict Management and Peace Science .
• Siverson, R. M. , & Starr, H. (1991). The diffusion of war: A study of opportunity and willingness . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia and China . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Slantchev, B. L. (2004). How initiators end their wars: The duration of warfare and the terms of peace. American Journal of Political Science , 48 (4), 813–829.
• Slantchev, B. L. (2011). Military threats: The costs of coercion and the price of peace . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, A. , & Stam, A. C. (2004). Bargaining and the nature of war. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 48 (6), 783–813.
• Stam, A. C. (1996). Win, lose, or draw: Domestic politics and the crucible of war . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Stanton, J. A. (2016). Violence and restraint in civil war: Civilian targeting in the shadow of international law . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Stojek, S. M. , & Chacha, M. (2015). Adding trade to the equation: Multilevel modeling of biased civil war interventions. Journal of Peace Research , 52 (2), 228–242.
• Sullivan, P. L. (2007). War aims and war outcomes: Why powerful states lose limited wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 51 (3), 496–524.
• Sullivan, P. L. (2008). At what price victory? The effects of uncertainty on military intervention duration and outcome. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 25 (1), 49–66.
• Sullivan, P. L. , & Karreth, J. (2015). The conditional impact of military intervention on internal armed conflict outcomes. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 32 (3), 269–288.
• Svensson, I. (2007). Bargaining, bias and peace brokers: How rebels commit to peace. Journal of Peace Research , 44 (2), 177–194.
• Tir, J. (2005). Keeping the peace after secession: Territorial conflicts between rump and secessionist states. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 49 (5), 713–741.
• Toft, M. D. (2009). Securing the peace: The durable settlement of civil wars . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Toft, M. D. , & Zhukov, Y. M. (2012). Denial and punishment in the North Caucasus: Evaluating the effectiveness of coercive counter-insurgency. Journal of Peace Research , 49 (6), 785–800.
• Valentino, B. A. (2005). Final solutions: Mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Valentino, B. A. , Huth, P. K. , & Balch-Lindsay, D. (2004). “Draining the sea”: Mass killing and guerrilla warfare. International Organization , 58 (2), 375–407.
• Valentino, B. A. , Huth, P. K. , & Croco, S. (2006). Covenants without the sword. World Politics , 58 (3), 339–377.
• Valentino, B. A. , Huth, P. K. & Croco, S. E. (2010). Bear any burden? How democracies minimize the costs of war. The Journal of Politics , 72 (2), 528–544.
• Vasquez, J. A. , & Rundlett, A. (2016). Alliances as a necessary condition of multiparty wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 60 (8), 1395–1418.
• Wagner, R. H. (2000). Bargaining and war . American Journal of Political Science , 44 (3), 469–484.
• Wallace, G. P. R. (2015). Life & death in captivity: The abuse of prisoners during war . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Walter, B. F. (2002). Committing to peace: The successful settlement of civil wars . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Weidmann, N. B. , & Salehyan, I. (2013). Violence and ethnic segregation: A computational model applied to Baghdad. International Studies Quarterly , 57 (1), 52–64.
• Weinstein, J. (2007). Inside rebellion: The politics of insurgent violence . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Weisiger, A. (2016). Learning from the battlefield: Information, domestic politics, and interstate war duration. International Organization , 70 (2), 347–375.
• Werner, S. (1999). The precarious nature of peace: Resolving the issues, enforcing the settlement, and renegotiating the terms. American Journal of Political Science , 43 (3), 912–934.
• Werner, S. (2000). Deterring intervention: The stakes of war and third-party involvement. American Journal of Political Science , 44 (4), 720–732.
• Werner, S. , & Yuen, A. (2005). Making and keeping peace. International Organization 59 (2), 261–292.
• Wickham-Crowley, T. (1990). Exploring revolution: Essays on latin american insurgency and revolutionary theory . Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
• Wiegand, K. , & Keels, E. (2018). Oil wealth, winning coalitions, and duration of civil wars . Journal of Conflict Resolution .
• Wittman, D. (1979). How a war ends: A rational model approach . Journal of Conflict Resolution , 23 (4), 743–763.
• Wood, R. M. (2010). Rebel capability and strategic violence against civilians. Journal of Peace Research , 47 (5), 601.
• Wucherpfennig, J. , Metternich, N. W. , Cederman, L.-E. , & Skrede Gleditsch, K. (2012). Ethnicity, the state, and the duration of civil war. World Politics , 64 (1), 79–115.

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, International Studies. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 14 September 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [185.80.151.9]
• 185.80.151.9

Character limit 500 /500

The Russia-Ukraine war and its ramifications for Russia

Subscribe to the center on the united states and europe update, steven pifer steven pifer nonresident senior fellow - foreign policy , center on the united states and europe , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology , arms control and non-proliferation initiative.

December 8, 2022

• 24 min read

This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Nine months into Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, the outcome of the war remains unclear. The Russian military appears incapable of taking Kyiv or occupying a major portion of the country. Ukrainian forces have enjoyed three months of success on the battlefield and could well continue to make progress in regaining territory. The war also could settle into a more drawn-out conflict, with neither side capable of making a decisive breakthrough in the near term.

Projecting the ultimate outcome of the war is challenging. However, some major ramifications for Russia and its relations with Ukraine, Europe, and the United States have come into focus. While the war has been a tragedy for Ukraine and Ukrainians, it has also proven a disaster for Russia — militarily, economically, and geopolitically. The war has badly damaged Russia’s military and tarnished its reputation, disrupted the economy, and profoundly altered the geopolitical picture facing Moscow in Europe. It will make any near-term restoration of a degree of normalcy in U.S.-Russian relations difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Russia’s war against Ukraine

This latest phase in hostilities between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin directed his forces to launch a major, multi-prong invasion of Ukraine. The broad scope of the assault, which Putin termed a “special military operation,” suggested that Moscow’s objectives were to quickly seize Kyiv, presumably deposing the government, and occupy as much as the eastern half to two-thirds of the country.

The Russian army gained ground in southern Ukraine, but it failed to take Kyiv. By late March, Russian forces were in retreat in the north. Moscow proclaimed its new objective as occupying all of Donbas, consisting of the oblasts (regions) of Luhansk and Donetsk, some 35% of which had already been occupied by Russian and Russian proxy forces in 2014 and 2015. After three months of grinding battle, Russian forces captured almost all of Luhansk, but they made little progress in Donetsk, and the battlelines appeared to stabilize in August.

In September, the Ukrainian army launched two counteroffensives. One in the northeast expelled Russian forces from Kharkiv oblast and pressed assaults into Luhansk oblast. In the south, the second counteroffensive succeeded in November in driving Russian forces out of Kherson city and the neighboring region, the only area that Russian forces occupied east of the Dnipro River, which roughly bisects Ukraine.

Despite three months of battlefield setbacks, Moscow has shown no indication of readiness to negotiate seriously to end the war. Indeed, on September 30, Putin announced that Russia was annexing Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, even though Russian forces did not fully control that territory and consistently lost ground there in the following weeks. The Russian military made up for battlefield losses by increasing missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, aimed in particular at disrupting electric power and central heating.

As of late November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government insisted on conditions that included Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory (including Crimea and all of Donbas), compensation, and punishment for war crimes. While these are understandable demands given what Ukraine has gone through, achieving them would prove difficult. Still, Kyiv appeared confident that it could liberate more territory even as winter approached.

After nine months of fighting, the Russian military has shown itself incapable of seizing and holding a large part of Ukraine. While the war’s outcome is uncertain, however the conflict ends, a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state will remain on the map of Europe. Moreover, it will be larger than the rump state that the Kremlin envisaged when it launched the February invasion.

Whether the Ukrainian military can drive the Russians completely out or at least back to the lines as of February 23 is also unclear. Some military experts believe this is possible, including the full liberation of Donbas and Crimea. Others offer less optimistic projections. The U.S. intelligence community has forecast that the fighting could drag on and become a war of attrition.

Forging a hostile neighbor

Today, most Ukrainians regard Russia as an enemy.

Of all the pieces of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, no part meant more to Russians than Ukraine. The two countries’ histories, cultures, languages, and religions were closely intertwined. When the author served at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv at the end of the 1990s, most Ukrainians held either a positive or ambivalent view regarding Russia. That has changed. Today, most Ukrainians regard Russia as an enemy.

Putin’s war has been calamitous for Ukraine. The precise number of military and civilians casualties is unknown but substantial. The Office of the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that, as of the end of October, some 6,500 Ukrainian civilians had been killed and another 10,000 injured. Those numbers almost certainly understate the reality. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on November 10 put the number of civilian dead at 40,000 and indicated that some 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded (Milley gave a similar number for Russian casualties, a topic addressed later in this paper).

In addition, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees placed the number of Ukrainians who have sought refuge outside of Ukraine at more than 7.8 million as of November 8. As of mid-November, the Russian attacks had caused an estimated 6.5 million more to become internally displaced persons within Ukraine.

Besides the human losses, the war has caused immense material damage. Estimates of the costs of rebuilding Ukraine run from $349 billion to $750 billion, and those appraisals date back to the summer. Finding those funds will not be easy, particularly as the war has resulted in a significant contraction of the Ukrainian economy; the World Bank expects the country’s gross domestic product to shrink by 35% this year.

All this has understandably affected Ukrainian attitudes. It has deepened the sense of Ukrainian national identity. An August poll showed 85% self-identifying as Ukrainian citizens as opposed to people of some region or ethnic minority; only 64% did so six months earlier — before Russia’s invasion. The invasion has also imbued Ukrainians with a strongly negative view of Russia: The poll showed 92% holding a “bad” attitude regarding Russia as opposed to only 2% with a “good” attitude.

Ukrainians have made clear their resolve to resist. A September Gallup poll reported 70% of Ukrainians determined to fight until victory over Russia. A mid-October Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll had 86% supporting the war and opposing negotiations with Russia, despite Russian missile attacks against Ukrainian cities.

It will take years, if not decades, to overcome the enmity toward Russia and Russians engendered by the war. One Ukrainian journalist predicted last summer that, after the war’s end, Ukraine would witness a nationwide effort to “cancel” Russian culture, e.g., towns and cities across the country would rename their Pushkin Squares. It has already begun; Odesa intends to dismantle its statue of Catherine the Great, the Russian empress who founded the city in 1794.

Ironically for an invasion launched in part due to Kremlin concern that Ukraine was moving away from Russia and toward the West, the war has opened a previously closed path for Ukraine’s membership in the European Union (EU). For years, EU officials concluded agreements with Kyiv, including the 2014 EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. However, EU officials avoided language that would give Ukraine a membership perspective. In June, four months after Russia’s invasion, the European Council recognized Ukraine’s European perspective and gave it the status of candidate country. Kyiv will need years to meet the EU’s standards, but it now has a membership perspective that it lacked for the first 30 years of its post-Soviet independence.

As for NATO, 10 alliance members have expressed support for a membership path for Ukraine, nine in central Europe plus Canada . Other allies have generally remained silent or noncommittal, reflecting the fact that many, while prepared to provide Ukraine financial and military assistance, are not prepared to go to war with Russia to defend Ukraine. Even though Kyiv cannot expect membership or a membership action plan any time soon, it will have continued NATO support in its fight against Russia and, once the war is over, help in building a modern and robust military to deter a Russian attack in the future.

The Kremlin has sought since the end of the Soviet Union to keep Ukraine bound in a Russian sphere of influence. From that perspective, the last nine years of Russian policy have been an abysmal failure. Nothing has done more than that policy to push Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West, or to promote Ukrainian hostility toward Russia and Russians.

A disaster for Russia’s military and economy

While a tragedy for Ukraine, Putin’s decision to go to war has also proven a disaster for Russia.

While a tragedy for Ukraine, Putin’s decision to go to war has also proven a disaster for Russia. The Russian military has suffered significant personnel and military losses. Economic sanctions imposed by the EU, United States, United Kingdom, and other Western countries have pushed the Russian economy into recession and threaten longer-term impacts, including on the country’s critical energy sector.

In November, Milley put the number of dead and wounded Russian soldiers at 100,000, and that could fall on the low side. A Pentagon official said in early August Russian casualties numbered 70,000-80,000. That was more than three months ago, and those months have shown no kindness to the Russian army. Reports suggest that newly-mobilized and ill-trained Russian units have been decimated in combat.

The Russian military has lost significant amounts of equipment. The Oryx website reports 8,000 pieces of equipment destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured, including some 1,500 tanks, 700 armored fighting vehicles, and 1,700 infantry fighting vehicles. Oryx advises that its numbers significantly understate the true nature of Russian losses, as it counts only equipment for which it has unique photo or videographic evidence of its fate. Others report much heavier losses. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin commented that the Russian military had lost “staggering” numbers of tanks and other armored vehicles, adding that Western trade restrictions on microchips would inhibit production of replacements.

As a result of these losses, Russia has had to draw on reserves, including T-64 tanks first produced nearly 50 years ago. It reportedly has turned to tanks from Belarus to replenish its losses. To augment its own munitions, Russia has had to purchase attack drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea . As the Russian military has drawn down stocks of surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, it has used S-300 anti-aircraft missiles against ground targets. The Russian defense budget will need years to replace what the military has lost or otherwise expended in Ukraine.

Poor leadership, poor tactics, poor logistics, and underwhelming performance against a smaller and less well-armed foe have left Russia’s military reputation in a shambles. That will have an impact. Over the past decade, Russian weapons exporters saw their share of global arms exports drop by 26%. Countries looking to buy weapons likely will begin to turn elsewhere, given that Russia’s military failed to dominate early in the war, when its largely modernized forces faced a Ukrainian military armed mainly with aging Soviet-era equipment (that began to change only in the summer, when stocks of heavy weapons began arriving from the West).

Related Books

Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy

April 3, 2015

Steven Pifer

July 11, 2017

Angela Stent

February 26, 2019

As Russia went to war, its economy was largely stagnant ; while it recorded a post-COVID-19 boost in 2021, average real income fell by 10% between 2013 and 2020. It will get worse. The West has applied a host of economic sanctions on the country. While the Russian Central Bank’s actions have mitigated the worst impacts, the Russian economy nevertheless contracted by 5% year-on-year compared to September 2021. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects Russia’s economy to contract by 3.9% in 2022 and 5.6% in 2023, and a confidential study supposedly done for the Kremlin projected an “inertial” case in which the economy bottomed out only in 2023 at 8.3% below 2021. One economist notes that the West’s cut-off of chips and microelectronics has devastated automobile, aircraft, and weapons production, with the output of cars falling by 90% between March and September; he expects a long run of stagnation.

In addition to coping with the loss of high-tech and other key imports, the Russian economy faces brain drain, particularly in the IT sector, that began in February as well as the departure of more than 1,000 Western companies. It also has a broader labor force challenge. The military has mobilized 300,000 men, and the September mobilization order prompted a new flood of Russians leaving the country, with more than 200,000 going to Kazakhstan. Some estimates suggest several hundred thousand others have fled to other countries. Taken together, that means something like three-quarters of a million men unavailable to work in the economy.

Russia thus far has staved off harsher economic difficulties in part because of its oil and gas exports and high energy prices. High prices have partially offset the decline in volume of oil and gas exports. That may soon change, at least for oil. The EU banned the purchase of Russian crude oil beginning on December 5, and the West is prohibiting shipping Russian oil on Western-flagged tankers or insuring tankers that move Russian oil if the oil is sold above a certain price, now set at $60 per barrel. The price cap — if it works as planned — could cut sharply into the revenues that Russian oil exports generate. The cap will require that Russian exporters discount the price of oil that they sell; the higher the discount, the less revenue that will flow to Russia.

Weaning Europe off of Russian gas poses a more difficult challenge, but EU countries have made progress by switching to imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Moreover, European companies have found ways to cut energy use; for example, 75% of German firms that use gas report that they have reduced gas consumption without having to cut production. EU countries face a much better energy picture this winter than anticipated several months ago. If Europe successfully ends its import of Russian piped natural gas, that will pose a major problem for Gazprom, Russia’s large gas exporter. Gazprom’s gas exports move largely by pipeline, and Gazprom’s gas pipeline structure is oriented primarily toward moving gas from the western Siberian and Yamal gas fields to Europe. New pipelines would be needed to switch the flow of that gas to Asia. If Europe can kick the Russian gas habit, Gazprom will see a significant decline in its export volumes, unless it can build new pipelines to Asian markets and/or greatly expand its LNG export capacity, all of which will be expensive.

A further problem facing Russia’s energy sector is that, as existing oil and gas fields are depleted, Russian energy companies must develop new fields to sustain production levels. Many of the potential new fields are in the Arctic region or off-shore and will require billions — likely, tens of billions — of dollars of investment. Russian energy companies, however, will not be able to count on Western energy companies for technical expertise, technology, or capital. That will hinder future production of oil and gas, as current fields become exhausted.

Another potential economic cost looms. The West has frozen more than $300 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves. As damages in Ukraine mount, pressure will grow to seize some or all of these assets for a Ukraine reconstruction fund. Western governments thus far show little enthusiasm for the idea. That said, it is difficult to see how they could turn to their taxpayers for money to assist Ukraine’s rebuilding while leaving the Russian Central Bank funds intact and/or releasing those funds back to Russia.

Western sanctions did not produce the quick crash in the ruble or the broader Russian economy that some expected. However, their impact could mean a stagnant economy in the longer term, and they threaten to cause particular problems in the energy sector and other sectors that depend on high-tech inputs imported from the West. Moscow does not appear to have handy answers to these problems.

Changed geopolitics in Europe

In 2021, Moscow saw a West that was divided and preoccupied with domestic politics. The United States was recovering from four years of the Trump presidency, post-Brexit politics in Britain remained tumultuous, Germany faced September elections to choose the first chancellor in 16 years not named Angela Merkel, and France had a presidential election in early 2022. That likely affected Putin’s decision to launch his February invasion. In the event, NATO and the EU responded quickly and in a unified manner, and the invasion has prompted a dramatic reordering of the geopolitical scene in Europe. European countries have come to see Russia in a threatening light, reminiscent of how they viewed the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. NATO’s June 2022 summit statement was all about deterrence and defense with regard to Russia, with none of earlier summits’ language on areas of cooperation.

Few things epitomize the change more than the Zeitenwende (turning-point) in German policy. In the days following the Russian invasion, Berlin agreed to sanctions on Russian banks that few expected the Germans to approve, reversed a long-standing ban on exporting weapons to conflict zones in order to provide arms to Ukraine, established a 100-billion-euro ($110 billion) fund for its own rearmament, and announced the purchase of American dual-capable F-35 fighters to sustain the German Air Force’s nuclear delivery role. Just days before the assault, the German government said it would stop certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Berlin’s follow-up has been bumpy and, at times, seemingly half-hearted, which has frustrated many of its partners. Still, in a few short weeks in late February and early March, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government erased five decades of German engagement with Moscow.

Other NATO members have also accelerated their defense spending. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European allies and Canada have boosted defense spending by a total of $350 billion compared to levels in 2014, when the alliance — following Russia’s seizure of Crimea — set the goal for each member of 2% of gross domestic product devoted to defense by 2024. Stoltenberg added that nine members had met the 2% goal while 10 others intended to do so by 2024. Poland plans to raise its defense spending to 3% next year, and other allies have suggested the 3% target as well.

Moscow did not like the small multinational battlegroups that NATO deployed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland beginning in 2017. Each numbered some 1,000-1,500 troops (battalion-sized) and were described as “tripwire” forces. Since February, NATO has deployed additional battlegroups in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia and decided on a more robust forward presence, including brigade-sized units, while improving capabilities for reinforcement. The U.S. military presence in Europe and European waters has grown from 80,000 service personnel to 100,000 and includes deployment of two F-35 squadrons to Britain, more destroyers to be homeported in Spain, and a permanent headquarters unit in Poland.

In addition to larger troop deployments, the Baltic Sea has seen a geopolitical earthquake. Finland and Sweden, which long pursued policies of neutrality, applied to join NATO in May and completed accession protocols in July. They have significant military capabilities. Their accession to the alliance, expected in early 2023, will make the Baltic Sea effectively a NATO lake, leaving Russia with just limited access from the end of the Gulf of Finland and its Kaliningrad exclave.

In early 2014, NATO deployed virtually no ground combat forces in countries that had joined the alliance after 1997. That began changing after Russia’s seizure of Crimea. The recent invasion has further energized NATO and resulted in its enlargement by two additional members. As Russia has drawn down forces opposite NATO countries (and Finland) in order to deploy them to Ukraine, the NATO military presence on Russia’s western flank has increased.

The Kremlin has waged a two-front war this year, fighting on the battlefield against Ukraine while seeking to undermine Western financial and military support for Kyiv. The Russians are losing on both fronts.

The Kremlin has waged a two-front war this year, fighting on the battlefield against Ukraine while seeking to undermine Western financial and military support for Kyiv. The Russians are losing on both fronts. The Russian military has been losing ground to the Ukrainian army and has carried out a campaign of missile strikes against power, heat, and water utilities in the country, which threatens a humanitarian crisis . Much will depend on how bad the winter is, but Ukrainians have shown remarkable resilience in restoring utilities, and the Russian attacks could further harden their resolve. Moreover, the brutality of the Russian missile campaign has already led Ukraine’s Western supporters to provide Kyiv more sophisticated air defenses, and pressures could grow to provide other weapons as well.

As for the second front, despite high energy prices, having to house the majority of the nearly eight million Ukrainians who have left their country, and concerns over how long the fighting might last, European support for Ukraine has not slackened. Russian hints of nuclear escalation caused concern but did not weaken European support for Ukraine, and Moscow has markedly deescalated the nuclear rhetoric in recent weeks. Given Russia’s relationship with China, the Kremlin certainly noticed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent criticism of nuclear threats.

It appears Moscow’s influence elsewhere is slipping, including among post-Soviet states. Kazakhstan has boosted its defense spending by more than 50%. In June, on a stage with Putin in St. Petersburg, its president pointedly declined to follow Russia’s lead in recognizing the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” as independent states. Neither Kazakhstan nor any other member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — or any other post-Soviet state, for that matter — has recognized Russia’s claimed annexations of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. In a remarkable scene at an October Russia-Central Asia summit, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon openly challenged Putin for his lack of respect for Central Asian countries. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoiled a late November CSTO summit; he refused to sign a leaders’ declaration and noticeably moved away from Putin during the summit photo op.

More broadly, in October, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution calling for rejection — and demanding reversal — of Moscow’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian oblasts by a vote of 143-5 (35 abstaining). A recent article documented how Russia has found its candidates rejected and its participation suspended in a string of U.N. organizations, including the International Telecommunications Union, Human Rights Council, Economic and Social Council, and International Civil Aviation Organization. Putin chose not to attend the November G-20 summit in Bali, likely reflecting his expectation that other leaders would have snubbed him and refused to meet bilaterally, as well as the criticism he would have encountered in multilateral sessions. The summit produced a leaders’ declaration that, while noting “other views,” leveled a harsh critique at Moscow for its war on Ukraine.

A deep freeze with Washington

While U.S.-Russian relations had fallen to a post-Cold War low point in 2020, the June 2021 summit that U.S. President Joe Biden held with Putin gave a modest positive impulse to the relationship. U.S. and Russian officials that fall broadened bilateral diplomatic contacts and gave a positive assessment to the strategic stability dialogue, terming the exchanges “intensive and substantive.” Moreover, Washington saw a possible drop-off in malicious cyber activity originating from Russia. However, the Russian invasion prompted a deep freeze in the relationship, and Washington made clear that business as usual was off the table.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and CIA Director Bill Burns nevertheless have kept channels open to their Russian counterparts. These lines of communication seek to avoid miscalculation — particularly miscalculation that could lead to a direct U.S.-Russia or NATO-Russia clash — and reduce risk. But other channels remain largely unused. Burns’s November 14 meeting with Sergey Naryshkin, head of the Russian external intelligence service, was the most senior face-to-face meeting between U.S. and Russian officials in nine months. Biden and Putin have not spoken directly with one another since February, and that relationship seems irretrievably broken.

In a positive glimmer, Biden told the U.N. General Assembly “No matter what else is happening in the world, the United States is ready to pursue critical arms control measures.” Speaking in June, the Kremlin spokesperson said “we are interested [in such talks]… Such talks are necessary.” U.S. officials have privately indicated that, while they have prerequisites for resuming the strategic dialogue, progress on ending the Russia-Ukraine war is not one of them. This leaves room for some hope that, despite their current adversarial relationship, Washington and Moscow may still share an interest in containing their competition in nuclear arms.

Beyond that, however, it is difficult to see much prospect for movement toward a degree of normalcy in the broader U.S.-Russia relationship. With Moscow turning to Iran and North Korea for weapons, Washington cannot count on Russian help in trying to bring Tehran back into the nuclear deal (the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) or to increase pressure on North Korea to end its missile launches and not to conduct another nuclear test. Likewise, coordination on Syria is less likely. It may well be that any meaningful improvement in the overall bilateral relationship requires Putin’s departure from the Kremlin. A second requirement could be that Putin’s successor adopt policy changes to demonstrate that Russia is altering course and prepared to live in peace with its neighbors.

What happens will depend on how the Russian elite and public view his performance; while some signs of disaffection over the war have emerged, it is too early to forecast their meaning for Putin’s political longevity.

This does not mean to advocate a policy of regime change in Russia. That is beyond U.S. capabilities, especially given the opacity of today’s Kremlin. U.S. policy should remain one of seeking a change in policy, not regime. That said, the prospects for improving U.S.-Russian relations appear slim while Putin remains in charge. What happens will depend on how the Russian elite and public view his performance; while some signs of disaffection over the war have emerged , it is too early to forecast their meaning for Putin’s political longevity.

Still, while it remains difficult to predict the outcome of the war or the impact it may have on Putin’s time in the Kremlin, there is little doubt that the fighting with Ukraine and its ramifications will leave Russia diminished in significant ways. It must contend with a badly-damaged military that will take years to reconstitute; years of likely economic stagnation cut off from key high-tech imports; a potentially worsening situation with regard to energy exports and future production; an alarmed, alienated, and rearming Europe; and a growing political isolation that will leave Moscow even more dependent on its relationship with China. Putin still seems to cling to his desire of “regaining” part of Ukraine, which he considers “historic Russian land.” But the costs of that for Russia mount by the day.

Related Content

Daniel S. Hamilton

Pavel K. Baev

November 15, 2022

Fiona Hill, Angela Stent, Agneska Bloch

September 19, 2022

Russia Ukraine

Foreign Policy

Europe & Eurasia Russia Ukraine

Center on the United States and Europe Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

George Ingram

September 12, 2024

Michael E. O’Hanlon

William A. Galston, Elaine Kamarck

September 11, 2024

• Optical Devices

The Russian-Ukrainian war: An explanatory essay through the theoretical lens of international relations.

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Maria Bengtsson

• James L Richardson
• Chin J Int Polit
• Zhang Ruizhuang
• Sven Gunnar Simonsen
• REV INT STUD

• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

War by Margaret Macmillan — essays on how conflict shaped us

Limited time offer, save 50% on standard digital, explore more offers..

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism. Cancel anytime during your trial.

Premium Digital

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• FT App on Android & iOS
• FT Edit app
• FirstFT: the day's biggest stories
• 20+ curated newsletters
• Follow topics & set alerts with myFT
• FT Videos & Podcasts
• 20 monthly gift articles to share
• Lex: FT's flagship investment column
• 15+ Premium newsletters by leading experts
• FT Digital Edition: our digitised print edition

FT Digital Edition

10% off your first year. The new FT Digital Edition: today’s FT, cover to cover on any device. This subscription does not include access to ft.com or the FT App.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction
• Evolution of theories of war
• Liberal analyses
• Socialist analyses
• Nationalism
• Special-interest groups
• Regional integration
• International law
• Peaceful settlement of disputes
• Collective security
• Disarmament
• Limiting conflict
• World government

The causes of war

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• World History Encyclopedia - Warfare
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Philosophy of War
• McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - War
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - War
• Social Sci LibreTexts - War
• World History Encyclopedia - War in Ancient Times
• war - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• warfare - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Contemporary theories of the causes of war divide roughly into two major schools. One attributes war to certain innate biological and psychological factors or drives, the other attributes it to certain social relations and institutions. Both schools include optimists and pessimists concerning the preventability of war.

Biological theories

Recent News

Theories centring upon man’s innate drives are developed by ethologists, who draw analogies from animal behaviour, and also by psychologists and psychoanalysts.

Ethologists start with the persuasive argument that study of animal warfare may contribute toward an understanding of war as employed by man. The behaviour of monkeys and apes in captivity and the behaviour of young children, for example, show basic similarities. In both cases it is possible to observe that aggressive behaviour usually arises from several drives: rivalry for possession, the intrusion of a stranger, or frustration of an activity. The major conflict situations leading to aggression among animals, especially those concerning access of males to females and control of a territory for feeding and breeding, are usually associated with patterns of dominance.

The analogies of animal to human behaviour drawn by many ethologists, however, are severely questioned by their more restrained colleagues as well as by many social scientists. The term “aggression,” for example, is imprecisely and inconsistently used, often referring merely to the largely symbolic behaviour of animals involving such signals as grimaces.

Observed animal behaviour can be regarded as a possible important source of inspiration for hypotheses , but these must then be checked through the study of actual human behaviour. As this has not yet been adequately done, the hypotheses advanced have little foundation and are merely interesting ideas to be investigated. Further, human behaviour is not fixed to the extent that animal behaviour is, partly because man rapidly evolves different patterns of behaviour in response to environmental factors, such as geography, climate, and contact with other social groups. The variety of these behaviour patterns is such that they can be used on both sides of an argument concerning, for example, whether or not men have an innate tendency to be aggressive.

Two particularly interesting subjects studied by ethologists are the effects of overcrowding on animals and animal behaviour regarding territory. The study of overcrowding is incomplete, and the findings that normal behaviour patterns tend to break down in such conditions and that aggressive behaviour often becomes prominent are subject to the qualification that animal and human reactions to overcrowding may be different. Ethologists have also advanced plausible hypotheses concerning biological means of population control through reduced fertility that occurs when animal populations increase beyond the capacity of their environment . Whether such biological control mechanisms operate in human society, however, requires further investigation.

Findings concerning the “ territorial imperative ” in animals—that is, the demarcation and defense against intrusion of a fixed area for feeding and breeding—are even more subject to qualification when an analogy is drawn from them to human behaviour. The analogy between an animal territory and a territorial state is obviously extremely tenuous . In nature the territories of members of a species differ in extent but usually seem to be provided with adequate resources, and use of force in their defense is rarely necessary, as the customary menacing signals generally lead to the withdrawal of potential rivals. This scarcely compares with the sometimes catastrophic defense of the territory of a national state.

One school of theorists has postulated that the major causes of war can be found in man’s psychological nature. Such psychological approaches range from very general , often merely intuitive assertions regarding human nature to complex analyses utilizing the concepts and techniques of modern psychology. The former category includes a wide range of ethical and philosophical teaching and insights, including the works of such figures as St. Augustine and the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza .

Modern writers utilizing psychological approaches emphasize the significance of psychological maladjustments or complexes and of false, stereotyped images held by decision makers of other countries and their leaders. Some psychologists posit an innate aggressiveness in man. Others concentrate upon public opinion and its influence, particularly in times of tension. Others stress the importance of decision makers and the need for their careful selection and training. Most believe that an improved social adjustment of individuals would decrease frustration, insecurity, and fear and would reduce the likelihood of war. All of them believe in the importance of research and education . Still, the limitations of such approaches derive from their very generality. Also, whether the psychological premises are optimistic or pessimistic about the nature of man, one cannot ignore the impact upon human behaviour of social and political institutions that give man the opportunities to exercise his good or evil propensities and to impose restraints upon him.

Global War and the Racial Imaginary

• Original Article
• Published: 15 November 2023
• Volume 61 , pages 465–472, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Alexander D. Barder 1  

282 Accesses

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

In my contribution, I want to show that Henderson’s essay opens a crucial reexamination of the nexus between histories of racial violence, genocide and the social imaginary of the West. Rather than taking for granted the idea that the formation of, and institutionalization of, the modern European/Western state-system constituted as a rational political and legal order—insofar as it circumscribed violence within a certain juridical framework—we need to better understand the consequences how such an order founded on white supremacy unleashed a racialized genocidal violence within itself. My argument here focuses on the concept of race war as way of making intelligible how state strategic action comes to be racialized in what I’ve called, the “global racial imaginary.” I conclude with a gesture towards Afro-pessimism structural understanding of modernity and anti-Blackness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Racism and global war in world politics: As obvious as it is ignored

The Trump Effect: Debunking the False Narrative of “Post-Racial” America

Global justice and race.

See especially, Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Jessica Blatt, Race and the Making of American Political Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 103. Emphasis in the original.

One of the striking features of Wendt’s social constructivist engagement with Waltz is precisely the removal of any concern with the question of imperialism, which does not figure in his Social Theory of International Politics . See, for example, Barder, A. D., & Levine, D. J. (2012). “The World Is Too Much with Us”: Reification and the Depoliticising of Via Media Constructivist IR.  Millennium ,  40 (3), 585–604.

See Charles Mills, The Racial Contract , 18–19.

Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 23; See also, Alexander D. Barder Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 17; See also my discussion in, Barder Global Race War , Chapter One.

Barder Global Race War, 17.

Alfred Mahan, “A Twentieth Century Outlook,” Harper’s Magazine 95, no. 568 (1897); Barder Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy , 50.

Cited in Barder Global Race War , 67.

See, for example, Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press, 2006).

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Tradition (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983 [2000]), 39.

Cited in Alexander D. Barder, Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Laboratories of Government (New York: Routledge, 2015), 81.

See, for example, Chris Manias, “The Race prussienne Controversy: Scientific Internationalism and the Nation” Isis , 100, No. 4 (December 2009): 733–757 at 742–743.

Cited in Ian Ousby, The Road to Verdun: World War One’s Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 30.

See, for example, John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 217.

Cited in Barder, Global Race War , 118.

Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 120. My emphasis.

Michael Geyer, “German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare 1914–1945,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin, 2008).

Barder, Global Race War , Chapter Five.

Saidiya Hartman “The Burdened Individuality of Freedom” in Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction (Minneapolis: racked & dispatched, 2017), 34.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Florida International University, Miami, USA

Alexander D. Barder

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander D. Barder .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Barder, A.D. Global War and the Racial Imaginary. Int Polit 61 , 465–472 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-023-00534-9

Download citation

Accepted : 25 September 2023

Published : 15 November 2023

Issue Date : April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-023-00534-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Imperialism
• Critical theory
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

World War I

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 10, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

World War I, also known as the Great War, started in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. During the four-year conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers had won, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe—for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire , Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand —heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Great War

Watch The Great War . Available to stream now.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary , like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or “blank check” assurance of Germany’s backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen ), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege , using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance. 

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne , fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading German army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches , and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

HISTORY Vault: World War I Documentaries

Stream World War I videos commercial-free in HISTORY Vault.

World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as “ All Quiet on the Western Front ” by Erich Maria Remarque and “ In Flanders Fields ” by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae . In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan .

Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on World War I’s Eastern Front but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks , which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, it was increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania —traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia , while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

8 Events that Led to World War I

Imperialism, nationalistic pride and mutual alliances all played a part in building tensions that would erupt into war.

World War I Battles: Timeline

For four years, from 1914 to 1918, World War I raged across Europe’s western and eastern fronts after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the war’s battles were devastatingly bloody, claiming an estimated 40 […]

10 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Verdun

Explore 10 surprising facts about one of the longest and most brutal campaigns of World War I.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany’s U-boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane’s propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany’s Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than Germany’s earlier Zeppelin raids.

By the war’s end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army. 

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne . The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany’s best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

The Harlem Hellfighters and Other All-Black Regiments

By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I. 

Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions . Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more success. 

How World War I Changed Literature

World War I altered the world for decades, and writers and poets reflected that shift in literature, novels and poetry.

Was Germany Doomed in World War I by the Schlieffen Plan?

The Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before the start of World War I, was a failed strategy for Germany to win World War I.

A Harlem Hellfighter’s Searing Tales from the WWI Trenches

Blue clouds of poisonous gas. Relentless shelling and machine gun fire. Horace Pippin's art‑filled journals recorded life in ‘them lonely, cooty, muddy trenches.'

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing , commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. The 93 Division’s 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters , fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.

Toward Armistice

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But the Treaty of Versailles , signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations , Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace without victory,” as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II .

World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict—machine guns, tanks , aerial combat and radio communications—were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remain in effect today.

Photo Galleries

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Essay on War and Its Effects

Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Its Effects in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

Introduction.

War is a state of armed conflict between different countries or groups within a country. It’s a destructive event that causes loss of life and property.

The Devastation of War

Wars cause immense destruction. Buildings, homes, and infrastructure are often destroyed, leaving people homeless. The loss of resources makes it hard to rebuild.

The human cost of war is huge. Many people lose their lives or get injured. Families are torn apart, and children often lose their parents.

Psychological Impact

War can cause severe psychological trauma. Soldiers and civilians may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

250 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, a term that evokes immediate images of destruction and death, has been a persistent feature of human history. The consequences are multifaceted, influencing not only the immediate physical realm but also the socio-economic and psychological aspects of society.

Physical Impact

The most direct and visible impact of war is the physical destruction. Infrastructure, homes, and natural resources are often destroyed, leading to a significant decline in the quality of life. Moreover, the loss of human lives is immeasurable, creating a vacuum in societies that is hard to fill.

Socio-Economic Consequences

War also has profound socio-economic effects. Economies are crippled as resources are diverted towards war efforts, leading to inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Social structures are disrupted, with families torn apart and communities displaced.

Psychological Effects

Perhaps the most enduring impact of war is psychological. The trauma of violence and loss can have long-term effects on mental health, leading to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Society at large also suffers, with the collective psyche marked by fear and mistrust.

In conclusion, war leaves an indelible mark on individuals and societies. Its effects are far-reaching and long-lasting, extending beyond the immediate physical destruction to touch every aspect of life. As we continue to study and understand these impacts, it underscores the importance of pursuing peace and conflict resolution.

500 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

The political impact of war.

War significantly alters the political landscape of nations. It often leads to changes in leadership, shifts in power dynamics, and amendments in legal systems. For instance, World War II resulted in the downfall of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, giving rise to democratic governments. However, war can also destabilize nations, creating power vacuums that may lead to further conflicts, as seen in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Social Consequences of War

Societies bear the brunt of war’s destructive nature. The loss of life, displacement of people, and the psychological trauma inflicted upon populations are some of the direct social effects. Indirectly, war also affects societal structures and relationships. It can lead to changes in gender roles, as seen during World War I and II where women took on roles traditionally held by men, leading to significant shifts in gender dynamics.

Economic Ramifications of War

The psychological impact of war.

War leaves a deep psychological imprint on those directly and indirectly involved. Soldiers and civilians alike suffer from conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, societies as a whole can experience collective trauma, impacting future generations. The psychological scars of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings continue to affect Japanese society today.

In conclusion, war is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with profound effects that can shape nations and societies in significant ways. Its impacts are not confined to the battlefield but reach deep into the political, social, economic, and psychological fabric of societies. Therefore, understanding its effects is not only essential for historians and political scientists but also for anyone interested in the complexities of human societies and their evolution.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

World War 1 - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

World War 1, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict that occurred between 1914 and 1918, chiefly among European powers. Essays on World War 1 might explore the causes of the war, the significant battles, the political dynamics, and the aftermath of the conflict. Discussions could also delve into the technological innovations and tactics employed, the impact of the war on civilian populations, and the cultural and literary responses to the war. Moreover, examining the war’s legacy on international relations, the changing geopolitics, and its role as a precursor to World War 2 can provide a comprehensive exploration of this monumental event in global history. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to World War 1 you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

How Technology Affected World War 1

In my paper I will be discussing the many inventions, weaponry, tools that were being released during that period of war. Many new weapons were being pushed out and provided for us to use against our enemies. One of the biggest inventions of the early 1900s was the tank, during this time it was a war of trenches filled with machine guns spraying down men before they could even make it past the 'no man's land' the solution to that […]

Causes of World War 1

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the world was seething with an explosive, hair-trigger force waiting to explode. Capitalism was undergoing a transition to imperialism. The world’s territory was divided among the world’s most powerful nations. Colonies were scattered throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The struggle between the new empires and the old ones was getting larger and larger. As new forces began to snatch resources, uneven economic development and inadequate […]

World War I: Deadliest War Ever

World war 1 lasted from august 1918 to November 1918. With this war being the deadliest with over 16 million deaths which was between the allied powers which included Serbia, Britain, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, and the united states versus the central powers which included Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the ottoman empire. There were many events that led up to the start of world war 1 such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassination which was believed to be […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

What was the Underlying Cause of World War 1

The Great War, also known as the First World War or World War I, was a geopolitical struggle that emerged in 1914 and lasted for four years. In this essay on the underlying cause of World War 1, we'll look at a few things. This international conflict greatly influenced both the sociopolitical and economic development of most nations in Europe, Israel, Russia, the United States, and the Middle East. Notably, the war eroded the central powers in Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and […]

History of the World War 1

The First World War brought along a series of changes compared to the nineteenth century and peoples previous way of living. In America when the war broke out, housework was largely still a woman’s job and men worked to support the household. When America declared war in 1917 and a vast majority of men had to go fight in the war, the power shifted over to the women. “Middle class women often said that the war broke down the restrictions […]

Compare and Contrast in WW1 and WW2

The First World War (WWI) was battled from 1914 to 1918 and the Second World War (or WWII) was battled from 1939 to 1945. They were the biggest military conflicts in mankind's set of experiences. The two conflicts included military collusions between various gatherings of nations. While WWI included the coalition framework, WWII included the Axis Powers and the Central Powers. World War 1 began from 1914 to 1918 and it went on for a very long time. World War […]

Propaganda during World War 1

In the age of national socialism, and the rise of Hitler, media and the creation of art was controlled by the government in order to prevent anti-government propaganda from reaching the public sphere. By preventing artists and journalists from having the creative freedom to express their opinions the media became one sided. Everyone was fed the same anti-Semitic, pro hitler, pro-government news so that they would be brainwashed into believing that their government was protecting them and fixing Germany. Propaganda […]

Large-Scale World War 1

World War I started in 1914 and kept going until 1918, The Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire) battled against the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States). Therefore, because of new military advancements and the detestations of channel fighting, World War I saw uncommon dimensions of the massacre. When the war was finished and the Allied Powers guaranteed victory, in excess of 16 million individuals—military and civilian people alike—were dead. […]

Reasons World War i Started

World War One was started because of many reasons, the British were doing everything in their power to make the United States angry. It worked.. The British tried their best to win U.S. support since at the beginning of the war Wilson declared the United States neutral. Many Americans weren't all in, some of them supported one side and the other supported the other side. The British used propaganda, it's information designed to help people create their opinion. Britain cut […]

Car Production during World War 1

This paper is based on two Primary Sources from Chapter 19, “Of Masses and Visions of the Modern, 1910 – 1939”. The first is “Bruce Barton’s Gospel of Mass Production” and the second is “Cult of the Dynamic Leader”. Both of these sources provide information that relates to the period of time covered in this chapter where major changes in both society and politics developed, especially after World War I. One of the major characteristics of the period was the […]

The Spanish Flu during World War 1

 Spain was the first to report the flu in 1918. Symptoms of the flu are like normal flus like fever, aches and feeling nauseous and fatigue. People with the flu first felt chills or Then they began to feel a headache and begin to have pains on their back which then spread to whole body pains causing tenderness in the muscles. Next came vomiting running eyes and a running nose and coughing plus sore throat. People infected then began to […]

Geography of World War i

World War I began in 1914, after Archduke was killed. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, which were the central powers fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States which were the allied powers. By the time the war was over the allied powers won, and more than 16 million people were killed. The assassination of Archduke set off a bunch of events that include, Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack. On […]

Women’s Role in World War 1

Before WWI women had to stay home to raise the family and do work around the house. The women would cook, clean, do laundry, and take care of the family while they raised their children when the men worked.[Women, wages and rights] Some women would become a teacher or librarian for the towns though it was not favored for women to work. In fact, there was a huge resistance to hiring women for “men’s work”. Women wore dresses and corsets […]

Homogenizing a Pluralistic Nation: Propaganda during World War 1

During the World War 1, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information with an attempt to mobilize the opinion of a diverse American community in support of the nation’s war effort. The Committee used many forms of media from posters to films to deliver messages, inspire, and persuade civilians. Shaping people’s thoughts required a compelling use of persuasion methods. We will analyze three main themes of propaganda: army recruitment, buying war bonds, and uniting a multiethnic society; and […]

The most Awarded Soldier in the History of the World War 1

On October 8, 1918, Sergeant Alvin York single-handedly fought off a rain of bullets from thirty-five German machine guns, along with a large battalion of soldiers; defeating them and capturing 129 soldiers. This remarkable war triumph amazed everyone around him, he earned several merit awards and became one of the most decorated and well-known soldiers in World War I history. However, he faced many tragic events leading up to that point, including being forced to fight and kill in that […]

The Raise of Authoritarian and Ultranationalists after World War 1

The rise of authoritarian and ultranationalist in 1930s was an accumulation of several factors such as economic collapse, mistreatment of peasant farmers and workers, and the need for raw material. The world’s economy after World War one was severely crippled and damaging as many nation were left with large debts and for some countries, the price for losing the war have further pushed their economy into ruins. After World War one, several countries were experiencing inflation, each to various degree. […]

Horror of World War i

Theworld war was as known as the great war between 1914 to 1918. During the war Germany Empire was the vital power in the fight in opposition to four big countries like Great Britain, Franc and United States well as. It brought a huge development of war technics and weapons. For examplethe country build up their military power that is mobilizing term and supping necessary war equipments. For instance In Britain developed a weaponry manufacturing company to lead the full […]

Patriotism during World War 1

Last Sunday marked the 100 year anniversary of the end of World War 1. In remembrance of World War 1, many of the world leaders met in Paris, France, where French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech at the Armistice Day Ceremony. According to the Washington State Post, Macron argued that “The millions of soldiers who died in the Great War fought to defend the universal values of France, and to reject the selfishness of nations only looking after their […]

Features of the World War 1

World War I was unlike any previous wars because of its reliance on advanced industrial technology and the economic and political organization of nations at war. World War I saw the first widespread use of machine guns, air power, submarine operations, poison gas and armored vehicles. The war was also characterized by mobilization of civilian resources to make the pace of combat much faster. The technology of World War I was unlike any the world had ever seen used in […]

The Coalition of Power: a Closer Look at the Central Powers in World War 1

Major international powers were split into two opposing coalitions during international War I, a struggle that fundamentally changed the direction of the 20th century. The alliance known as the Central Powers, which was mostly made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, was very important to the course of the Great War. This article delves further into the Central Powers' participation in one of the bloodiest wars in history by examining its creation, tactics, and effects during World […]

The Puzzle of World War 1 Central Powers: Untangling the Threads of Global Turmoil

In the chaotic symphony of the First World War, the Central Powers orchestrated a performance that danced on the edge of geopolitics, blending the hues of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria into an enigmatic canvas. This alliance, a concoction of diplomatic intricacies and shared ambitions, unfolded a narrative that surpassed the conventional boundaries of global conflict. As we plunge into the heart of the Central Powers during WW1, we find a tapestry woven with alliances, strategic gambits, and […]

Review of World War One

World War One began in nineteen fourteen, right after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The war lasted till nineteen nineteen. During the war many countries decided to work together to try and win the war. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire teamed up against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States. The most important cause of World War One was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. In the summer of […]

The Alliance System: Unraveling the Threads of World War 1

As the curtains fell on the 19th century and the world stood at the threshold of a new era, an intricate web of alliances quietly wove itself across the geopolitical stage. This alliance system, conceived as a mechanism to foster stability, paradoxically became the harbinger of one of the most devastating conflicts in human history – World War I. In unraveling the threads of this complex tapestry, it becomes evident that the alliance system was not merely a backdrop to […]

The Alliance System of World War 1: a Prelude to Global Conflict

The commencement of World War I in 1914 was a watershed moment in history, ushering in an age of large-scale industrial warfare. The intricate alliance structure among Europe's leading nations was key to the conflict's intensification. This network of treaties and accords, forged over decades, laid the groundwork for a regional conflict to escalate into a worldwide war. This article investigates the development, nature, and significance of alliances prior to World War I, giving insights into how they led to […]

Beneath the Waves: the Role of Submarines in World War 1

The First World War, often characterized by its brutal trench warfare and massive land battles, also marked a significant chapter in naval history with the strategic use of submarines. These underwater vessels, relatively new to the theater of war, brought a unique dimension to naval combat and significantly impacted the war's course. This essay explores the role and evolution of submarines during World War I, examining their strategic significance, technological advancements, and the challenges they posed to traditional naval powers. […]

Was the World War 2 a Continuation of World War 1?

World War II Research and Family Paper, The Second World War was one of the most tragic wars facing us in the 1900s. The Second World War is the continuation of the First World War but at a completely new level. I'll explain an overview of the war and what it was like to live through it in this research paper. The Genesis of World War II There were many things that could be considered to have caused the war, […]

Information about World War i

World War 1, also known as the first world war and the great war, had started conflicts throughout the world. 1914-1918 most of the european countries, Russia, and the middle east were at war. The United States would also be entering the war later as it went on. Germany, Austria, and Turkey were the Central Powers, they fought against the Allies which was France, Great Britain, Russia and later the U.S. 19 million soldiers and civilians died in World War […]

Comparing World War i and World War II

World War I was one of the greatest wars of all time. It was very hard times for the world, as people all around were constantly in fear of what could be their tomorrow. But it wasn't always this horrid, as certain events let to this point in history. Everyone surrounded by moods changing before, during, and after the Great War. The conflict between different countries led to what could've been an even greater disaster. Before World War I, the […]

United States Joining and Involved in World War i

On April 6, 1917, the United States joined its allies, Great Britain, France, and Russia, and fought in World War I. The U.S. army was under the command of General John J. Pershing. More than 2 million U.S. soldiers battled and fought on France battlefields during this war. When World War 1 began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality (the United States would not support or take part in World War I) for the United States. Many U.S. citizens […]

The Guns of August (1962) by Barbara W. Tuchman

The book “The Guns of August” explains many topics throughout it, such as, imperialism, political alliances, the diplomacy of royalty amongst national rivalries, and even the social darwinism in the years leading up to the Great War. The Great War lasted from 1914-1918. This book starts by explaining the scene of the funeral for King Edward VII. There were many royal people that attended this event, such as 5 heirs, 40 imperials or royal highnesses, 7 queens, and a whole […]

Additional Example Essays

• PTSD in Veterans
• Veterans: Fight for Freedom and Rights
• The Sixties Civil Rights Movement vs. Vietnam War
• The Importance of Professional Bearing in the Military
• Gender Inequality in Education
• “Allegory of the Cave”
• Rosa Parks Vs. Harriet Tubman
• History of Mummification
• Three Waves of Feminism
• History: The Fall of the Roman Empire
• National Junior Honor Society: A Journey of Character and Leadership
• The Negative Impacts of the War on Drugs

How To Write an Essay About World War 1

Introduction to world war 1.

When embarking on an essay about World War 1, it's essential to first establish a clear understanding of the historical context and significance of the war. Known as "The Great War," World War 1 was a pivotal event in world history, marked by its unprecedented scale, the involvement of numerous nations, and the introduction of new warfare technologies. In your introduction, outline the basic timeline of the war, from its origins in 1914 to its conclusion in 1918, and the main countries involved. This initial section should set the stage for a comprehensive exploration of the war's causes, major battles, political dynamics, and its profound impact on the 20th century.

Analyzing the Causes and Key Events

The main body of your essay should delve into the complex causes and key events of World War 1. Explore the intricate web of alliances, militarism, imperialism, and nationalism that set the stage for the war. Discuss critical battles and campaigns, such as the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Verdun, and the Gallipoli Campaign, highlighting their strategic importance and the human cost involved. It's crucial to use specific examples and historical data to illustrate the progression of the war and the shifts in momentum among the warring nations. This section should provide a detailed and nuanced understanding of how World War 1 unfolded and the factors that drove its progression.

The Impact of World War 1

In this section, focus on the wide-ranging impact of World War 1. Analyze the immediate consequences, including the massive loss of life, the physical and psychological toll on soldiers, and the political upheaval in many participating countries. Discuss the broader implications of the war, such as the redrawing of national borders, the dissolution of empires, and the setting of the stage for World War 2. Consider also the social and cultural impacts, including how the war influenced art, literature, and public attitudes towards war and peace. This part of the essay should highlight the transformative effect World War 1 had on the world.

Concluding Reflections on World War 1

Conclude your essay by summarizing the key points of your analysis, emphasizing the historical significance of World War 1. Reflect on the lessons learned from the war and its relevance to modern society. Consider how understanding the complexities of World War 1 can provide insights into current global conflicts and international relations. A well-crafted conclusion will not only bring closure to your essay but also underscore the enduring legacy of World War 1 in shaping the contemporary world.

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

• Share full article

Opinion Guest Essay

World War III Begins With Forgetting

Credit... Justin Metz

Supported by

By Stephen Wertheim

Mr. Wertheim is a scholar and writer on U.S. foreign policy.

• Dec. 2, 2022

In March, as President Biden was facing pressure to intensify U.S. involvement in Ukraine, he responded by invoking the specter of World War III four times in one day.

“Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III,” he said , “something we must strive to prevent.” He underscored the point hours later: “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III, OK?”

More than any other presidential statement since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Biden’s warning signaled the start of a new era in American foreign policy. Throughout my adult life and that of most Americans today, the United States bestrode the world, essentially unchallenged and unchecked. A few years ago, it was still possible to expect a benign geopolitical future. Although “ great power competition ” became the watchword of Pentagonese, the phrase could as easily imply sporting rivalry as explosive conflict. Washington, Moscow and Beijing would stiffly compete but could surely coexist.

How quaint. The United States now faces the real and regular prospect of fighting adversaries strong enough to do Americans immense harm. The post-Sept. 11 forever wars have been costly, but a true great power war — the kind that used to afflict Europe — would be something else, pitting the United States against Russia or even China, whose economic strength rivals America’s and whose military could soon as well.

This grim reality has arrived with startling rapidity. Since February, the war in Ukraine has created an acute risk of U.S.-Russia conflict. It has also vaulted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the forefront of American fears and increased Washington’s willingness to respond with military force. “That’s called World War III,” indeed.

Yet how many Americans can truly envision what a third world war would mean? Just as great power conflict looms again, those who witnessed the last one are disappearing. Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Advertisement