More War

War is being redefined. Conventional war was one nation fighting another nation, sometimes with the assistance of allies. After World War II, that happened less, though it never truly went away. Wars are breaking convention. Proxy wars during the Cold War weren’t really wars between or within small countries. They were superpower wars, but without the full power of the superpowers. The War of Terror and the War on Drugs meant one nation might attack an non-national organization, sometimes violating national sovereignty. Small conflicts still had large effects. Now, drones and cyber-assaults mean even smaller collections of people can begin, engage, and sustain deadly confrontations. The line blurs between pirates, mercenaries, freedom-fighters, and probably new types of opponents. No wonder it seems as if there’s more war in the news, and now we’re seeing a return of nation-against-nation wars like in Ukraine. There are limits to the capacity of large governments, like the US, to be global police forces especially because funding for such efforts are national, not global. We may be entering, or already in, a new era for war that will redefine the conflicts, the participants, the peacekeeping forces, the weapons, and our expectations. Since 1980, the number of conflicts has almost tripled to 180. Total casualties are harder to quantify because the line between war and mass violence is harder to define; but hundreds of thousands of deaths are hard to ignore.