5 Surprising Truths About Modern War That Change How We See Conflict
Our mental image of war is often a product of the 20th century: massive armies clashing across defined borders, powerful nation-states locked in existential combat, and clear lines drawn between soldiers and civilians. We think of the trenches of World War I or the tank battles of World War II. While this type of industrial, state-on-state warfare defined a century, it is rapidly fading into history. However, this does not mean the world has become peaceful.
Conflict has not disappeared; it has fundamentally transformed. It has moved from the international stage to within the borders of single nations. It has become a contest not between equals, but between the powerful and the agile. The drivers of conflict are more complex and often more personal than grand ideologies. This article explores five of the most surprising and impactful realities of modern war, based on historical data and strategic analysis, that challenge our traditional understanding of conflict.
1. The Era of State-on-State War Is Over (Mostly)
The most significant shift in modern conflict is the dramatic decline of interstate conflict—wars fought between two or more countries. An extensive analysis by the RAND Corporation shows that after a period of intense volatility during the Cold War, where the number of countries engaged in interstate conflict regularly peaked at 12 or 13 in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the frequency of these wars has plummeted.
Following the Cold War’s end, the trend shifted to a dramatic and sustained decline, leading RAND to project that by the year 2040, interstate conflict will be an extremely rare event. This represents a monumental strategic departure from the 20th century, which was scarred by two devastating world wars and the constant, nuclear-tinged threat of superpower confrontation. The hard-won stability of the post-Cold War era has fundamentally altered the landscape of global security.
2. War Hasn’t Vanished—It’s Moved Indoors
The decline in state-on-state war has not ushered in an era of global peace. Instead, the locus of conflict has shifted. Today, the vast majority of armed conflicts are intrastate conflicts, such as civil wars, insurgencies, and ethnic violence fought within a single country’s borders.
The RAND report projects that this form of violence will continue to be the primary type of conflict for the foreseeable future. While the long-term trend for intrastate conflict also points downward, the decline is much slower and more gradual. In fact, data shows a notable uptick since 2012, a stark reminder that the drivers of internal conflict—state fragility, sectarianism, and political grievance—remain potent, as evidenced by brutal wars in nations like Syria. This shift is critical because it creates far more complex wars involving a mix of government forces and non-state actors, tragically blurring the lines between combatants and civilians. This shift to internal, multi-actor conflicts has created the perfect incubator for a new dominant strategy: asymmetric warfare.
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3. The Underdog’s Playbook Is the New Standard
Modern conflict is increasingly defined by asymmetric warfare: a struggle between adversaries with vastly different military capabilities. In these contests, the weaker party avoids direct, conventional battle and instead employs unconventional tactics to exploit the vulnerabilities of its stronger opponent.
This playbook includes guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run attacks, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), terrorism, and sophisticated information warfare campaigns. These tactics are effective because they bypass a conventional military’s strengths, like firepower and technology, and directly attack its weaknesses: its low public tolerance for casualties, its dependence on complex logistics, and its need to maintain political legitimacy at home and abroad. While not new—colonial militias used these tactics against the British Army in the American Revolutionary War and Viet Cong forces countered a technologically superior U.S. military—this asymmetric approach has become the standard model for modern insurgents. As Mao Zedong famously wrote:
The guerrillas must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.
This strategic shift denies conventionally superior forces the decisive battles they are designed to win. The battlefield is no longer just a physical space but a complex human environment that includes public opinion, media narratives, and the civilian population itself.
4. Greed Can Fuel War More Than Grievance
We often assume wars are fought for grand causes—ideology, religion, or political justice. But a counter-intuitive and powerful driver of modern conflict is far more basic: individual economic incentive. This “private motivation hypothesis” suggests that for many combatants, war is a profitable enterprise.
In the chaos of conflict, controlling valuable resources like diamonds, timber, or drugs becomes a direct source of income. For individual fighters, opportunities for simple looting or profiting from illicit trade can be a more powerful motivator than any political grievance. Case studies of long-running civil wars in Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia revealed that these private economic motives played a significant role in prolonging the violence. This insight is crucial because it challenges the notion that all conflicts are fought for “higher” ideals and helps explain why some wars persist for decades, even when political solutions seem within reach.
5. Many “Ancient Hatreds” Were Invented
When ethnic violence erupts, it is often explained away as the result of “primordial” or “ancient” hatreds between groups who have been fighting for centuries. However, historical analysis shows this is rarely the case. Many of the ethnic identities at the center of modern conflicts are not ancient at all; they were often constructed or solidified by colonial powers for administrative convenience.
Once these group identities are established, political leaders can then “rework historical memories” to mobilize their followers in a competition for political power and economic resources. This dynamic was a key factor in the Rwandan genocide, where Hutu identity was weaponized against the Tutsi population. Similarly, in post-independence Zimbabwe, political objectives drove the manipulation of ethnic identity in the conflict in Matabeleland. This reframes our understanding of ethnic conflict, shifting the focus from an inevitable clash of cultures to a calculated strategy of political and economic manipulation by elites.
Conclusion: A New Map for a New Kind of Conflict
The 21st-century battlefield is not a place but a system—a complex human environment where internal grievances, amplified by global information networks and fueled by private greed, give nimble, asymmetric actors a decisive edge over traditional military power. The decline of state-on-state warfare is a historic achievement, but conflict has adapted, becoming more internal, intractable, and defined by the cynical manipulation of identity. Understanding these five truths is essential for navigating the complexities of modern security.
As the nature of conflict continues to evolve, how must our strategies for achieving peace adapt to this new and more complex reality?
