AN ASSESSMENT OF THE TRENDS IN ARMED CONFLICTS AROUND THE
WORLD FROM 1940s TO THE PRESENT
Introduction
The characteristics and dynamics of armed conflict have changed over the course of a
decade since the 1940s up to modern day. The Second World War rose to prominence in the first
half of the 1940s as a wide-scale industrial war between leading global powers that led to
incredible casualties and redrawing of political borders in Europe and Asia. The emergence of
nuclear weapons after that war contributed to the change in the type of conflict from major
warfare to proxy-wars and civil wars as major powers refused to engage in direct warfare for fear
of a nuclear showdown: a trend which was aggravated by the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The
main conflicts of the early Cold War occurred in Korea and Vietnam and provided battles
between capitalist and communist world that did not directly involve the superpowers
themselves. It also facilitated wars of independence all over Africa and Asia in 1950s through
1970s as empires in Europe began to disintegrate. But the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan in
late December 1979 was the first example of direct conventional military intervention by a
superpower in the Third World that was to continue throughout the following decade up to the
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. The collapse of this wall the same year can be said
to have signified the end of the cold war which brought to an end the ideologies of communism
against capitalism as a cause of conflicts globally. The 1990s witnessed ethnic genocides and
civil wars within most of a number of newly emerged states that were no longer held in check by
the Cold War divisions, particularly in the Balkans and Africa. The global system was changed
after the September 11 terrorist attack on United States of America that led to the Global War on
Terror in 2000s and 2010s where the conflict changed from state based to non-state based.
Coordinated and large-scale US-led military operations involving Afghanistan and Iraq to
dismantle the terror networks spanned for the next two decades with limited success before
shifting towards countering the Russian and Chinese expansionism. At the same time, non-state
threats have driven further fluctuating internal stability and civil wars in most Middle Eastern
countries after the Arab Spring movement in 2011. As for the future trends, climate change and
competition for resources as the main factors may increase global insecurity and stimulate inter-
and intra-state conflicts.
Post-World War II Conflicts (1940s-1950s)
The anti-colonial liberation movements and how they affected the nature of conflict in the world
Since the end of the Second World War people of colour across Asia, Africa and the
Middle East rose against their colonial masters and sought development of nation states; these
struggles transformed the dynamics of conflict during these decades as civil wars, proxy wars
and wars of liberation became especially prominent and rejuvenated the traditional interstate
warfare. The Europeans such as Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands were fighting to
keep their colonies intact while the nationalist movements within these colonies intensified, the
European‘s brutal tactics of ‗shock and awe‘, massacres and mass detention only served to
deepen the resentment and opposition of the indigenous people. These also became battle
grounds during the early stages of the Cold War as the USSR and USA sought to assert their
influence over the newly independent states and those still struggling for freedom by funding,
arming, basing and advising allied anti-colonial movements and post-colonial governments. This
internationalized local conflicts and further increase tension between super powers. Some of the
major anti-colonial wars in the post-Second World War years were: the First Indochina war in
Vietnam; the Algerian war of liberation; the Mau Mau war of independence in Kenya; the 1948
Arab-Israeli war which led to the creation of the state of Israel; the Suez war in Egypt, 1956; the
war of Malayan independence; and a series of anti-Brit Such postcolonial wars were usually
marked by high levels of interpenetration between the warring factions, with soldiers and
noncombatants difficult to distinguish, the predominant reliance on guerilla tactics and terrorism
against lower profile targets, and engagements being predominantly fought in towns or rural
areas that were rather distant from conventional battlefields. These were not the clean moral
battles with distinct battlefronts, and the wars had severe costs in that many of the participants
were civilians. Many anti-colonial movements were not only regional in nature but impacted the
entire world as it showed that European monarchs were not the superpowers that could not be
overthrown and called for other subjected people in the rest of Asia and Africa to seek freedom
bringing about a new world order whereby the nation-state became the new political reality.
The first conflicts of the Cold War and proxy wars between the United States and Soviet Union
The first clashes of the cold war were practically at the very beginning of 1945 because
the tensions between the two superpowers the United States as the representative of the
democratic capitalist world and Soviet Union as the head of the communist bloc emerged
quickly. Ideological differences also contributed to the outbreak of various proxy wars since both
the super powers wanted to spread their ideologies to every corner of the world. One major arena
was Europe: the Soviet Union unfolded control over Eastern Europe while the U.S. took the
initiative in rebuilding and consolidating Western Europe. This led to these early ‗conflicts‘ such
as the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49. The other significant theatre of confrontation was the Third
World, as both superpowers tried to gain influence in newly forming nations of Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. It is important to note that major proxy wars that emerged in the mid-20th
century included the Korean War of 1950-53, where the Soviet Union-supported North Korea
attacked the United States-supported South Korea, and the Vietnam War of 1955-1975 between
North Vietnam and its non-communist neighbor in the south, which was backed by the United
States There were also conflicts in the Middle East; The Suez Crisis of Moreover there were civil
strife which saw one side being supplied by the Soviets and the other side by the Americans like
the Greek civil war in the late 1940s and the Angolan civil war in the 1970s. These proxy wars
were indicative of ideological trends of the early Cold War and the extreme measures that the
two superpowers were willing to take to ensure that the other side did not spread its influence
any further. Casualties in these conflicts totaled millions of people that were fought around the
globe, even though the US and USSR never directly engaged in the fighting.
New nation-states and consequently the conflicts over territories
With the emergence of new nation-states after the end of World War II many colonial
regions gained independence, but this lead to new kinds of violence as borders were
reestablished. When the Axis powers were defeated many colonies in Asia and Africa felt the
time is ripe to strike out for imperialism. This was made easier by the fact that the powers that
were colonizing the region had weakened. For example, the Indian independence struggle led by
Mahatma Gandhi ultimately paid off in 1947 as the Britain could not contain the colony any
more after the war had ruined Britain‘s economy and made her militarily weaker than before.
Likewise; any territories that were controlled by France, Netherlands, Belgium and many others
soon also began demanding their freedom. Nevertheless, as these new nation-states or states
were created, there was bound to be conflicts over territory. Some of the issues that they
discussed included the placement of borders, a concept that was not well understood due to the
unique ethnic and religious characteristics of the regions. For instance, with the creation of the
state of Pakistan out of India through the Partition of India in 1947, there was bloody strife
between Hindus and Muslims in a disputed territory of the province of Kashmir. Similarly, in
1948 with the founding of Israel many Palestinian Arabs were removed from their land and
Israel was at war with neighboring Arab states. In some instances like the Indonesians who
declared their independence in 1945, other colonial powers like the Dutch resorted to violence in
a bid to reclaim their lost colonies. In some of them the borders and structures of governance
were drawn with no regard to ethnic, religious or linguistic affiliations; many of these post-
colonial states were thus plagued by insurgencies and secessionist movements that demanded
their right to self-determination. This all led to both inter and intrastate conflicts becoming the
norm in the decade following WWII, or becoming a major issue in the stability of regions, such
as the Middle Eastern and South Eastern Asia as is experienced today. It is important to
understand that after the WWII, independence and statehood came to the region, but they were
not devoid of conflicts.
Some of the conflicts that characterized the Cold War Era are as follows;
Spread of communism and counter communism movements and operations around the globe
Communism and counter communism operations and movements across the world were
some of the significant characteristics of global politics in the twentieth century. After the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, other governments supporting communism in the Soviet Union
was formed in countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America such as the notable example of
China in 1949. In order to checkmate this spread, the western countries, spear headed by the
United States of America embarked on covert and at other times overt operations to destabilize
these regimes and support anti-communism forces as well as propound the virtues of capitalism
and democracy as against communism. Some key conflicts are the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49
delivering food and supplies into West Berlin when the Soviets blocked access, the Korean War
of 1950-53 to prevent the North‘s invasion of South Korea, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba in April 1961 in an attempt to instigate a rebellion against Fidel Castro‘s new communism,
and the long Vietnam War of 1955-75 between a Besides conventional warfare, the CIA
intervened covertly to sabotage elections of suspected communists, support media and cultural
initiatives, and prop up pro-capitalist labor organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia
during the Cold War. Also, the Soviet Union waged similar spying activities to finance
communist movements and weaken western powers on the global stage. This Cold War tension
was characterized by major proxy wars that pitted the communists against the anti-communists
of the western world in different developing nations such as Guatemala, Angola, Afghanistan
among others. The shift from communism to globalization after the Soviet Union break up in
1991 means the Cold War is still present in today‘s political climate. China still has a communist
rule, while Cuba and North Korea still hold on to their system despite the onslaught by the West
and various sanctions. Communism expanded at a very fast pace for sometime in the twentieth
century and after that, long drawn battle with the capitalist democracies was an ideological
struggle which has defined the modern world.
Increase in nuclear arms race and its impact on conflict behavior
The arms race between the United States and Soviet Union is one of the most significant
features of the Cold War period that started immediately after the second world war when the
two emerging world powers intensified the development of nuclear technology and accumulated
a vast quantity of nuclear arsenals primarily for the purpose of gaining the upper hand over the
other side and preventing it from attacking them. This increased competition heightened tensions
and the possibility if conflict since each nation aimed to establish dominance for itself while
speculative paranoia also arose about the other nation‘s motives, thus a number of incidents
which could have easily led to a nuclear showdown like the Cuban Missile Crisis that saw the
world come to the brink of a nuclear war following the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
The increase of the nuclear capability made both sides to be more aggressive and to embark on
adventurous foreign policies, the Soviets suppressed unrest among the Eastern European satellite
states through force and invasion as in the Hungarian invasion of 1956 and the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in the year 1968 after the Prague Spring to be confident that the western powers
lack the willingness to act in order not to trigger of nuclear war. In the case of the United States
of America, the theory of deterrence sanctioned the aggressive containment measures to stop the
expansion of Communism in Asia; the American involvement in the Vietnam and Korean wars
turned into long-drawn slogs. It also plagued diplomacy because neither the U.S. nor U.S.S.R.
could risk making concessions and compromise earlier on, thus preventing diplomacy.
Therefore, the nuclear arms race made international relations more confrontational during the
Cold War period and raised the likelihood of direct or proxy confrontations between the
superpowers and their allies, as both were assured by their arsenal to use force to advance their
interests, which resulted in several wars that might otherwise have not occurred or have only
lasted for a short time before international actors applied diplomacy to sort out their differences.
Emergence of nationalism and separatism in different parts of the world
Cold War period was a period of ideological confrontation between the West that was
mostly capitalist and led by the USA and the East that was mostly socialist and led by the Soviet
Union, with several minor wars being fought by proxies. As a result, this period marked the
dawn of nationalism and separatism due to the weakening of European empires‘ colonial powers.
Asian and African nationalist leaders sought support in the form of material and ideological
assistance in their fight against colonialism or domination by ethnically/religious different
groups. For instance during the Vietnam War, United States aided South Vietnam while Soviet
Union and China assisted North Vietnam, which was in effect a nationalist struggle for
unification and independence, which was caught in the cold war conflict. Likewise, most of the
battles with the Middle East — from the Arab nationalism spearheaded by Egypt‘s Gamal Abdel
Nasser, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Islamic revolution in Iran that toppled the Shah regime which
was close to America — were related to or associated with the Cold War setting even when
based on regional politics. As it was with other African countries, new states were facing
problems like ethnic conflict, artificial state frontiers, lack of nationality and institutions, and
economic problems at that period. Each side attempted at manipulating the paths of African
countries according to their interests, providing developmental as well as military support. In
general, the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa received the shade of
the Cold War. Angola‘s civil war had external forces‘ interference that included Cuba, South
Africa, and the United States. As every micro nationalisms on the basis of linguistically and
ethnically different regions emerged in different parts of the world many separatist movements
which sometime used the tactics of terrorisms were supported either directly or indirectly by the
Cold war powers who sought to destabilize the opponent‘s sphere of influence and expand their
own. In Northern Ireland, there was a conflict between the Irish and British where Irish guerrillas
supported Marxism and received arms and funds from the Libyan leader Gaddafi, who had
friendly relations with the Soviet Union.
Post-Cold War Conflicts (1990s)
Ethnic and religious conflicts after the breakup of the Soviet Union
Post-Soviet region witnessed several ethnic and religious conflicts in the newly formed
states in Soviet Union after 1991 due to nationalist and separatist movements which were banned
during the Soviet dictatorship. After the Soviet domination the ethnic tensions that had existed
between different groups came into forefront and in most cases the conflicts erupted in violence.
Caucasus region witnessed a series of wars between Armenia-Azerbaijan on the territorially
disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh both committed ethnic cleansing against each other. Thus,
two devastating wars occurred in Chechnya because of a war for secession of the Chechen rebels
from Russia that affected a great number of civilians and resulted in their displacement. Some
other Central Asian states also witnessed ethnic disturbances such as the ethnic Russians‘ revolt
in the predominantly ethnic Kazakh republic in 1992 over the reduced roles of Russians in new
Kazakhstan. Ethnic tensions also arose, as well as religious ones, following the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the subsequent cancellation of the state atheism policy. It is noteworthy that
this revival of religion into the public purview allowed old sectarian antagonisms to be reignited;
in Georgia, Muslims and Orthodox Christians have been known to fight each other, and
Tajikistan‘s civil war was fought between Islamist reformers and secular regional clans. This was
due to the fact that nationalism and religious movements were on the rise and was harmoniously
interrelated. For instance, the civil wars of the 1990s in the Balkans specifically due to the
breakup of Yugoslavia witnessed Serbian chauvinists attacking not only Bosnian Muslims but
Catholic Croat as well. This has included appealing to ethnic Russians in these states, and
perceived orthodox Christian bonds that exist between Russia and the former Soviet states.
Hence, the Soviet breakup created ‗the perfect storm‘ of ethnic and religious violence owing to
the vulnerabilities and instability of new sovereign states with multi ethnic and/or multi religious
populace that emerged from a already troubled totalitarian empire which was largely held
together by bribes and threats and not by any real sense of unity. These states had tremendous
difficulties in the process of building a new political culture and order at the time of the sudden
democratization: They had to find ways on how to achieve order, law, power, and even rights for
the minorities. The nationalist politicians and the zealous religious leaders that assumed power in
these power vacuums then used the influence gained to promulgate exclusions and hatred for
political and material gains at the loss of lives and psychological traumas of the victims that
continue to affect the region up to this date.
Humanitarian interventions and the principle of ‘Responsibility to Protect’
Launched in the post-Cold War period, the principle of ‗Responsibility to Protect‘ was an
attempt to provide a framework for intervention with a view of preventing future genocide and
the crimes against humanity. Though it has been considered as raising questions about the
sovereignty of states, it is based on the assumption that sovereignty is not inviolable and that in
the event of genocide and other forms of mass atrocities, the International community has the
responsibility to protect vulnerable populations. The most complex humanitarian emergencies
and challenges for the international community appeared in the 1990s including the crises in
Somalia, Rwanda, Bosina and Kosovo which exposed the need for a reformulated framework of
action on mass atrocities. Situation like Rwanda, where lack of organized capacity and will from
the international system to stop genocide as it was still in progress was evident and the civilian
death toll was massive proved that there were flaws in the established norms that required
reform. Developed in 2001 by International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,
R2P as a principle for humanitarian intervention was formulated in order to close a gap between
sovereignty and the need to protect the people in extreme situations by asserting that state
sovereignty equals responsibility and if state fails, others have responsibility to intervene. The
real application of such principles has occasioned controversies and debates such as the rights to
force in the realization of the humanitarian intent such as forceful liberation. The examples of
unauthorized attacks at the level of the 90s, for example, the Kosovo war, put additional
questions about the admissibility as opposed to the lawfulness of such actions. Efforts to apply
concepts like R2P during complicated conflict contexts have raised several political and
operational concerns and criticisms concerning imperialism of dominant states, selective
reaction, incoherence, as well as negative effects of intervention.
Appearance of transnational terrorist organizations and the use of irregular warfare strategies
The fall of the Soviet Union and start of globalization facilitated the creation of
transnational terrorist organizations that employed their warfare and asymmetric techniques
against much stronger state adversaries in the 1990s conflicts. Since these organizations did not
possess the regular military might to directly tackle a number of modern professional armies,
they subjected their enemies to shock tactics of surprise guerrilla-style hit-and-run raids, hostage-
taking, carefully planned targeted killings and high-profile dramatic mass-casualty suicide
bombings all of which were aimed at sowing seeds of terror and demoralization among their foes
in order to dismantle any desire within the latter to prosecute long-term campaigns against them.
Al-Qaeda initiated this practice under Osama Bin Laden during the 1980 Afghan Jihad
coagulating from the remnants of the mujahideen foreign fighter after the Soviet war into a
transnational network in the 1990s oriented against the west and the pro-Western Muslim
governments. Al-Qaeda and other regional affiliate groups capitalized on uncontrolled or
virtually unpoliced territories in failed or failing states such as Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan
to train fighters drawn from the global militant Islamist diaspora and coordinate devastating
asymmetrical warfare, such as the 9/11 attacks against the US. Other groups used vignettes of
irregular warfare to prosecute nationalist or religious struggles in the 1990s wars, for example
the RPG flailing Somali clan militias Even the insurgent groups that had heavy access to arms
and ammunitions such as the FARC in Colombia in the 1990s shifted to kidnapping, extortion,
drug peddling and strategic terrorism as additional tools in addition to the hit-and-run raids and
ambushes when confronting a more technologically equipped force in the Colombian military
that had American intelligence backup. Therefore while the 1990s recorded technological
advancement in military equipment and growth of professionalism in state armed forces as force
modernization trends, the availability of cheap small arms and light weapons and adaptation of
insurgent and terrorist strategies as irregular warfare neutralized some of these aspects.
Pre 9/11 Era (2000s)
Counter terrorism initiatives in the global arena and its influence on the stability of the regions
In the period prior to September 11, 2001, counter-terrorism operations by nations aimed
at detecting and preventing terrorist operations and events through espionage, shared
intelligence, police work, and some military activity though approaches and specific measures
may have shifted across time and space as well as country and region with divergent views on
the use of force against terrorists groups acting domestically as well as trans-nationally. This led
to the United Kingdom and Spain enduring attacks from the Irish Republican Army and Basque
separatists respectively, whilst Germany faced threats from the Red Army Faction up to the
1990s which eventually saw European partners tightening their nets on finances and elevating
arrests of suspects as attacks reduced gradually despite resentments among minority people who
were attacked. Palestine and Israel were involved in many acts of aggression and aggression due
to the hostility of these two factions and despite the attempts of the United States to negotiate for
a peace agreement in the 1990s that made the area volatile in terms of security. In some parts of
Asia and Russia, there were groups demanding for independent Muslim states or those with an
Islamic fundamentalism agenda conducted bombings and insurgent activity with a view to
disrupting and weakening political structures; though through measures such as local increase in
security and intelligence sharing within some regional associations, major successful attacks and
unrest such as in Indonesia and the Philippines had reduced by the year 2001 but threats
continued from groups like Abu Sayyaf. Saudi Arabian attempts against al-Qaeda, along with
CIA activities, had some impact on the more complex degree of operation and planning through
the arrest of a planner in 1996 and sabotage of several plots, yet it remained a highly
decentralized terrorist group.
Escalation in the number of proxy wars funded by the states in the Middle East
The increased number of proxy wars sponsored by states in the Middle East prior to the
9/11 event that took place during the 2000s may be attributed to several factors that made it
possible for extremism to take root and flourish in the region. Also, there were increasing Sunni-
Shia tensions due to political and economic issues linking the two groups for a long time. In Iraq
and Syria, authoritarians stifled dissent amongst their people, and Saudi Arabia and Iran
extended their regional power struggle to back opposing factions in civil wars. Moreover, more
people began to express hostility against the US military and its actions in the Islamic countries
following the 1990-91 Gulf War and also due to the increasingly frustrating Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and standstill in the peace process. Such dynamics produced radical Islamist movements
that were in open confrontation with the ruling powers and which called for an armed jihad. The
powerful vacuum was thus filled by groups such as the Al Qaeda and other jihadi networks to
launch themselves, train personnel and conduct terrorist acts against western powers. Through
such real societal elements, they exercised the strategy of which they aimed at achieving their
objectives as well as using violent extremism and terrorism. Backed by money and ideological
patronage from the oil-rich Arabs and charities in the Persian Gulf states, these militant groups
inserted themselves into the wars ranging from Afghanistan to Algeria to Somalia, painting them
as ―jihads‖ to mobilize men and material. Unsustainable socioeconomic grievances and post-
Cold War anti-Western sentiment were manipulated by both state and non-state actors for their
own political and ideological gains, fueling destructive proxy wars that destabilized the region in
the years prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Emergence of cyber warfare and its inclusion as a part of traditional warfare
The subject of cyberspace warfare and its integration into conventional warfare can be
traced back to the beginning of the twenty-first century when cyberspace emerged as an integral
part of civilian and military infrastructure and became more susceptible to cyber threats. While
simple DoS attacks were attempted in the economic years of the nineties, new-age intrusions
started from the year 2000, which revealed a strategic change where cyberspace was used for
reconnaissance and neutralizing opponents. The Conceptual Framework for Network Centric
Warfare was formalized in 2002 and defined the aspiration of the US military to dominate
information, thereby enhancing its military might by relying on networked communications
technology. The reliance on networks developed new risks and threats for the companies. The
new millennium has witnessed increased cyber spying by strategic rivals with the intention of
gaining strategic information and intelligence from the government and business entities. Actual
hackers or those that could be affiliated to certain states targeted important structures such as the
financial network and power structures. It is good to note that as awareness of these threats rose,
militaries began to create cyber commands, incorporate hacking into operational arsenals, and
develop information security departments to counteract interference from the opposing side.
While especially the explicit and targeted cyber-attacks were a topic often avoided in public
discourse before 2010, the ever growing integration of warfare and armed forces into the digital
space of the global information environment meant that cyberspace is another level of the
strategic competition between post-industrial, high-tech actors, a level that would only intensify
as military operations and structures became more and more connected to and dependent on
information technologies.
Hybrid Warfare and Gray Zone Conflicts (2010s)
The two concepts of hybrid warfare and gray zone conflicts became significant security
threats as states extended to achieve their objectives through combined means that are below the
conventional warfare involving hostile forces. Since 2014, one of the most blatant instances of
hybrid warfare was Russia‘s involvement in Ukraine where Moscow sent troops without
identification, proxies and weapons to capture territory and force the Ukrainian government, not
to mention cyber and information warfare. China has also increased its gray zone activities to
control the sovereignty of the south and east China seas through using maritime militia vessel to
threaten other states on given area and at the same time construct artificial structures and fully
reclaim them without necessarily having to fight a war. All of these approaches discussed here
are critical in operationalizing states‘ attainment of foreign policy objectives through
synchronization in the course of a campaign, and in moderating severe fallout while maintaining
some plausible deniability cover for diplomacy and deterrence, making the field all the more
intricate. While NATO allies have claimed that Russia has continued to spread fake news and
influence Western elections with the objective of furthering social and political divisions, this is
another form of 21st century hybrid warfare that is below the threshold of Article 51 where there
is an armed attack justifying self-defense. A number of states, particularly Russia, have
embraced hybrid warfare and gray zone conflicts that push the envelope of the sovereignty
norms of the existing international rules-based order to contain revisionist behavior by major
powers and presents problems for enforcing sovereignty norms and requires tailored policy
responses below the level of full-scale military conflict from targeted states and alliances. These
trends are going to contribute to the sustenance of tensions in the sphere of great power rivalry as
the spheres and characteristics of potential confrontation developing in the future years.
Information warfare and militarization of social media applications
The social media and applications are a new space of information operations and uses
militarization primarily in the context of hybrid and gray-zone warfare that has evolved in the
last decade. Both state and non-state actors use these technologies in the development,
dissemination, and promotion of narratives, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods for the purpose
of misinforming the population, influencing their perceptions, and causing social rifts as a way of
destabilizing one‘s opponents and achieving tactical advantage in the context of hybrid warfare
where direct military confrontation is inconceivable. Some of the examples of this include
Russian information warfare in the 2016 US presidential election, Chinese propaganda regarding
Hong Kong protests and Taiwan, and Iranian information propaganda throughout the Middle
East. Due to the relatively low barriers to the creation of fake profiles and the ability to
coordinate computational propaganda, these platforms are especially vulnerable to
weaponization, such as Facebook and Twitter. Such platforms also possess the level of data
analytics, profiling, and micro-targeting that can be employed maliciously as crafting influence
operations that are uniquely designed to target selected demographic or psychographic audience
segments within a society. Social bots and cyborg accounts operated by actual human beings
amplify the volume and credibility of propaganda and fake news in comment sections, posts,
tweets, photos, and videos. Their obscurity– involving automated and human-driven filtering
across multiple, diverse networks– grants plausible deniability and attribution gymnastics. These
techniques are being tried out by states and other actors as a cheap, devastating, but
unconventional strike against ‗soft‘ targets in liberal democracies felt to be particularly
susceptible to subversion in this new order of warfare. Indeed, there are discussions about the
necessity to enhance control of social media platforms and, at the same time, enhance society‘s
immunity to such influences and narratives along with practicing more professional
psychological protection.
Non-state actors obtaining new generation military equipment
Purchasing new and advanced military equipment by non-state actors is a relatively new
problem as a result of the hybrid warfare and gray-zone conflicts in the 2010s. To illustrate,
groups with no state affiliation such as terrorists and insurgents are obtaining new technologies
and weapons formerly in the domain of the national armies like drones, guided missiles,
encrypted communication, and surveillance systems. As state and non-state actors entwine, it
challenges conflicts because non-state actors employ equipment previously exclusive to state
military forces to counter government teammates for political purposes. For instance, Middle
Eastern relatively non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah utilize armed drone aircraft for
intelligence and kinetic purposes. The ISIS has been one of the first organizations to employ
commercial drones as weapons and share instructions on how it can be done. The fact that one
can construct IEDs from rudimentary components, with little more than chemicals and triggering
mechanisms also enables non-state groups to deal significant blows to state security forces. Other
equipment that newly minted fighters can access include off the shelf commercial gear as night
vision goggles, advanced optics, and secure radios that are acquired through black markets or
from state backers. The spread of once highly technical military equipment to irregular non-state
actors provide them with new means to subvert state control and undermine governmental
authority while remaining flexible about the source of aggression. This puts great pressure on the
targeted states to regulate the purchase of dual-use commercial technology or military equipment
from less moral third parties in an attempt to prop up non-state actors against regional
adversaries. With these new capabilities, non-state groups can challenge the state more
effectively and overwhelm local security forces; this is especially true for countries where central
authority is in decline. Mitigating this threat from empowered non-state actors entails the
targeted states to improve on the borders security, employing stricter measures in export control,
intelligence sharing, and even proactively seeking new ways of repositioning their militaries.
Ambiguity of peace and war in the contemporary conflict
The concept of the peace-war continuum is relevant due to the fact that the contemporary
conflicts are rather fuzzy, especially when it comes to the hybrid and gray zone warfare that
emerged in the 2010s as a result of the evolution of the modern geopolitical interactions and the
advancement of technologies that allow for using more covert forms of aggression that can have
significant impact on the target state or non-state actor. Instead of direct kinetic operations, it is
the penetrative cyber strikes against power systems, propaganda war to sway the targeted nations
public opinion, usage of proxies to sow chaos in the rival nation‘s territory, and other aggressive
actions that are just short of armed aggression that have allowed states to achieve strategic goals
while camouflaging culpability or outright denying it. The ambiguity thereby achieved is used to
challenge the prescriptions of established rules of warfare and of sovereignty, and non-
interventionism, to raise tensions and risks of provocation and escalation or other unintended
outcomes. But, increasing ambiguity and deniability is also useful from the revisionist
perspective of powers wishing to redraw the map of influence and revise the rules of the global
system to better suit them. Finally contemporary conflicts that include hybrid warfare entail
security interdependence between nations with less certainty of the size and measures to take to
counter perceived threats. Stability is fragile with the gray zone threats continuing to output
pressure on, and counter escalation threatens misadventures against an ill-defined opponent.
Combating and preventing hybrid threats, therefore, can only be done through synchronized
cooperation within and across military services, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, cyber
forces, foreign offices, and, most importantly, the international community, a challenging
endeavor for any organization. Drawing strong security postures and variable deterrent strategies
offers some leverage to states in the face of murky threats within the new multifaceted terrain of
concepts, data, and surrogates. However, establishing transparent communication lines which
ensures that the two parties do not fall victims of misperception or end up escalating the conflict
inadvertently can prevent the situation.
Contemporary Conflict Trends (2020s-Present)
Climate change as a source of conflict and migration over resources
According to the range of studies, in the 2020s and other subsequent decades, climate
change effects are widely promoting resource scarcity and environmental degradation as major
causes of conflict and population displacement in a range of critical regions globally; climate
change is a threat multiplier that enhances existing social, economic and political tensions over
the access to water, food, and arable land. Climatic changes such as frequent and severe
droughts, desertification, rise in sea levels and other extreme weather conditions are negatively
affecting availability of natural resources, food insecurity through destruction of crops and
livestock among other impacts on traditional livelihoods of some climatically vulnerable regions
like the Sahel, Middle East, and Central America. This shortage leads to local and regional
conflicts as people strive to capture the remaining arable land and water resources while also
resulting in forced migrations leading to internal migration and cross-border migration as those
affected seeks employment and livelihoods in other areas thus putting pressure in areas that are
already grappling with challenges of climate change and population increase. For instance, in the
Central America, the violence and displacement attributable to extreme climatic conditions such
as multi-year droughts and crop failures due to climate change and variability, have led to
displacement by desperation due to food insecurity on top of the existing sociopolitical
instability. In the forthcoming years, the effects of climate change to exacerbate of resource
shortage and livelihood loss due to environmental degradation is expected to present it as more
compelling push factor that heightens displacement and conflict across the globe, which is more
challenging for climate exposed fragile states with low capacity for coping and adaptation.
AI and use of robots in warfare
The rising employment of artificial intelligence and robots as fighting force in war can be
seen as a paradigm shift in warfare within the contemporary period mainly because these
technologies are now posited to perform combat functions at par or even superior to human
soldiers in some respects. Although it is still a relatively new development in the application of
technologies like AI and capable or partly capable autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons
systems, it represents a shift away from the exclusively human-led, controlled and directed
operations and decision-making in conflict areas in the context of warfare across the domains of
installation on land, in the air, water, space, and cyber. Some of the important motivating factors
that have been observed to be the root of increased investment in such technologies include;
desiring speed in sensing, analysis, and action in order to gain tactical edge over rivals; replacing
human resources with robot forces in order to reduce losses; speeding up the tempo of operations
beyond human capabilities; and the need to operate in environments that are characterized by
limited or no communication or Global Positioning System (GPS) access. Some of the countries
currently using AI and autonomous systems as operational capabilities are the United States,
China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Israel, and South Korea. While advocates believe that AI
and robotics can contribute to making battlefield decisions more ethical, problems of
accountability arise due to the fact that the use of these technologies is frequently opaque and
due to the fact that decisions about lethal force are increasingly delegated to algorithms. The
technology also has the disadvantage of raising the propensity of conflict escalation in given
durations through having no standing to deter such incidents, in addition to easy startup of
conflict. It will always be possible to debate the degree of autonomy that AI and autonomous
systems should provide to either reinforce or substitute human warfighters which in turn means
that the OD may contribute to the diffusion of power, promote ‗othering‘ measures, and change
the balance of power. There is also unpredictability regarding its long-term impact on the
stability of the world and certain areas, thus, it becomes an issue that requires the management
and a cooperation of the countries. In the next years, as it is observed in the critics, the
application of improvements in artificial intelligence and robotics are almost inevitably
expecting to increase in militaries as it underlying changes in the fields that shaped wars and
lives.
Revived superpowers rivalry and its impact on world wars
Due to aggressive and competitive postures demonstrated by the United States, China and
Russia in the early 2020s and the revived superpowers rivalry, there is concern on how new
conflicts might emerge and future wars might transpire because of poor crisis management; the
Ukraine war has brought involvement by NATO and threats of nuclear use by Russia which has
led to worst relations between Russia and the West since Cold War era, superimposed by
escalating Sino-American So far there has been no direct confrontation, however, the probability
of conflict increases, primarily due to the new areas such as cyber, space, and artificial
intelligence where new opportunities for a clash emerge; a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure
that it is impossible to assign with certainty, a space accident that escalates, AI weapons making
decisions on the use of force at a speed that is indecipherable, etc. Sanctions between the three
superpowers have also further intensified resulting to economic decoupling, which affects
globalization and isolates the world into two polar opposite camps, identical to the bipolarity of
Cold War; middle powers are being forced to make sides rather than have positive relations with
all. But while China has grown increasingly entwined with the world economy, and especially
America, it is less likely to risk a complete break as both would have an interest in not
eliminating the economic relations which will continue to exist in some form a ―Cold Peace‖ of
constant antagonism, sanctions and proxy wars short of direct hostilities. Also, the high human
cost of contemporary great power war brought by advanced technologies like the precision-
guided munitions, hypersonic delivery, cyber-attacks on civilians may subdue the escalatory
actions. However, given that these three global heavyweights have much to lose in terms of
prestige, credibility and influence, the stakes could again run out of control with unexpected
events or misunderstandings. Whether the tensions will continue to be managed and controlled
by allies and middle powers or whether the situation will escalate and blow up into an actual
superpower conflict in the following years will be a defining factor in whether the Cold Peace
will remain a cold peace or turn hot.
Conclusion
Expanded use of technology and non-state actors in conflict processes
The expanded use of technology and non-state actors in conflict processes have
influenced the conflict processes in the world from the period of the Second World War to the
present period; a trend which is best captured by the fact that a new warfare strategy in which
non state actors can blunt the superiority of state actors for periods of time by using what is
referred to as asymmetrical warfare tactics have become common; for instance, non-state
militant actors like Hezbollah and Hamas have used technologies such as improvised explosive
devices, rockets and Similarly, the increased availability of small arms and light weapons all
around the world has equally allowed all forms of non-state actors from drug cartels to ethnic
insurgent groups to pose better threats to state authorities, with the lightly armed fighters in the
last few decades proving to be a tough nut to crack for national armies in countries like Syria,
Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Third, mass telecommunications enabled
non-state actors with dispersed geographical location to synchronize and improve their
operations in a cooperative way that was previously impossible, illustrated by the increase of
transnational radical Islamist terrorism with political and religious agendas from Southeast Asia
to North America using internet-based indoctrination and fundraising networks in substitute to a
central command and control.
Intractable challenge of dealing with the sources of conflicts for sustainable peace
The root cause of conflicts in resolving matters for sustainable peace is a difficult
experiment since it entails addressing the source of conflicts for sustainable peace, which
involves economic and social, human rights, resource access, and ideologies that cannot be
handled in a straightforward manner. Whereas the major wars erupted in 1940s and 1950s
including the WWII and the Korean War resulting from expansionist foreign polities of major
powers, the nature of conflict has been different since the 1960s were most of the conflicts were
internal insurgencies formed by socioeconomic injustices or calls for self-determination by
ethnically or religiously motivated groups as witnessed in the case of Northern Ireland. While the
incidence of inter-state wars reduced after the Cold War, civil wars continued in Africa and Asia
for example and the use of terrorism became a new tactic among non-state actors globally. If one
considers the overall global trends in the defense expenditure and battle deaths since 1991,
however, attaining sustainable peace is not easy as economic factors, political instability and
radicalism are still fuelling intrastate conflicts. Solving these root causes is not only about
stopping violence and providing temporary peace in countries with opposing factions but
ongoing and protracted processes of rebuilding and finding justice and political solutions to
systemic issues of injustice, inequity or discrimination and marginalization; and finding ways to
build more democratic, inclusive societies; These are enduring processes, and present ongoing
challenges for the international community.
