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  1. The Waning of Major War

The Waning of Major War

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most recent invasion of Ukraine undermines the popular notion that large-scale, interstate wars have become passé. Some pundits have argued the declining occurrence of major wars since World War II is evidence that armed conflict itself is disappearing altogether.2 While few scholars seem willing to go to that extreme, they do offer six explanations (discussed below) for what on the surface appears to be a marked decline in the frequency of large-scale conflicts.3 But the interesting implication for strategic studies is half of these explanations functioned as accelerants rather than as deterrents for Putin’s act of aggression against Ukraine.

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. According to this explanation, major wars have declined in number due to the risk such wars pose of nuclear escalation, which could well lead to unparalleled devastation if not mutual annihilation. Instead, states have opted to pursue limited conflicts that do not present existential threats to other regimes or to compete within the so-called gray zone, the realm of aggression short of war. As some sources have noted, however, Putin chose to launch large-scale operations against Ukraine precisely because his previous invasions led only to “frozen conflicts” in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts and his gray-zone activities have not yielded the results he desired.4

The spread of democracies and democratic values. This explanation suggests the decline of major wars has occurred because the number of democracies worldwide is increasing, and democracies purportedly do not go to war with

2. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); and for a critique, see Bear F. Braumoeller, Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

3. For a summary of the main arguments, see Raimo Väyrynen, ed., The Waning of Major War: Theories and Debates (New York: Routledge, 2006).

4. Michael Kofman and Ryan Evans, “Interpreting the First Few Days of the Russo-Ukrainian War,” War on the Rocks (website), podcast, 25:07, February 28, 2022; and on frozen conflicts, see Erik J. Grossman, “Russia’s Frozen Conflicts and the Donbas,” Parameters 48, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 51–62.

one another.5 Yet, as multiple accounts have indicated, Putin perceived Ukraine’s movement toward a fully democratic and representative government as a threat to his style of autocratic rule. Thus, he opted to arrest that progress with military force. In this case, therefore, the spread of democracy and democratic values increased, rather than decreased, the likelihood of a major war. Given the fact that autocratic regimes frequently see democracies as threats, the spread of democracy itself appears likely to cause more wars before it can be said to cause fewer of them.

The growth of multilateral institutions. Multilateral institutions, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), and the European Union (EU), are believed to have reduced both the number and scale of armed conflicts by increasing security more collectively and by creating “new normative standards, communication channels, and institutional practices.”6 These new alternatives and customs have provided states with opportunities to enhance their security and to channel their competitiveness in less belligerent ways. Unfortunately, Putin saw at least one of those multilateral organizations, namely NATO, as a threat to his security. In 1946, George Kennan described the Russian mind as perennially suspicious and insecure, a characterization we may hope will one day be overcome by events.7 But that day is not yet here. In terms familiar to students of Thomas Schelling, even an alliance built merely to deter must, by definition, be intimidating.8

Increasing economic integration. According to this explanation, governments refrain from choosing armed conflict to settle their grievances because war in general and interstate war in particular cause a high degree of economic disruption. Armed conflict clearly benefits some sectors of the global defense industry; however, it disrupts commerce and financial markets, driving up prices and increasing other costs even for parties not directly involved in the conflict. Even though the Russian economy is relatively small compared to many Western economies, the sanctions imposed on it by the West have started a ripple effect that some experts warn might halt globalization and separate the world’s economy into three spheres: a Chinese-led one, a US-led one, and a European one divided between the other two.9 Whether or not the effects extend that far, fears over the negative impact a major war might have on an integrated global economy are at least partially founded, as second- and third-order economic

5. Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

6. Väyrynen, Waning of Major War, 19.

7. X [George F. Kennan], “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947): 566–82.

8. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 174–77.

9. Adam S. Posen, “The End of Globalization? What Russia’s War in Ukraine Means for the World Economy,” Foreign Affairs (website), March 17, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2022-03-17/end-globalization.

effects are notoriously difficult to predict. For his part, Putin gambled in two ways: that Russian financial institutions would find sufficient workarounds to remain effective and that the campaign in Ukraine would conclude before sanctions could take full effect. On the first gamble he was correct; however, it remains to be seen how much longer the Russian economy, the 11th largest in the world with a GDP of $1.70 trillion in 2019, can endure such pressures as the conflict becomes more protracted.10

The influence of international law and the law of armed conflict. This rationale suggests the influence of international law and the law of armed conflict have restricted the reasons states may legally go to war, and how they may wage it. To be sure, to have legal restraints on the conduct of war is useful. But for this explanation to be persuasive, prosecutions of war criminals must occur in a timely fashion.11 Historically, that has not been the case. For example, “It took two decades for the Nazi Adolf Eichmann to be called to account. It was two and-a-half decades for former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, and four decades for Kang Kek Iew, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan.”12 Clearly, the existence of the International Criminal Court and the promise of postconflict investigations into possible war crimes neither dissuaded Putin from invading Ukraine, nor from allowing his troops to attack non-military targets. In fact, attacking noncombatants appears to be one of the Russian army’s primary tactics.

The spread of anti-war norms. This explanation says the expansion of anti-war norms has made it much more difficult to “sell” a contemporary populace on the need to participate in an armed conflict. To be sure, anti-war norms have ebbed and flowed throughout modern history. Nonetheless, they represent an important measure of national will (or international will in some cases). They also have a critical downside in that aggressors can leverage such attitudes to bully states into policies of appeasement. Putin has successfully employed that tactic throughout much of his presidency. Fortunately, the situation reversed itself after his invasion of Ukraine. Most of the free world, with the assistance of a brilliant Ukrainian information campaign, bonded emotionally with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people and came to see the Russian state as having brutally victimized its peace-loving neighbor.

10. “Russia GDP 1998–2022, Macrotrends (website), n.d., https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS /russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product.

11. Oona A. Hathaway, “International Law Goes to War in Ukraine: The Legal Pushback to Russia’s Invasion,” Foreign Affairs (website), March 15, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-03-15/international-law-goes-war-ukraine; and Davida E. Kellogg, “Jus Post Bellum: The Importance of War Crimes Trials,” Parameters 32, no. 3 (Autumn 2002), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol32 /iss3/8/.

12. Michael Byers, “Justice Delayed: Why International Law Still Matters,” Foreign Affairs (website), September 22, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2016-09-22/justice-delayed.

In theory, all six explanations offer plausible reasons for the alleged decline of major conflicts since World War II. In practice, however, none dissuaded Putin from opting to launch a major assault against Ukraine. Indeed, of the six explanations, the first three functioned more as accelerants or enablers of Putin’s plans for war rather than as decelerants. The fourth, economic integration, is in some ways neutral: it affects aggressors, defenders, and nonaligned parties alike, though certainly not equally. On the one hand, it demonstrates why sanctions and economic embargoes have become weapons of first resort in the modern era, at least for pro-Western democracies with robust economies. On the other hand, these measures require time and the cooperation of other parties to be effective, and such cooperation cannot be assumed regardless of the severity of the case.

Members of the international community have already begun to experience adverse effects from the sanctions and embargoes imposed on Russia, turning the process of economic punishment into a war of attrition and exhaustion in which all sides must endure some costs. Perhaps not surprisingly, the influence of international law and the law of armed conflict neither dissuaded Putin nor his top leaders. But perhaps they offer hope of exacting some form of legal justice in the future that might influence other actors. The last explanation, the spread of anti-war norms, clearly offers aggressors advantages during peacetime but quickly works against them in wartime. Anti-war sentiments transformed almost overnight into antipathy for the Russians and sympathy for the Ukrainians. Before the invasion, Putin’s bullying tactics gave him a distinct advantage in dealing with heads of state who wanted to avoid war. But he lost that edge once the conflict started and then antipathy grew which led to a host of cultural sanctions, such as barring Russian athletes from competing in international events.

But this list is also instructive for what it omits. Oddly, a seventh potential explanation for the low incidence of interstate wars since 1945 is the relative balance of military power, especially regionally. Heads of state might indeed fear nuclear escalation and may have avoided armed conflict as a result, but they also might have been deterred by the fact that they possess little in the way of a decisive military advantage over their rivals. This contemporary “balance of power” is not the “balance of nuclear terror” that existed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. But it might be as effective, and it might be one reason states have decided to compete within the “gray zone,” below the threshold of war, rather than above it. Obviously, as Putin’s current war in Ukraine proves, miscalculation is always possible, and deterrence, like any strategy, is only as stable as the pace of technological innovation permits. Yet something should be said for the possibility some would-be aggressors have been soberly calculating their odds of succeeding militarily, and have decided not to take the risk.

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