Why Are Wars Increasingly Difficult to End?

The number of armed conflicts has increased in recent years, and researchers have warned that many wars are lasting longer and have become more difficult to end. We asked five experts if the 21st‑century trend of more intractable wars is continuing, and if so, why.

Read more below.

Dafna H. Rand Senior Fellow at Brookings Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State

Wars are not ending definitively in the 21st century, and the United States is likely to see the same pattern in Iran. Whereas peace settlements or victory by one side was once the culmination of war, today the more difficult scenarios are on‑again, off‑again pauses in fighting or frozen conflicts.

Gideon Rose Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Lecturer in Discipline at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

In recent generations, wars have tended to last longer and become harder to end decisively. There are five main reasons: greater regional and global economic and political interdependence, which draws in additional external actors who help losing belligerents stay in the game; reduced U.S. leverage over adversaries; difficulty aligning political objectives and defining what victory means; waning domestic support as the conflict drags on; and diverging strategic interests between Washington and the parties involved.

Source link