War Has Become Pointless

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately, and I’m beginning to wonder if war in today’s world is increasingly pointless. I say that with considerable trepidation, because past predictions that war was increasingly costly and likely to become less frequent have not fared well. In 1849, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “War is on its last legs, and universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism.” Before World War I, a Polish banker named Jean de Bloch argued that military technology had made war too dangerous, and that it was becoming impossible “except at the price of suicide.”

In a similar vein, Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion, first published in 1909, warned that interdependence meant that the costs of great power war would exceed any possible benefits. More recently, scholars such as John Mueller and Steven Pinker have each argued that war was becoming obsolescent, if not obsolete, only to see new conflicts erupt on a scale they did not expect. As the late military historian Michael Howard quipped in his review of Mueller’s book Retreat from Doomsday, a prudent man reading that war is dying out “will check that his air raid shelter is in good repair.”

So I’m not going to tell you that war is disappearing. It’s not. It’s just becoming increasingly pointless. Consider the recent historical record.

The United States has fought a lot of wars since World War II, and none of them were fought against a genuine peer competitor or even another great power. Instead, the United States has gone up against a bunch of weak states, most of whom lacked powerful allies. Yet with the exception of the first Gulf War in 1991 and the trivial invasion of mighty Grenada in 1983, its track record is unimpressive. The Korean War was a draw, and Vietnam was a clear defeat. The Gulf War was a victory, in good part because the United States didn’t start it and had lots of allied support, and because President George H. W. Bush had the good sense to stick to a limited set of political objectives (that is, getting Iraq out of Kuwait and dismantling much of its military power). The U.S. intervention in Somalia ended with a humiliating withdrawal; the Kosovo War was essentially a draw; and what are now known as the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan were costly defeats. Donald Trump’s foolish assault on Iran is a strategic disaster, which supporters are trying desperately (and unconvincingly) to deny.

Instead of making the United States more secure or more prosperous, almost all of these wars left the country worse off than it would have been had it never fought them. You could add to the list Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s murderous campaign against alleged drug smugglers from Latin America, which is costing billions of dollars, killing innocent people, violating international law, and having little or no effect on the supply of illegal drugs. In a word: These wars are pointless.

What about the former Soviet Union, or today’s Russia? Invading Afghanistan in 1979 was a major misstep that exacerbated Soviet economic problems and made its eventual collapse more likely. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has become an equally costly quagmire, and all Vladimir Putin has to show after four years of war and hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded is about 20 percent of Ukraine’s original territory. Russia may have launched the war primarily to keep Ukraine from gravitating toward the West, but Putin clearly misjudged his army’s abilities, the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance, and Kyiv’s ability to gain support from others. Even if the war arose in part from genuine Russian security concerns, it is looking increasingly pointless now. And let’s not forget that Russia’s efforts to prop up the Assad regime in Syria ultimately failed—and its support for various African autocrats isn’t looking like such a great deal these days either.

Or take Israel, whose many tactical victories never seem to deliver lasting strategic benefits. The genocide in Gaza hasn’t eliminated Hamas, and the umpteenth round of bombing and the reoccupation of southern Lebanon hasn’t removed Hezbollah. Instead of making it more secure, Israel’s belief that it can bomb its way to victory is turning it into a pariah state and threatening its special relationship with the United States. Along with the continued mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel’s addiction to war is blocking normalization with most of Israel’s neighbors, a development that would do far more for its long-term future than endless wars against them. (I’d make similar claims about Hamas, by the way, whose murderous assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was also a war crime and did nothing to advance the goal of an independent Palestinian state.)

Everywhere one looks, in fact, one sees more examples of pointless conflicts. Saddam Hussein started two wars—one by invading Iran and another when he seized Kuwait in 1990—and both were utter failures. The factions in the Sudanese and Libyan civil wars have succeeded only in hurting their own countries; it will be a pyrrhic victory for whichever sides ultimately come out on top. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen achieved nothing but tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and the border clashes that India and Pakistan occasionally indulge in are no more successful or decisive. Don’t get me started about the long-running Congo wars.

Meanwhile, who’s doing well? China, because it has stayed out of all these wars and concentrated on building power at home, pursuing scientific and technological dominance, and building global influence through trade, investment, diplomatic engagement at multiple forums, and the provision of green technologies. As the United States did through most of the 19th century, remaining aloof while the other major powers punch themselves out in ruinous wars turns out to be a smart strategy.

What’s going on here? Why is it hard to find wars that meet Clausewitz’s criterion, where the initiator set out a clear political objective and was able to achieve it at a reasonable cost? I can think of at least four possible reasons.

First, nuclear weapons. For the major powers (and a few others), the possession of nuclear weapons places a clear limit on what any other country can do to them. Nuclear weapons aren’t much good for fighting wars, but they are very good at deterring other states from trying to conquer you. Yes, states have sometimes attacked a nuclear-armed country (Egypt and Syria went after Israel in October 1973, and India and Pakistan have had some serious border clashes) but in these cases the initiators had only limited aims and did not expect or try to conquer their opponent. The shadow of nuclear weapons rules out decisive victories and the political objectives of the war must perforce be limited. If war can achieve only limited goals, however, it also limits the costs a state is willing to expend to achieve them.

Second, the difficulty of achieving decisive political objectives is magnified by the power of modern nationalism, which encourages societies to fight like tigers against a foreign aggressor. Americans found this out in Vietnam, promptly forgot the lesson, and had to be reminded of it again in Iraq and Afghanistan. Putin made a similar mistake in Ukraine. Israeli Zionists and Palestinian nationalists have both underestimated the tenacity of the other side’s national identity and willingness to fight to preserve their own community, which is one reason why that conflict has persisted without a final resolution.

Third, war is increasingly pointless because globalization and interdependence make it possible for states to become richer without expanding. The United States doesn’t need to control an area like Greenland to benefit from whatever assets exist there: U.S. firms can invest if there are any genuine opportunities or Americans can trade with any foreign companies that do so instead. And as Andrew Coe and Jonathan Markowitz have shown, the economic benefits of conquering even highly valuable territory (like a rich oil field) are relatively small for states that already have large and diverse economies. To take an extreme case, were China to incorporate Taiwan seamlessly, it would add only 5 percent to China’s overall GDP—not insignificant, but by itself not a game changer. And Taiwan is already a highly developed economy. The calculation is different for smaller economies, but even for them, becoming richer through internal development is a far better bet than seizing territory for economic gain.

Please note: I am not suggesting that economic interdependence has made war impossible, or denying that control over key geographic chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz gives a few states some valuable leverage. I’m merely pointing out it is generally easier for states to get what they want through trade than through war. Moreover, the ability of others to “weaponize interdependence” can increase the costs of fighting and make it harder for all states—including the great powers—to achieve ambitious political goals. States will still go to war, but that doesn’t mean doing so is wise.

And then there’s technology and its impact on the modern battlefield. Those dazzled by the technological wizardry of an F-35 or the ability of the United States, Israel, and a few others to conduct complicated combined arms operations have failed to recognize that warfare has been slowly shifting in favor of local defenders, even when facing seemingly superior foes. The United States had command of the air, the ability to survey complex battle spaces in real time, and overwhelming superiority in firepower in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and it still lost. Russia’s military significantly outnumbers Ukraine and has improved its military performance considerably since 2022, yet it still suffers massive losses for every square kilometer gained.

This trend is not due solely to the advent of cheap but increasingly sophisticated drones (though they are obviously important), it is also due to the spread of small arms, improved targeting and surveillance, the development of improvised explosive devices, and the use of suicide bombers, which have made it harder to seize or hold hostile territory. Put differently, these developments have shrunk the size of the global commons that the United States used to dominate and expanded what MIT’s Barry Posen termed the “contested zone,” where weaker adversaries could still impose serious costs on stronger powers. The U.S. Navy is still a formidable fighting force, but there’s a reason it isn’t steaming around freely inside the Persian Gulf these days. When combined with powerful national sentiments, these developments in warfare have made it harder to coerce foreign governments or subdue restive populations.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying states can stop worrying about their security and start beating their swords into plowshares. After all, it is the preparations that some have made to defend themselves that make it harder for others to achieve gains commensurate with the costs. In other words, maintaining a favorable balance of power and a credible deterrent is still important. But we need to recognize what this means: Self-defense is getting easier and aggressive wars are increasingly pointless. They haven’t worked for the United States, or for anybody else. Keep that in mind the next time some clever think tanker, lobbyist, or self-serving foreign leader tells you that some other country is both a mortal danger that must be stopped immediately and a fragile house of cards that will be easy to topple. They’re wrong.