This article was originally published in “Understanding Our Timing” n°3

Frédéric Ramel, Full Professor, is a researcher at the Centre de recherches internationales (Centre for International Research [CERI]). 

At the very beginning of the post-Cold War era, the concept of ‘new wars’ came into vogue, primarily to describe the armed conflicts taking place in the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. The focus on civil wars underscored the destatisation of warfare and the supposed inadequacy of the model developed in the nineteenth century by Clausewitz to explain them (see box): because of the privatisation of the means of violence and the mobilisation of ethnic identities by warlords, war was no longer seen as the ‘continuation of politics by other means’. 
The attacks of 11 September 2001 marked the beginning of a period of ‘global wars on terror’, Afghanistan and Iraq being the most emblematic. Both were expeditionary and counter-insurgency wars orchestrated by Western powers. They demonstrated the limits of the use of force to change political regimes. During this same phase, the commitment to protect civilians waned, culminating in the 2011 intervention in Libya. Despite calls not to go beyond the mandate defined by the Security Council, it led to regime change. Today, the spectre of a new high-intensity war between the major powers looms. The idea of the obsolescence of major war between states is dwindling, giving way to the ‘return of geopolitics’, in an international system shaped by increasing social and economic inequalities, environmental degradation and the development of disruptive technologies. In such a configuration, the famous apocalypse clock, published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1947, moved even closer to midnight in January 2025: 89 seconds to go. Among the interpretations of contemporary conflict, the ‘Thucydides’ trap’ thesis advanced in 2010 by the American political scientist Graham Allison, is regularly invoked. Drawing inspiration from Thucydides and his account of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens in the fifth century BC, Allison believes that the United States' concern about China's growing military power is fuelling the possibility of war between the two countries. This interpretation, which foregrounds the idea of a growing bipolarisation in the international system, merits discussion, because conflict in the twenty-first century cannot be reduced to simply the balance of power between the two biggest arms-spending powers.

Fragmentation of motives, actors and forms of warfare

Major wars between states are similar to phases of change in the international system in the quest for hegemony. The latter is understood as the monopolisation of material military and economic forces between two powers, as one aspires to dethrone the other. The Peloponnesian War, as described by Thucydides, offers a reference model for conflict that is limited to a military confrontation between great powers. However, such an interpretation applied to the contemporary period has three limitations. First, in terms of method, the over-reliance on figures is a pitfall. This is evident when describing the upward trajectory of China's defence budgets, as its nuclear arsenal has doubled since 2010 (600 nuclear warheads as of March 2025 according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists). More broadly, it appears in the statistical links commonly established between the rise in power of a state and the outbreak of war. Graham Allison notes that ‘in 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed’, suggesting an almost mechanical relationship between an increase in power and a war for hegemony. In other words, the view tends towards alarmism, neglecting the local context and singularity of the configurations in which the players evolve. It also underestimates other determining factors in the outbreak or avoidance of war, such as de-escalation and strategic restraint i.e. the limited use of force to preserve capabilities in the face of a risk of escalation.
Second, by referring to Thucydides' trap, Allison views contemporary war events through the exclusive prism of Sino-American bipolarisation, thus assuming the existence of two systems of alliances facing each other. The strategic reality is much more fluid, with many emerging powers refusing to commit to either of the two camps, such as India, which is cultivating ‘multi-alignment’, and Indonesia, which is advocating for ‘flexible commitment’.
Third, this interpretation exclusively focuses on future high-intensity warfare between industrialised states. This parsimony obscures other forms of conflict, such as civil wars and internationalised intra-state conflicts (those in which the belligerents are supported by foreign actors). Yet the latter are the most numerous, totalling 252 compared with 58 inter-state wars, according to data from the 2023 Conflict Barometer of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research. The annual number of victims can exceed 10,000, as in      the civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan in 2023. These other forms of conflict fall outside the classic security dilemma because they are rooted in a number of complex factors, including the social and economic conditions in which people live.

Extending the scope of war

One of the central characteristics of contemporary conflict lies in the multiplication of operations below the threshold of conventional warfare, particularly in the global commons of the high seas, outer space and cyberspace (see pages 80-82). Accessible to all but owned by none, these commons are essential links in the modus operandi of modern societies, enabling the flow of people, goods and information across national borders. Actions that fall short of regular armed conflict occur within these spaces, in a wide variety of operations ranging from the manipulation of information on social media to cyber-attacks and anti-satellite missile tests, producing considerable space debris. A tension is emerging between res communes (common things that cannot be appropriated, i.e. that nobody can own) and res nullius (things without a master or owner, but that can be appropriated by private individuals or even groups). However, there is a risk of confusing the two concepts through the uncontrolled appropriation of these resources or part of these global commons, including by private players, as illustrated by Elon Musk's statements about his space projects. This type of extension has led to the development of doctrines aimed at combining conventional and unconventional means of action as hybrid warfare, or next-generation warfare. An example is the Gerasimov Doctrine, named after the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Officially adopted by Russia in 2014, it proposes linking precision strikes deep in enemy territory with the use of digital tools such as artificial intelligence, drones and, more broadly, cyber warfare.
The extension of the domain of war does not end with global commons. It also manifests itself in clandestine operations, psychological influence and targeted assassinations. These modes of action are not the sole preserve of states; they also emanate from entrepreneurs of anger or violence who operate across national borders, seeking to advance a political project, such as the creation of a new state entity (Islamic State, Boko Haram, etc.), or to harm Western interests wherever they may be (Al Qaeda). The major consequence of their actions is to blur the distinction between situations of war and peace – a trend already identified during the Cold War by the French General and military strategist, André Beaufre, an ardent defender of nuclear deterrence, who said that ‘true war and true peace [were] perhaps dead together’. If war is no longer declared, how can we expect to find common ground with the enemy and therefore make peace? This risk of confusion was denounced in his time by the philosopher Raymond Aron, who has always pushed back against Beaufre’s interpretation, since it exposes societies to a form of continual war.

Unfavourable conditions for strategic restraint

There are other worrying trends at work and ultimately their effect is to impact strategic restraint. Some conflicts are embedded in, and characterised by, a refusal of the players to accept each other, easily leading to escalation, which can be all the more devastating if religious beliefs are invoked. The war between Hamas and Israel since the massacres of 7 October 2023 is a tragic case in point. When a logic of divine inspiration is activated, we are not far removed from cosmic wars which, according to Mark Juergensmeyer, ‘evoke images of great legendary battles of the past, and are linked to metaphysical conflicts between good and evil’. This perspective is close to René Girard's interpretation of Clausewitz's thought as an empirical and historical shift towards absolute war. This form of war, which the Prussian general did not envision occurring in reality, is characterised by an escalation to the extremes with the goal of exterminating the enemy, not just weakening his will.
In addition to the development of armed conflicts with a religious dimension likely to create radicalisation, two conditions that are unfavourable to strategic restraint are emerging at the international level. The first is the growing heterogeneity of values that goes beyond the divide between democracies and authoritarian regimes. One of its sources lies in criticism of the West and post-colonial denunciations. Countries such as China, Russia and Turkey are developing narratives in which they promote themselves as ‘civilisation states’, rejecting the notion of Western states whereby the liberal international order is the only possible aspiration. These discourses, far  removed from      the post-1945 spirit towards which newly independent states were converging, challenge the quest for universality.  
The heterogeneity of values is detrimental to the multilateral spirit, which has itself been altered by the expansionist and neo-sovereignist policies of the new United States administration led by President Trump since January 2025. The erosion of multilateralism favours the authority of force over that of law and justice in the international system. This weakening varies depending on the context and the intergovernmental organisations involved. However, it is evident in certain regions of the world that previously seemed unaffected. For example, the Antarctic Treaty system, signed in 1959, has long been considered a model of multilateral and scientific cooperation, based on the recognition of an area to be protected. Climate change, by providing access to the fishery resources of the polar ocean and offering the opportunity to carry out technological – especially digital – experiments in extreme conditions, is whetting new appetites. This is the case not only for certain      states with claims,  such as Australia, but also for other players such as China, which defines itself as a polar power, not to mention the situation in the Arctic, where the United States now covets Greenland and Canada.
The second unfavourable condition for strategic restraint  is linked to the acceleration of the world catalysed by modern technologies. This trend is reflected in the sophistication of weapons and in the appeal of the concept of the augmented soldier. In addition to vertical nuclear proliferation (modernisation of arsenals), as opposed to horizontal proliferation (the number of States possessing nuclear arms), new weapons are being developed that combine speed and stealth, from hypersonic ballistic missiles to autonomous lethal weapons (robot killers). Paradoxically, the arms race could slow us down, as it could result in paralysis of the enemy rather than the outbreak of open conflict. Nevertheless, this strategic restraint remains conditional on the tactical posture of the states that have such weapons and, more specifically, the nationalist stance that some pursue in their foreign policy.      
Could strategic restraint find a new ally in the rise of planetary awareness? A growing number of armies are taking their environmental footprint into account, even though the greening of military policies is by definition limited. The environmental impact of war is colossal, including upstream, when damage is intentionally caused to nature, as illustrated by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine in June 2023, which resulted in the release of sediments laden with heavy metals. These actions are being carried out in defiance of Articles 35 and 55 of the 1977 Additional Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use of the environment as a weapon. ‘Global’ views of the world based on the exploitation of existing natural resources seem to prevail over ‘planetary’ views, characterised by a desire to maintain the world's habitability and to protect living organisms in the broadest sense. At a time when several terrestrial boundaries have already been breached, is it still possible to think about war without taking this dimension into account? 

Frédéric Ramel, Full Professor, is a researcher at the Centre de recherches internationales (Centre for International Research
[CERI]). Director of the Department of Political Science at Sciences Po from 2016 to 2022, he was also the first scientific director of the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM) from 2009 to 2013 and
has published several books on international relations, including Espace Mondial [World Space], with Aghiad Ghanem (Presses de Sciences Po, 2024).

References

• Allison, G. 2015. ‘The Thucydides Trap. Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?’, The Atlantic, 24 September 2015.
• Beaumais, L., Lambert, I., Lindemann, T., Makki, S., Ramel, F. and Sangar, E. (eds), 2025. Quantifying International Conflicts. Data on War or Data for War, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan.
• Juergensmeyer, M. 2017. Cosmic War, Berkeley: University of California Press. 
• Girard, R. 2011. Achever Clausewitz, Paris: Flammarion.
• Lindemann, T. 2023. Theorising Danger or Dangerous Theories? Positivist Data and the Making of the China Threat’, Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences, 4 (2), 2023, p. 1-21.
• Waskelar S. 2023. Entre guerre et paix. Histoire et politique des conflits dans le monde, Paris: CNRS Editions.