War

War is an intense armed conflict^[a] between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias.^[2] It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general.^[3] Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties.

This article is about war in general. For other uses, see War (disambiguation) and Warring (disambiguation).

While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature,^[4] others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic, or ecological circumstances.^[5]

is the methods used in conflicts between belligerents of drastically different levels of military capability or size.^[24]

Asymmetric warfare

or germ warfare, is the use of biological infectious agents or toxins such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi against people, plants, or animals. This can be conducted through sophisticated technologies, like cluster munitions,^[25] or with rudimentary techniques like catapulting an infected corpse behind enemy lines,^[26] and can include weaponized or non-weaponized pathogens.

Biological warfare

involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a chemical weapon was principally used during World War I, and resulted in over a million estimated casualties, including more than 100,000 civilians.^[27]

Chemical warfare

is an intense international rivalry without direct military conflict, but with a sustained threat of it, including high levels of military preparations, expenditures, and development, and may involve active conflicts by indirect means, such as economic warfare, political warfare, covert operations, espionage, cyberwarfare, or proxy wars.

Cold warfare

is a form of warfare between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment.

Conventional warfare

involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's information systems.

Cyberwarfare

is a rebellion against authority, when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents (lawful combatants). An insurgency can be fought via counterinsurgency, and may also be opposed by measures to protect the population, and by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime.

Insurgency

is the application of destructive force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers and networks that support the four critical infrastructures (the power grid, communications, financial, and transportation).^[28]

Information warfare

is warfare in which nuclear weapons are the primary, or a major, method of achieving capitulation.

Nuclear warfare

is warfare by any means possible, disregarding the laws of war, placing no limits on legitimate military targets, using weapons and tactics resulting in significant civilian casualties, or demanding a war effort requiring significant sacrifices by the friendly civilian population.

Total war

the opposite of conventional warfare, is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict.

Unconventional warfare

Tangible war aims may involve (for example) the acquisition of territory (as in the German goal of in the first half of the 20th century) or the recognition of economic concessions (as in the Anglo-Dutch Wars).

Lebensraum

Intangible war aims – like the accumulation of credibility or reputation – may have more tangible expression ("conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power").^[32]

[31]

Issue indivisibilities

Incentives to misrepresent or

information asymmetry

Commitment problems

[120]

Pauses

During a war, brief pauses of violence may be called for, and further agreed to – ceasefire, temporary cessation, humanitarian pauses and corridors, days of tranquility, de-confliction arrangements.^[141] There are a number of disadvantages, obstacles and hesitations against implementing such pauses such as a humanitarian corridor.^[142]^[143] Pauses in conflict can also be ill-advised, for reasons such as "delay of defeat" and the "weakening of credibility".^[144] Natural causes for a pause may include events such as the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.^[145]^[146]

Outline of war

Grey-zone (international relations)

An Interactive map of all the battles fought around the world in the last 4,000 years

on Histropedia

War