War has been defined in various ways. For present purposes, we can define was as sustained intergroup violence in which state military forces participate on at least one side or on both sides in the case of interstate war and, generally, on only one side in the case of civil war. . In a world of standing military forces, it’s hard to say exactly where peace ends and war begins. A military battle that is not sustained over time may or may not be considered a war. The brief border clashes between China and the Soviet Union in March and July 1969, for example, involved several small battles at points along the border, in which hundreds of people were killed. Equally ambiguous is a long-term violent struggle involving irregular forces, as in Northern Ireland. There, uniformed British military forces fought a sustained violent struggle with a non-state army, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), until a ceasefire that has held on and off since 1995.
Thus, many different activities are covered by the general term war. Consequently, it is not easy to say how many wars there are in the world at the moment. Wars are very diverse. Various types of war tend to arise from different situations and play different types of roles in the negotiation of conflicts. Starting from the largest wars, we can distinguish the following main categories.
The Hegemonic War is a war for control of the entire world order: the rules of the international system as a whole, including the role of world hegemony. This kind of war is also known as global war, world war, general war, or systemic war. The last hegemonic war was World War II.
Total war is the war of one state waged to conquer and occupy another. The objective is to reach the capital city and force the surrender of the government, which can then be replaced by one of the victor’s choice. The 2003 Iraq war is a classic case. Napoleonic Wars, which introduced large-scale conscription and oriented the entire French international economy towards the war effort. In total war, the entire society mobilized for the fight, the entire society of the enemy is considered a legitimate target.
Limited Warfare includes military actions carried out to achieve some objective other than the surrender and occupation of the enemy. For example, the United States led the war against Iraq in 1991 and recaptured the territory of Kuwait, but it did not go to Baghdad to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein. Many border wars have this character; after occupying the land it wants, a state can stand still and defend its gains.
The Civil War refers to the war between factions within a state that try to create or prevent a new government for the entire state or some territorial part of it. The American Civil War of the 1860s is a good example of a secessionist civil war.
Guerrilla warfare, which includes certain types of civil war, is war without front lines. Irregular forces operate in the midst of civilian populations and are often hidden or protected by them. The purpose is not to directly confront an enemy army, but to harass and punish it in order to gradually limit its operation and effectively free the territory from its control.
In short, wars have been going on constantly between states and within states since the beginning of history itself. It will remain until the world exists due to the various desires of individuals and also state actors.
