The Changing Contours of the Modern War

The world once was a tug-of-war between two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. It then became a solo venture by the United States resulting in a unipolar order. Today, it is chaotic and anarchic with multiple actors vying for influence, assertion and power.

This multipolar world order does not have clear dichotomies. Conflict isn’t simply about guns, missiles and bullets but also about narratives, culture, economics and algorithms.

The rupture of the world order is more than the simple redistribution of power but reflects a deeper transformation of the nature of conflict. War is a highly political phenomenon, so much more than simply what states do.

It is a fragmented landscape of power across institutions, domains and actors. The gun is as important as micro-fibre cables, cash-flows and algorithms. War is shaped by domestic turbulence, politicking, struggles over identities, culture and decentralised power cores as it is by AK-47s or an M60. Power today is diffused, multi-dimensional, and often wielded by actors beyond the state, requiring a fundamental rethinking of both strategy and governance.

Why has the world which was once averse to war seeing so many active conflicts today? Who are the primary actors involved in these conflicts? Are the threats that lead to conflict different from what they used to be or are they the same? Are states still the sovereign actors involved in war? And most importantly what implications does this have for power?

Understanding Power Today

Power today can be imagined broadly as a triangle – with each end representing hard, soft and smart power. Hard power is the military strength of a country and soft power - the ability to persuade others to work in their interest with the help of culture, values, diplomacy and ideology. Smart power integrates both hard power and soft power dependant on the audiences and circumstances in which a country finds itself. Modern conflict is a manifestation of all these forces playing out among different actors.

The Rise of Sharp Power

There a fourth node of power as well – sharp power. Sharp power in the application of corrosive tactics, deception and manipulation to influence perception. This involves the weaponisation of technology, misinformation campaigns, the spreading of lies - all used to amass popularity and power.
The old-world order was dominated by hard power. Today’s multipolar world does on rely on hard power alone but also the power of countries to persuade and co-opt. Guns and grenades are a necessity but not the only markers of strength.

Hybrid Wars and Multipolarity

Conflict has become hybrid. Nations need to convince people into believing they are right, reliable and respectable in their motives and do not rely solely on conquest. It is determined by the sociopolitical conditions in which national politics takes place. The dispersion of power has led to increased competition over resources, technology, values and recently over who gets to decide the narrative that shapes the global world.

The transformation in conflict in recent times is largely due to a change from centralised state-oriented political power to a more dispersed spectrum that includes non-state actors, markets, weapons manufacturers, technological companies and others. The resulting landscape is a messy, chaotic and ever-changing scene of actors involved in modern day conflict with differing agendas to achieve.

The Multipolar World

Every country is developing its own doctrine and strategy of power - with a toolkit designed to maximise its influence.

The United States has moved away from a doctrine that relied on hard power to a smarter blend. While having the world’s largest military it also uses the power of Hollywood, alliances, elite universities to project its power. It balances the use of charm and violence when it comes to attainting its objectives.

Similarly, China has developed an arsenal of soft and smart power. It uses large infrastructural projects like the Belt and Road Initiative and a slew of Confucius Institutes (CI) to promote economic influence and Chinese culture abroad. In the shadows of this diplomacy, it has quietly been modernising its army.

Countries like India and Brazil have been pursuing a blend of soft power and smart power with an emphasis on tech diplomacy, regional cooperation, and cultural exports. The Middle East uses long-term partnerships and alliances to create deeper connections. Turkey uses its state capacities to increase its connection with the Islamic world while Gulf States are deeply entrenched in upscaling its miliary-industrial capacities.

Russia has adopted a blend of defence diplomacy and strategic disruption. It has used the import of the S-400 missile system to deepen dependence on it. Its recent invasion of Ukraine has relied mostly on the use of hard power to achieve its global ambitions.

Europe on the other hand leans heavily on the use of soft power where it focuses on human rights, climate diplomacy, peacekeeping and tourism. When it comes to military strength it relies on NATO that acts as its borrowed muscle.
What can be inferred from this is that countries behave differently when their survival is secured. Liberal democracies that were once convincing enough to create consensus among people to meet political ends is undergoing a transformation presently.

War no longer remains a political project of the state solely. The stakes are higher and the actors involved in modern conflict have more to loose - from power, profit and the ability to influence people.

The Proliferation of Conflict Actors

The scattered landscape of conflict is littered with a slew of actors vying for a slice of the power-pie – the state and non-state actors, technological giants, economic institutions and shadow agents.

Modern agents of conflict have evolved with globalisation and technological advancements. Battlefields include militias, tech giants, humanitarian agencies, insurgent groups and other non-state actors along with the state.

The state remains central to the edifice of conflict, however, some of its influence has been dispersed to other actors. Sovereignty and the official use of violence remain in the sole control of the state making it a primary actor. However, since conflict has become messier and is often defined by the larger sociopolitical conditions of national politics – the agents of conflict are those who have some political stake in the situation.

The myriad intersections of threats, interests and opportunities that these agents pursue become issues at stake and violence erupts. Whether it be the troubled Assad regime in Syria that just fell or the Sudanese crisis between the SAF and the RSF or whether the FARC that fought the Colombian government till 2017.

Violent Non-State Actors

The dichotomy between legitimacy and non-legitimacy has broken down in today’s times. Weak states see the emergence of “shadow elites” that operate between the official and private spheres – they often challenge traditional notions of accountability and democracy. These power brokers emerge from communities that govern themselves, build alliance and are involved in resource distribution – as displayed by the emergence of non-state actors both violent and non-violent internationally.

Violent non-state groups are embodiments of those agents that mix governance, identity, and advance-technology weaponry. Outfits like these - that mostly use propaganda and digitally networked identities to weaponise both ideology and infrastructure have begun to access superior technology weapons making them more dangerous. Groups like this challenge the monopoly of violence that rests with states. They have begun to adopt technologically superior weaponry like drones and autonomous weapons systems (AWS) not simply for tactical advantages but also to project power and influence from the bottom-up.

Jihadist organisations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have used drone technology to enhance their operational capacities – as evidenced by the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen or Syria. ISIS’s wings in Iraq and Syria have developed a sophisticated system of drone technology that it uses for reconnaissance, surveillance and even in spreading propaganda. Hezbollah has also used advanced armed drones in their recent skirmishes with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Paramilitary groups like Wagner and Blackwater have been equally influential situations of conflict. While they come with state support, they are still private security providers that exert undue influence in shadow conflicts. Wagner has been linked with the conflicts in Syria and the Central African Republic (CAR) where it was responsible for providing military training, security and combat training to rebel soldiers. Often seen as state proxies, these private security companies function in a ‘grey’ zone which allows states to have plausible deniability, complicating issues of accountability.

Tech Giants as Geopolitical Players

Information and technology are a crucial source of power in post-industrial societies. The control over the flow of information and its consequent narratives equals the possession of power. Wars are being fought over servers and satellites too.

Technological firms are not bystanders but are heavily involved in conflicts – SpaceX’s Starlink was crucial in the Ukrainian war to keep communications alive. Amazon and Microsoft provide cloud space to governments to upload their information for safe storage.

Social media platforms influence public opinion. Earlier states had the final say on what was true or not – now that is being challenged by these platforms. Bots, misinformation campaigns and viral hashtag influence foreign policy and global perceptions. Digital spaces have emerged as extensions of battlefields.

These technologies and their advancements are destabilising not simply because they can destruction but because of how they disrupt battlefield realities. Whether it be decision-making or distinctions between aggression and defence – technology has changed the game. Hypersonic missiles while reducing warning time of strikes also risks escalations. Cyber vulnerabilities of nuclear weapons have increased - leading to unpredictability and uncertainty that deterrence does not account for. Digital survival has become important.

Economic Institutions

Economic institutions like the IMF, World Bank and the World Trade Centre – are not above the fray. They are enablers and regulators. Conflict today plays out on excel sheets as much as the trenches. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) as implemented by the World Bank have been linked to weakened state capacities in Zambia, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire and heightened vulnerability to conflict and triggering unrest.

China has created alternate economic platforms like BRICS and Belt and Road Initiative to create newer alignments and move away from western influence. Supply chains and financial flows are now used for coercion or alliance-building. The Bretton Woods economic order is being challenged by the Chinese and those who want to join its bandwagon.

Win Wars - Weaponise Everything

What binds all these dispersed domains is the conversion of tools into weapons. Everything from bullets to berets are weaponised in today’s times. Drones that were meant for defence are now assets that are used by insurgents. Education with its original agenda of development has become a domain of power-influence.

Humanitarian aid corridors which are generally lifelines during times of war are now weaponised for systemic starvation – as evidenced in Gaza. Humanitarian assistance during the wars in Syria and Libya were selectively granted to faction complainant with western interests. Aid agencies are redefining and reorienting functioning in such a deeply politicised world. Peace has become illiberal. Whether it is sending satellites into the low-Earth orbit or other such resilience strategies – everything has double use and can be weaponised.

What becomes important then for such dual-use technology is perception. With the normalisation of dual-use infrastructure like this – every grant, every project, every fibre-optical wire is investigated for hidden motives.

From machine learning models to AI models to quantum computing everything is used to further some or the cause – whether it is to predict troop movements or voting patterns.

Financial dependency has also been weaponised in today’s times – China has been accused of using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to do the same; the US uses financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF to foster common financial interests, while Russia used energy exports to create a system of favour during the Ukrainian crisis. Asymmetrical economic reliance has caused geopolitical tensions.

Culture has been weaponised too – whether it is the soft diplomacy of K-Pop that South Korea uses or the appeal of Japanese ramen. Hollywood and Bollywood have emerged as major films industries that have been instruments of soft power dispersal. Streaming platforms like Spotify and companies like Apple – have been instrumental in generating soft power. China has created an entire social media ecosystem to counter-narratives of Western imperialism.

To draw a long story short – everything assumed to be neutral has been included into a geopolitical arsenal, whether it be education, trade, religion or media. Battlefields are borderless.

Reinventing Power – What it Means

We have more than 50 active conflicts being fought today as per the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), including the aggressions of Ukraine, the West Bank and Sudan. Cyberattacks, piracy and satellite-warfare has increased. It was assumed with the end of the second world war and the deployment of the nuclear bomb that – war was dead. Inter-state conflict was assumed to be all but over – what we see now is on the contrary. Conflict isn’t over it has simply spilled over in domains that remained out of its reach – it has simply proliferated.

It is those actors that adapt to these hybrid circumstances are the ones who will win. The very meaning of the word victory is changing. During the Cold War, deterrence was imagined to be victory – when neither side could attack. Today victory could mean controlling narratives, technological supremacy and restricting adversarial momentum.

One of the primary reasons for the United States not winning its War on Terror or any of its Forever Wars including Iraq and Afghanistan was its unclear vision of what constituted a victory. This confusion along with the coherence and patience displayed by its adversaries did not allow USA to enjoy complete victory despite having superior armed forces.

Smart Power: The Path for Tomorrow?

Smart power needs to be reimagined to be more than a simple amalgamation of hard power or soft power. It should encompass reflexivity, the ability to pivot and assimilate new information, technology and economic stresses. The Clausewitzian understanding of war being fundamentally political would be correct with a few tweaks. While the term ‘political’ usually denoted partisan squabbling what modern conflict asserts is a struggle for institutional and ideological dominance as well. The largest armies do not win wars as evidenced by Ukraine’s resistance to Russian forces or America’s failure in Afghanistan. What wins wars today is the ability to create an environment that moves both armies and narratives.

The idea of conventional deterrence does not hold true anymore – it is outdated and requires including the newer realities of the digital age. Tradition deterrence relied on the threat of retaliation but now with offensive and defensive postures blurring – stability is hard to come by. The nature of threats today is not simply kinetic but also include systems, networks, quantum archives, under-sea cables and botnets. Strategic literacy is required to break through silos and sectors. Anticipating memes with cultural value, understanding blockchain reactions along with drone components is important to understand global competition.

Conclusion - Towards a New Governance Architecture

With 50 active conflicts of which 10 are deemed critical, with countries more than ever on their armies, violent non-state actors becoming important and technological companies gaining precedence in war rooms – we need pre-emptive governance to take centre stage. International norms and humanitarian law are outdated and clearly non-functional. Enforcement by organisations like the ICC remain arbitrary and have mostly lost consensus as seen in Gaza, South Sudan. The right to protect is scattered and the UN has failed in its original mission to prevent conflict from emerging.

New norms that encapsulate the realities of the global order need to develop. The older western security architecture established post-Cold War does not capture the realities of the world including the rise of middle-powers, the ascent of China and the withdrawal of America from the position of global leader. It is on its last legs and requires replacement.

Conflict has been around since time immemorial - states remain the primary agent of war but the power landscape of modern conflict has proliferated significantly. Whether it be violent non-state actors, militant organisations, private militias, cyber actors, technological companies or people sitting behind computers and simply tweeting – all of them influence foreign and economic policies.

The nature of what constitutes an existential threat in today’s times has undergone radical revision as well – nuclear missiles are as dangerous as misinformation campaigns or global pandemics. The times are changing, and governance needs to keep up. A more reflexive understanding of the proliferation of power and threats need to be adopted to make sense of what is happening today.