Conflict, Peace & the Global Order

The grand optimism of 1989 has evaporated. For three decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a certain class of international observer—policymakers, academics, and theorists of global governance—believed history had essentially reached its terminus. The rivalry between superpowers had ended. Liberal democracy and market economics would spread inexorably across the planet. International institutions would manage the inevitable frictions between nations. War itself might become an anachronism, confined to failing states and criminal enterprises at the margins of the respectable world.

Today, that narrative has shattered.

We live now in what Ian Bremmer calls a “G-Zero world”—a geopolitical space where no single power or bloc of powers has the will or capacity to establish and maintain order. “We’ve entered a geopolitical recession,” Bremmer observes, and this shift represents far more than a mere adjustment in international relations. It reflects a fundamental rupture in the assumptions that have governed global politics for the past generation. The United States, for decades the world’s sole superpower, has turned inward. China has risen but remains locked in strategic rivalry with Washington. Europe, an extraordinary experiment in post-national cooperation, fractures along ideological lines. Russia, wounded and resentful, acts as a disruptive force. And in this vacuum, authoritarian populists around the world sense opportunity.

The consequences are not abstract. They are written in the ruins of Syria, in the grinding war in Ukraine, in the ongoing tensions that could ignite in Taiwan, in the festering grievances of the Middle East. They manifest in the rise of extremist movements that exploit the chaos of state collapse. They appear in the erosion of international law and the institutions that were designed to constrain conflict. Most ominously, they exist in a world where nine nations possess nuclear weapons, and where the possibility of their use has ceased to seem merely theoretical.

To understand this moment requires looking backwards and forwards simultaneously. It demands grappling with why the post-Cold War hopes proved so fragile, why nations still choose conflict over cooperation, and what pathways might exist toward a more durable peace. It requires listening to those who have studied conflict across decades, those who have lived through the worst of it, and those who refuse to abandon the possibility that human beings can choose differently.

The Unraveling Order: How Confidence Collapsed

Niall Ferguson, the historian of empires and financial systems, has spent much of his career examining how complex systems fail. His insights are particularly relevant to understanding our current moment. “Today’s civilisation is more fragile as a result of its complexity,” he argues. This is the paradox at the heart of the post-Cold War era: the very systems of global interconnection that were supposed to make war obsolete—trade networks, financial integration, instant communication—have instead become potential vectors for cascading catastrophe.

Consider how a crisis in one region ripples instantly across the world. A conflict in Ukraine disrupts grain supplies, triggering food insecurity across Africa and the Middle East. A tensions in the Taiwan Strait destabilizes semiconductor supplies, shutting down manufacturing across every industrial economy. A cyberattack on one nation’s infrastructure could cripple another’s. Financial markets, bound together by instantaneous electronic networks, can transmit panic from any corner to all corners in moments. This is what Ferguson means by the fragility of complexity: the systems that have delivered unprecedented prosperity have also created unprecedented vulnerability to disruption.

The collapse of confidence in the post-Cold War order did not happen suddenly. It was a process of accumulated disillusionments, each one eroding a cornerstone of the international consensus that had seemed so durable in the 1990s.

General H.R. McMaster, who served as National Security Advisor to President Trump and has spent decades studying military strategy, identifies the root of the problem with characteristic directness: “Our hopes for this new epoch were anchored on presumptions.” Those presumptions were numerous and consequential. Western policymakers presumed that economic interdependence would make war prohibitively costly. They presumed that globalization would undermine the appeal of nationalist ideology. They presumed that China, as it grew wealthier, would become more liberal and accommodating to the existing international system. They presumed that Russia, weakened and economically backward, would gradually integrate into Western-led institutions. They presumed that the spread of information technology would empower liberal forces and constrain authoritarians. Most fundamentally, they presumed that the engine of history had shifted decisively toward liberal democracy and that the age of great power competition had ended.

All these presumptions were wrong, or at least incomplete. China’s rise did not lead to political liberalization; instead, the Chinese Communist Party has tightened its grip on power while leveraging economic integration as a tool of strategic advantage. Russia’s weakness did not produce docile acceptance of its diminished status; rather, it generated a deep resentment that has metastasized into a strategy of disruption and revanchism. Information technology did not emancipate the masses; it has proven equally powerful in the hands of authoritarians seeking to manufacture consent and suppress dissent. And nationalism, far from being a relic of the industrial age, has resurged with remarkable force across the world, from Europe to Asia to the Americas.

The first major crack in the post-Cold War consensus appeared in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. Here was the world’s sole superpower, at the height of its material power, invading a Middle Eastern nation on contested legal grounds and with incomplete justification. The operation was meant to be swift and surgical. Instead, it catalyzed a catastrophic unraveling—regional destabilization, the emergence of ISIS, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and a massive expenditure of American military and economic resources that benefited no one save arms manufacturers and contractors. More importantly, Iraq shattered the illusion that liberal democracies were inherently more wise in the exercise of power than their rivals. If the United States, with all its democratic institutions and free press, could blunder so catastrophically, what protection did democracy truly offer against the follies of leaders?

The financial crisis of 2008 compounded the damage. The institutions and thinkers that had orchestrated the post-Cold War liberal order—central banks, investment banks, multinational corporations, international organizations—revealed themselves to be not wise stewards of global prosperity but often architects of vast inequality and systemic fragility. When the crash came, ordinary people bore the costs while those responsible were rescued by taxpayers. The contrast between the bailouts for bankers and the austerity imposed on working people crystallized a deep anger that still reverberates through politics.

Then came the technological disruption of traditional media structures. The internet had been supposed to democratize information. Instead, it fractured the shared epistemic space that had previously constrained political discourse. Now, people across the ideological spectrum could inhabit entirely separate information ecosystems, consuming media that confirmed their preexisting views while reinforcing their sense that the other side was not merely mistaken but fundamentally evil. This cognitive polarization made compromise increasingly difficult and fed the rise of populist movements that explicitly rejected the technocratic consensus of the post-Cold War era.

By the time of the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, the shape of the new order was becoming clear: a world in which the presumptions of the liberal consensus could no longer be taken for granted, in which anti-establishment movements enjoyed genuine popular support, and in which the great powers were repositioning themselves not as partners in a shared liberal endeavor but as competitors in a raw struggle for influence and advantage.

Why Nations Fight: The Strategic Logic of Conflict

If the post-Cold War order was built on an illusion—that history had essentially ended—then to understand the return of great power competition, we must grapple with a more fundamental question: Why do nations fight at all?

Christopher Blattman, an economist and expert on civil conflict, offers a provocative counterpoint to the narrative of inevitable war. “Peace is not so unusual,” he argues, turning conventional wisdom on its head. In fact, Blattman’s research suggests that peace is the dominant condition throughout human history. Wars are exceptions, and when they do occur, they tend to be the result of specific structural conditions rather than inevitable expressions of human nature or civilizational conflict.

The key insight here is deceptively simple: war is costly. It destroys resources, kills productive people, disrupts trade, and consumes capital that could otherwise be invested in civilian purposes. For two rational actors, the logic of bargaining suggests that almost any negotiated settlement should be preferable to warfare, since both sides could do better through negotiated compromise than they could by fighting and accepting the costs of conflict. So why, then, do wars occur?

Blattman identifies several mechanisms. First, there is the problem of incomplete information. Leaders on both sides may misjudge the other side’s military capacity or determination. An overconfident leadership may believe that war will be swift and glorious when in fact defeat awaits. Second, there are commitment problems. Even if both sides prefer peace to war, they may fear that the other side will violate any agreement once the costs of enforcement become apparent. A dictator might wonder: if I disarm now, what prevents my rival from rearming and attacking me? Without a reliable mechanism to enforce agreements, the shadow of future conflict can make present war seem rational.

Third, there are information asymmetries related to intentions. A nation that claims to want peace might actually be preparing to dominate. It might be in your opponent’s interest to misrepresent their intentions, knowing that truthful disclosure could trigger your preemptive attack. These information problems are not mere nuisances—they are structural features of international relations that can make war rational even when all parties would prefer peace.

Fourth, and perhaps most critically, there are distributional conflicts. Different groups within nations want very different things, and wars can serve the interests of specific factions even if they harm the nation as a whole. A military elite might profit from war. An authoritarian leader might use conflict to distract from domestic failures and consolidate power. Nationalist politicians might use conflict rhetoric to energize their political base. The problem is that the costs of war are diffuse—spread across the entire population—while the benefits are concentrated among elites. This creates a fundamental misalignment between who decides to go to war and who pays the price.

This framework helps explain why, even in an era of nuclear weapons and economic interdependence, nations still resort to conflict. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for instance, cannot be understood merely as the inevitable result of Russian character or civilizational struggle. Rather, it was the result of specific strategic calculations on the part of President Putin and his inner circle. These leaders faced a domestic legitimacy problem as economic growth slowed and corruption became increasingly apparent. They miscalculated the costs of military intervention, believing that Ukraine would capitulate quickly and that Western nations would lack the will to sustain a response. They may have feared that a Ukraine moving closer to NATO and the European Union would eventually pose a strategic threat to Russian dominance in its sphere of influence. And they may have believed, reasonably or not, that striking preemptively was more advantageous than waiting for Ukraine to become further integrated into Western institutions.

But Blattman’s work also points to something more hopeful: if wars result from specific structural conditions rather than from inevitable aspects of human nature, then changing those conditions could reduce the incidence of war. Institutions that make commitment problems less severe, that provide information about capabilities and intentions, and that align the incentives of leaders with the welfare of their citizens, could all contribute to peace. This is not Panglossian optimism but rather a recognition that the future is not determined by immutable laws of nature. It is shaped by choices—institutional choices, policy choices, the choices of leaders and citizens.

The Shadow of Nuclear Weapons: Living with Annihilation

If conventional conflict remains a recurrent feature of international politics, nuclear weapons have fundamentally altered the calculus. We live in the shadow of weapons that could, in principle, extinguish human civilization. The mere existence of nuclear arsenals changes the logic of war in ways that we still struggle to fully comprehend.

Joseph Cirincione, a leading expert on nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, captures the paradox with a stark formulation: “Nuclear weapons were invented out of fear.” Fear of Nazi Germany possessing the bomb drove the Manhattan Project. Fear of Soviet dominance sustained the American arsenal. Fear of American superiority motivated Soviet weapons development. And now, this cycle of fear continues: North Korea develops nuclear weapons out of fear of regime change; Iran pursues nuclear capability out of fear of Israeli strikes and American intervention; rising powers develop nuclear arsenals out of fear that they will be vulnerable without them.

The irony is that nuclear weapons, designed to prevent war by making its costs unbearable, have not actually eliminated war. They have merely constrained certain forms of it. The United States and Soviet Union never fought directly during the Cold War, not because the incentives for conflict were absent—indeed, they competed fiercely for influence—but because the consequences of direct confrontation risked nuclear exchange. However, both nations waged proxy wars across the developing world, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, killing millions while avoiding direct confrontation. The possession of nuclear weapons by multiple sides did not eliminate conflict; it merely channeled it into forms that would not lead directly to mutual annihilation.

Cirincione’s nightmare scenario is perhaps the most plausible of the nuclear catastrophes that keep strategists awake at night: nuclear terrorism. Unlike the Cold War, when the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers were under tight state control, the world today is characterized by nuclear proliferation to smaller powers and, more dangerously, the possibility that nuclear materials or knowledge could fall into the hands of non-state actors. A terrorist organization that acquired a single nuclear weapon could not be deterred in the way that nation-states can be deterred. They have no territory to lose, no population whose welfare they are accountable for, no reputation to preserve. They might use a nuclear weapon not despite its catastrophic consequences but because of them.

The challenge of nuclear governance in the twenty-first century is thus one of maintaining control over arsenals while they are dispersed across more nations, managing the technical details of weapons verification when states have incentives to cheat, and preventing proliferation to actors who cannot be reliably deterred. None of these tasks is easy, and the track record of the international community in recent decades suggests that nuclear weapons are becoming increasingly difficult to contain.

Yet Cirincione does not advocate for despair. The logic of “global zero”—the elimination of all nuclear weapons—is not merely idealistic; it is, he argues, strategically rational. In a world without nuclear weapons, the worst-case scenario of conventional war is terrible but survivable. In a world with nuclear weapons dispersed across multiple powers and loose in the hands of extremists, the worst-case scenario is human extinction. The choice between these two future states seems clear in principle, yet the practical path to achieving global nuclear disarmament is extraordinarily difficult. It requires verification mechanisms that can reliably confirm compliance; it requires the trust of nuclear-armed states that others will also disarm rather than cheat; and it requires powerful incentives to comply, since the military advantages of nuclear possession are substantial.

The conversation about nuclear weapons is ultimately a conversation about whether humanity can collectively manage existential risks—whether we can build institutions and norms that constrain the use of technologies that could destroy us all.

The Human Cost of War: Beyond the Statistics

War appears in international relations textbooks as a set of strategic calculations—costs and benefits, gains and losses, relative advantage and disadvantage. But this abstraction obscures something essential: war is fundamentally about human suffering. It is about individuals whose lives are destroyed, families torn apart, communities obliterated. To truly understand the crisis of global order, we must also understand the human dimension of conflict.

Robert O’Neill, a retired Navy SEAL who participated in some of the most intense combat operations of the post-Cold War era, brings this human reality into sharp focus. “Fear is healthy, fear is natural,” he observes, and in that statement lies a profound recognition. The popular narrative about warriors often emphasizes their courage, their willingness to suppress fear and charge forward into danger. But O’Neill’s decades of combat experience lead to a different insight: the most effective operators are not those who are free from fear but those who understand fear, who respect it, and who are able to function despite it.

This distinction matters because it speaks to something beyond the tactical—it speaks to the human cost of warfare. Fear, properly understood, is not a weakness to be overcome but a signal that something dangerous is afoot. And in combat, that fear is multiplied a thousand times because the stakes are ultimate. Men and women in uniform make the decision to place themselves in harm’s way, knowing that they may be killed or severely wounded. They do this for reasons that seem adequate at the time—duty, service, the desire to protect comrades, belief in a cause—but the long-term psychological and physical consequences are often terrible.

O’Neill also makes an observation about fear that has implications far beyond the military context: “Calm is contagious.” In high-stakes situations where panic can be fatal, leaders who maintain composure can transfer that composure to those around them. They create psychological space in which people can think clearly and act effectively. This observation points to something important about how international crises are managed: the emotional state and psychological resilience of leaders matter not just for their personal wellbeing but for the wellbeing of millions.

The costs of war extend far beyond those who wear uniforms. Civilians in conflict zones experience displacement, trauma, loss of livelihood, and exposure to violence. Children grow up in war, missing formative educational experiences and bearing the psychological scars of violence. Women face particular vulnerabilities, including sexual violence used as a weapon of war. The global refugee crisis, which has created unprecedented numbers of forcibly displaced people, is to a significant degree the product of modern warfare conducted with little regard for civilian distinction.

These human costs demand a different kind of attention than the strategic calculations of international relations. They demand empathy, imagination, the willingness to see in the abstract figures on a casualty count the particular faces of real people. They demand that policymakers who authorize military action be made to genuinely reckon with the consequences that will follow.

Intelligence and the Art of Analysis: Building Better Understanding

If war is ultimately about human judgment and decision-making, then the quality of the information available to decision-makers becomes crucial. David Omand, who served as the Director of the UK Government Communications Headquarters and brings decades of experience in intelligence and security matters, emphasizes that “analytical thinking is a form of scientific enquiry.” This seemingly simple statement contains profound implications for how nations understand threats and opportunities in an international system characterized by incomplete information and strategic deception.

Intelligence analysis is not about collecting secrets and using them to surprise opponents. Rather, it is fundamentally about building the most accurate possible picture of reality given uncertain and incomplete information. This requires intellectual humility, the willingness to update views when new evidence emerges, and the recognition that truly important questions often have ambiguous answers rather than definitive ones. It requires separating what we know from what we think we know, being explicit about assumptions, and understanding how those assumptions shape conclusions.

The history of intelligence failure is in many ways the history of intelligence analysts being led astray by their own preconceptions. During the Cold War, the CIA consistently overestimated Soviet military capabilities, in part because analysts assumed the worst and extrapolated from fragmentary evidence. In the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, intelligence agencies across multiple countries concluded that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—a assessment that turned out to be entirely wrong. The intelligence was not fraudulent; rather, analysts were looking for evidence of weapons programs that had actually been dismantled, and they interpreted ambiguous evidence in ways that confirmed their preexisting expectations.

What Omand advocates is a more rigorous approach to intelligence analysis that takes seriously the scientific method: formulate hypotheses, gather evidence, test those hypotheses against the evidence, update beliefs based on what the evidence reveals, and acknowledge where uncertainty remains. This is harder than it sounds, because human beings are not naturally inclined toward epistemic humility. We prefer confidence to uncertainty, narrative coherence to ambiguity. We tend to interpret information in ways that confirm what we already believe. Intelligence agencies can be particularly susceptible to this because they operate in a classified environment with limited outside scrutiny and because intelligence chiefs are often expected to provide certainty to policymakers who demand it.

The implications of Omand’s framework extend beyond the intelligence community proper. It suggests that better decisions about war and peace require better information, but more fundamentally, it requires better thinking. It requires institutions that reward the careful assessment of evidence over the production of confidence. It requires leaders who are willing to acknowledge uncertainty and update their views. It requires an intellectual culture in which being wrong is understood not as a failure but as a necessary part of the process of improving understanding.

Ukraine: Democracy Under Fire

No contemporary conflict better illustrates the fragility of international order and the persistence of great power competition than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here is a nation that, after the Cold War, chose democracy and markets, that attempted to integrate into Western institutions, that believed that geography and history were not destiny. And yet Russia, viewing Ukraine’s orientation toward the West as a threat to its sphere of influence, launched a military invasion intended to reverse that choice.

Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian parliamentarian and member of the opposition party Holos, has become the public face of Ukrainian resistance. In the face of Russian military aggression, she articulated a commitment that resonates far beyond Ukraine’s borders: “We were prepared to pay with our lives.” This is not merely rhetoric from a politician. Rudik and thousands of others made the choice to remain in Ukraine despite the catastrophic dangers. They served in combat roles, worked in hospitals, maintained critical infrastructure, governed liberated territories. They did so not because they believed they would win easily—indeed, most observers in the early days of the war believed Ukrainian defeat was inevitable—but because they believed that certain things were worth dying for.

What were those things? Fundamentally, they were the right to choose one’s own future, to live under the rule of law, to participate in the governance of one’s own country. These are not abstract principles; they are the practical substance of democracy. And they are precisely what authoritarian powers seek to extinguish when they invade neighboring states that have chosen democratic paths.

The Ukrainian resistance has illustrated several profound truths about contemporary conflict. First, it has shown that material superiority in military hardware is not sufficient to win wars against populations that are committed to resistance. Russia began the war with more tanks, more artillery, more soldiers. Yet Ukrainian forces not only survived initial assaults; they pushed back Russian forces, liberated territory, and forced Russia to settle into a grinding war of attrition that has depleted its resources and killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Second, Ukraine’s resistance has revealed that liberal democracies can be far more effective at organizing national effort than casual observers might assume. Democratic governments often appear inefficient compared to autocracies precisely because they are constrained by law and accountability. Yet when democracy itself is at stake, when the alternative is subjugation, democratic peoples have proven capable of extraordinary mobilization and sacrifice.

Third, the Ukrainian experience has demonstrated the critical importance of international support. Ukraine has survived not merely through its own military effort but through the provision of weapons, intelligence, financial support, and diplomatic backing from Western nations, particularly the United States and European Union. This interdependence illustrates both the potential for collective action in defense of shared values and the danger that backsliding support could have catastrophic consequences.

The Ukrainian case also raises troubling questions about the future of the international order. If a nation that chose democracy and pursued integration with Western institutions can be invaded by a neighbor seeking to reverse those choices, then the promise of the post-Cold War order—that sovereign states could choose their own paths and that international law would protect them—has been revealed as contingent on power. International law constrains the weak but protects the strong only so far as other strong powers are willing to enforce constraints. Ukraine’s survival as an independent democratic nation depends not on international law alone but on the determination of Western powers to maintain an international order in which small nations are not simply prey for their larger neighbors.

The Roots of Extremism: Ideology, Grievance, and Politics

The return of great power competition is not the only source of instability in the contemporary international order. Alongside it exists the threat posed by extremist movements—organizations that deliberately target civilians, that operate across borders, that leverage modern technology to recruit and coordinate, and that are driven by ideologies that seem impervious to the normal incentives and disincentives of international politics.

Haras Rafiq, who has spent years studying extremism and radicalization, offers an important corrective to common misunderstandings. “Extremism is a political ideology, not religion,” he argues, a distinction that has profound implications for how we understand and counter these movements. The tendency in Western discourse has been to attribute extremism to Islam itself, to suggest that there is something inherent in the religion that produces violence. This is both factually wrong and strategically counterproductive.

In reality, the vast majority of Muslims reject extremism. The grievances that extremist movements exploit are political and social—the feeling that one’s community is oppressed, that governments are corrupt and unresponsive, that Western powers are pursuing interventionist agendas in Muslim-majority countries. These grievances are real, rooted in specific historical experiences of colonialism, imperialism, and military interventions. What extremist organizations do is take these legitimate grievances and militarize them, creating a framework that justifies violence against civilians and promises cosmic significance to political struggle.

This reframing is important because it suggests that counter-extremism strategies that focus on changing Islam or on military action will inevitably fail. They will fail because the problem is not religion but politics, and you cannot solve political problems with military force alone. What is needed instead is addressing the underlying grievances—working toward more responsive and accountable governance, ending military interventions that lack legitimacy, and creating economic opportunities for people who might otherwise be susceptible to recruitment by extremist organizations.

The challenge of extremism is compounded by the fact that modern technology has transformed how these movements recruit and operate. A young person in a suburb of Paris or London can, within minutes, encounter propaganda that tells them they are part of a global struggle, that their life has cosmic significance, that they can become a martyr and be remembered forever. This is extraordinarily seductive, particularly for individuals who feel alienated from their own societies, who lack social connection, and who are searching for meaning and belonging.

Moreover, extremist organizations have proven remarkably adaptable. When states have degraded one organizational form, these movements have reconstituted themselves in others. When one leader is killed, others emerge. When one territory is lost, they regroup elsewhere. This adaptability is not mystical; it is the result of decentralized structures and ideologies that can attach themselves to local grievances in different contexts.

The implication is that counter-extremism is not primarily a military problem but a political and social one. It requires building more legitimate and responsive governments, creating economic opportunities, addressing historical grievances, and marginalizing the extremist narrative through counter-narrative and alternative sources of meaning and belonging. This is far harder than launching military strikes, and it takes much longer, but the evidence suggests it is what actually works.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Beyond Vengeance

If conflict remains a persistent feature of international politics, so too does the question of how societies move beyond conflict. How do nations that have engaged in brutal warfare find a path toward coexistence? How do people who have lost family members to violence rebuild relationships with those from the communities of perpetrators? How do societies consolidate peace when the scars of conflict remain so raw?

Ben Ferencz, one of the last surviving prosecutors of the Nuremberg trials and an advocate for international law, has confronted these questions directly. His fundamental insight is stark and uncompromising: “War itself is a negation of law.” When nations resort to warfare, they are essentially saying that might makes right, that the strongest party can dictate terms to the weakest. International law exists to deny this premise, to establish that all nations are bound by rules regardless of their military power, and that those who violate those rules should face consequences.

Yet Ferencz himself represents a profound evolution in thinking about justice after conflict. The Nuremberg trials, in which he participated as a prosecutor, were fundamentally about vengeance and accountability—yes, they were conducted according to legal procedures, but their basic logic was that those who had committed atrocities deserved to be punished. In more contemporary conflicts, however, societies have increasingly turned to alternative mechanisms for dealing with the past. Truth and reconciliation commissions have become more common than war crimes tribunals. The logic here is different: rather than seeking to punish perpetrators, these mechanisms aim to create space for victims to be heard, for perpetrators to acknowledge what they have done, and for communities to understand their shared past in ways that allow them to move forward together.

Marina Cantacuzino, who founded the Forgiveness Project and has interviewed people who have chosen to forgive those who have harmed them, offers a parallel insight: “Forgiveness is making peace with things you cannot change.” This is not naïveté or moral weakness. Rather, it is a recognition that holding onto rage and the desire for vengeance keeps victims psychologically bound to those who have harmed them. Forgiveness, in this sense, is not about absolving perpetrators—it is about liberating oneself from the psychological burden of resentment.

The evidence from societies that have moved beyond conflict suggests that some combination of accountability, truth-telling, and forgiveness is more effective at consolidating peace than either pure vengeance or pure amnesia. Pure vengeance keeps conflict alive in a cycle of retaliation. But pure amnesia, in which past atrocities are ignored and everyone is expected to move on, leaves deep grievances unaddressed that can erupt into violence again at a future moment.

This is perhaps the ultimate tragedy of contemporary conflict: even when military hostilities end, the psychological and social work of peace remains ongoing, often for generations.

Building a More Peaceful World: Institutional and Philosophical Foundations

If this assessment of the global disorder has seemed dark, it is because the challenges are real and the solutions are neither obvious nor easy. Yet the voices consulted here also point toward possibilities for building a more durable peace. These possibilities exist at multiple levels—the institutional, the philosophical, and the personal.

At the institutional level, the task is to build mechanisms that address the structural problems that Blattman identified—incomplete information, commitment problems, and misaligned incentives. International institutions can help by creating transparency about military capabilities and intentions, making it costlier to violate agreements, and creating forums for negotiation that allow leaders to explore compromises without appearing weak domestically. The United Nations, despite its manifest failures, still provides such a forum. Regional organizations like the African Union, ASEAN, and the Organization of American States can play similar roles at smaller scales. The challenge is that these institutions are only as strong as the most powerful nations allow them to be; when a great power decides that an institutional constraint is incompatible with its interests, it can simply override it.

At a deeper level, the task is to create a more just international order that is less likely to generate the resentments and grievances that fuel conflict. This requires addressing the structural inequalities that make some nations perpetually vulnerable to the predation of more powerful neighbors, that deny them meaningful voice in institutions that affect their interests, and that channel resources away from addressing human needs toward military purposes. It requires a genuine commitment to development and poverty reduction, not as charity but as a strategic imperative for reducing the desperation that makes young people susceptible to recruitment by extremist organizations.

At the philosophical level, the task involves the patient work of building narratives that emphasize our common humanity, that stress the possibilities for cooperation and mutual benefit, and that create space for understanding perspectives radically different from our own. This is the work that journalists and authors undertake when they humanize those whom we might otherwise view as abstract enemies. It is the work of educators who teach students to think critically about the narratives of conflict that dominant in their own societies. It is the work of peace builders who facilitate dialogue between communities separated by violence.

Trey Yingst, a journalist who has covered conflict in multiple regions, articulates this imperative with clarity: “To get closer to peace, it requires the humanisation of everyone involved.” This is difficult work, particularly when one has witnessed atrocities, when one belongs to a community that has been victimized. Yet it is essential. As long as we see those on the other side as less than human, as inherently evil or irredeemable, we will be unable to imagine forms of coexistence that do not involve the annihilation or subjugation of one group by another.

The philosopher and activist Lech Walesa, who led the Polish Solidarity movement and helped bring about the nonviolent end of communist rule in Eastern Europe, emphasizes that “violence is always a bad choice.” This might seem obvious, yet it runs counter to much of political culture, which valorizes military strength and the willingness to use force. Walesa’s insight is that nonviolent resistance, while requiring tremendous courage and discipline, ultimately proves more effective at generating lasting political change than violence does. When a movement is nonviolent, it is harder for the authorities to delegitimize it; when violence emerges, it plays into the hands of those in power who can use state force to suppress it.

Ingrid Betancourt, who was held as a hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for six years, offers a testimony that perhaps more than any statistics or arguments illustrates the human possibility of transformation even in the worst circumstances. “I truly believe humans have the capacity to change,” she says. Despite being held in captivity, subjected to cruel conditions, and experiencing what many would consider hell on earth, Betancourt did not harden into bitterness. Rather, she emerged from captivity with her humanity intact and with the conviction that even those who had victimized her were capable of change. This conviction became the basis for her subsequent peace advocacy.

Finally, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Prize laureate, offers a blunt assessment that should focus the minds of policymakers: “War remains humanity’s most profitable trait.” This statement cuts through the rhetoric about defense and security and points to the uncomfortable truth that arms manufacturers, military contractors, oil companies, and those in power who benefit from military spending and from destabilization all have material incentives to sustain conflict. A world of genuine peace would require tremendous disruption to these profit streams and to the power structures that depend on them.

Legitimacy, Governance, and the Foundations of Stable Order

Before exploring how power operates in international relations, we must understand what drives populations to accept the costs of conflict and what allows societies to avoid it. Why do ordinary people volunteer to fight wars that kill millions? Why do they tolerate the enormous economic costs of military buildups? Why do societies accept rule by leaders who lead them to ruin? The answer lies in the complex relationship between legitimacy, governance, and collective identity.

Every conflict is built on a foundation of grievance—the feeling that one’s group has been wronged, that justice has not been done, that the existing order is fundamentally unfair. These grievances are often historical, rooted in conflicts that occurred generations ago. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is built on the mutual grievances of two peoples displaced and seeking the same land. The Kashmiri conflict is rooted in grievances about partition, about sovereignty, about the rights of minorities. The conflict between Russia and NATO members in Eastern Europe is rooted in post-Cold War grievances about who gets to decide the fate of former Soviet satellite states. When grievances fester for decades, when they are reinforced through education and media, when they are used by political leaders to consolidate power, they become embedded in the identity of communities, passed from generation to generation.

The key insight is that these grievances are not merely personal resentments; they are often tied to group identity and to narratives about justice and the proper order of the world. A person might accept personal hardship in service of a cause if they believe that the cause is just, that they are fighting for something larger than themselves, that their sacrifice will eventually result in their group achieving justice. But if a person believes that their leaders are leading them to fight for no cause, or for a cause perceived as unjust, then the willingness to fight disappears.

This points to the critical role of legitimacy in maintaining social order and in preventing conflict. A government that is perceived as legitimate—that operates according to rules that people accept, that provides security and basic services, that includes people in some form of meaningful political participation—can maintain order at relatively low cost. The police do not need to be everywhere if people generally accept the laws. The military does not need to occupy the population if people believe that the government represents their interests and respects their rights. This is why democratic nations often have more effective governance than autocracies despite spending less on security forces; the consent of the governed is worth more than the most sophisticated police state.

Conversely, a government that is perceived as illegitimate—that rules through violence, that is seen as serving only narrow interests, that excludes large segments of the population from political voice—must spend enormous resources on coercion and repression. And even then, the order it maintains is fragile, likely to collapse when the capacity or will to coerce declines. The Soviet Union appeared to be a permanent fixture of world politics until 1991, when the withdrawal of coercive capacity led to rapid collapse. Venezuela’s government maintains power primarily through the loyalty of security forces and the control of oil revenues; when those foundations weaken, the government weakens. Countries built on illegitimate power are inherently unstable.

This helps explain patterns of conflict in the contemporary world. Democracies rarely fight each other, not because democracy makes nations peaceful (democracies frequently fight non-democracies) but because democratic citizens have a voice in decisions about war. Democratic populations are reluctant to support wars, and democratic leaders therefore need good reasons to go to war and must maintain public support for war efforts. Autocracies, by contrast, do not require public support and can therefore wage wars that their own populations might not support if given a choice. Putin was able to invade Ukraine because Russian citizens had no meaningful ability to vote against the invasion or to remove him from power. Had Russia been a democracy, domestic political pressures would have constrained such an invasion.

The deeper implication is that peace is not merely an external matter of diplomacy and institutions; it is rooted in the domestic political structures of states. A world composed primarily of autocracies is a world prone to conflict, because autocrats face weak domestic constraints on their use of force. A world composed primarily of democracies is a world in which conflict is less likely. This suggests that promoting democracy and rule of law globally is not merely an idealistic project but a strategic imperative for those seeking to reduce international conflict.

Power and Soft Power: The Tools of Influence Without Force

If great power competition is the reality of contemporary international relations, then understanding the nature of power itself becomes crucial. Power is not merely military capability or economic size. Joseph Nye, the theorist who developed the concept of “soft power,” articulates a fundamental insight: “Power is the ability to affect others.” This definition is deceptively simple, but it contains profound implications for how nations achieve their objectives in the world.

Hard power—military force, economic coercion—can make others do what you want through threats or incentives. A nation with overwhelming military superiority can compel a weaker nation to comply with its demands. A nation that controls access to critical resources can extract concessions from nations dependent on those resources. Yet hard power has limits. It is costly to maintain, it generates resentment in those subjected to it, and it often fails to achieve the political objectives for which it is deployed. The United States spent two decades and trillions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq using military force, and the political outcomes are at best ambiguous.

Soft power, by contrast, is the ability to attract others, to make them want what you want, to shape the environment in which others make their choices. A nation with soft power gets others to align with its interests not through coercion but through the appeal of its ideas, its culture, its institutions, its perceived legitimacy. For decades, the United States possessed extraordinary soft power—the appeal of its democratic institutions, the prestige of its universities, the attractiveness of its popular culture, the prestige of its scientific achievements. This soft power was perhaps as important as military force in establishing American dominance during the post-Cold War era.

Yet soft power is fragile, and it can be lost through the misuse of hard power or through the demonstration that one’s actions contradict one’s professed values. The invasion of Iraq, justified through claims about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false, damaged American soft power. The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, showing American soldiers abusing detainees, damaged American soft power. The revelation that the United States had engaged in torture, in secret detention, in mass surveillance of its own citizens, damaged American soft power. By the time Trump took office, a significant portion of American soft power had been squandered.

Meanwhile, China has been building soft power through a different strategy—the Belt and Road Initiative, which provides financing and infrastructure development to nations in the global south. While some critics see this as debt-trap diplomacy, it is clearly effective in building relationships and in making those nations more inclined to align with Chinese interests. Russia has invested heavily in media and information operations, attempting to sow discord in Western societies and to position itself as a defender of traditional values against decadent Western culture. These are soft power operations, attempts to shape how others perceive the world and what they want for themselves and their societies.

The implication is that great power competition in the twenty-first century will be determined not merely by military and economic capacity but by the ability to attract others, to shape narratives about how the world works, and to demonstrate that one’s model of governance and social organization is more appealing than alternatives. This puts a premium on having institutions that actually work, on demonstrating that one’s values are genuine rather than hypocritical, and on addressing the legitimate grievances of populations that might otherwise be susceptible to competing narratives.

The Challenge of Great Power Rivalry: US-China and the Question of Coexistence

The central geopolitical challenge of the coming decades is how the United States and China can coexist in a world that is not large enough for both to be hegemonic. Both nations have interests that appear, from their perspectives, to be vital. The United States wants to maintain its position as the leading power in the international system and to preserve what it sees as a rules-based order that reflects American interests. China wants to become the dominant power in Asia, to regain what it sees as its rightful place in the international hierarchy, and to create international institutions that reflect Chinese interests.

These objectives are not inherently compatible. A China that is hegemonic in Asia is, by definition, a China that has displaced American influence. A United States that maintains dominance over East Asian affairs is, by definition, a United States that constrains Chinese ambitions. Both sides cannot achieve full hegemony. The question is whether they can find a form of coexistence that is stable and that does not require military conflict.

The challenge is immense. Both nations have nuclear weapons, which means that direct military conflict could escalate to catastrophic levels. Both nations have been building the military capacity to fight a war over Taiwan, which would almost certainly involve the United States and could easily escalate to encompass other theaters. Both nations are engaged in economic competition that includes technological competition—particularly around semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and other critical technologies. Both nations are investing heavily in military modernization and in space and cyber capabilities that could be decisive in future conflicts.

What makes this competition potentially manageable is mutual economic interdependence and mutual vulnerability. China’s economic model is dependent on export markets, particularly the American market. The United States is dependent on Chinese manufactures and on Chinese financing of American debt. If they go to war, both nations suffer enormously. Yet this interdependence also creates vulnerability—each nation knows that the other has the capacity to inflict enormous economic damage, which creates a temptation to strike preemptively rather than wait for the other side to do so.

The path forward requires what might be called managed competition—an understanding between the two powers that they are competitors but not enemies, that they have overlapping interests in maintaining global stability, and that they will negotiate clear rules of engagement that prevent competition from escalating to military conflict. This is extraordinarily difficult because it requires both sides to accept that the other side has legitimate interests, that complete victory is not possible, and that coexistence is preferable to conflict.

The historical precedent is the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union competed for influence globally but established mechanisms—the hotline, summit meetings, arms control agreements, clarity about red lines—that prevented competition from escalating to direct military conflict. But that competition occurred in a context of bipolar military parity. Today’s competition is asymmetrical in different ways: the United States retains military superiority, but China has geographic proximity, larger population, and rapidly growing military capacity. This asymmetry makes establishing clear understanding even more difficult.

Yet there is reason for cautious hope. Both the United States and China have nuclear weapons, which creates a shared vulnerability that constrains the worst possible outcomes. Both have immense economic interests in global stability. Both face internal challenges—demographic shifts, environmental pressures, economic stagnation—that would be vastly exacerbated by military conflict. Both have multiple channels of communication through government officials, academics, and business leaders. If leadership can be found that prioritizes stability over dominance, that understands the long-term costs of conflict, that is willing to negotiate compromises, then a stable coexistence is possible. This will not be easy, but it is achievable.

The Role of Leadership: Individual Choice in Global Context

Throughout this discussion of conflict, peace, and the global order, there emerges a consistent theme: at critical junctures, individual leaders make choices that shape global outcomes. General McMaster emphasized that the presumptions of the post-Cold War order were just that—presumptions, not inevitable facts. Those presumptions were built into policy by leaders who believed them. Different choices by leaders at critical moments could have produced different outcomes.

This is both hopeful and terrifying. It is hopeful because it suggests that the future is not determined by immutable laws of nature but by human choices, and humans have agency. It is terrifying because it means that leaders who make foolish or reckless choices can produce catastrophic outcomes.

The standard view of international relations treats states as billiard balls, moving according to objective laws of power and interest, with little space for individual choice. But this view underestimates the role of leadership and overestimates the constraint of structure. Yes, there are structural realities—geography matters, military capability matters, economic capacity matters. But within those constraints, there is space for different interpretations of interest and for different strategies. A leader who interprets national interest narrowly, as the maximization of military power and territorial control, will pursue different policies than a leader who interprets national interest as the security and prosperity of the nation’s citizens in a stable international environment.

Consider the choices that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin made a choice to invade, a choice that was not inevitable but rather the result of specific calculations and beliefs. He believed that the West would not support Ukraine effectively. He believed that Ukraine would capitulate quickly. He believed that the costs of invasion were acceptable compared to the costs of allowing Ukraine to integrate further into Western institutions. These beliefs turned out to be wrong, but they were not visibly wrong at the time. A different leader might have made different calculations, might have chosen a different path.

Similarly, the choices that the United States makes regarding China will profoundly shape the trajectory of international relations. A United States that views China as an implacable enemy that must be contained at all costs is likely to pursue policies that drive China toward more hostile actions. A United States that recognizes China’s legitimate interests and seeks managed competition is more likely to prevent escalation. These are not pre-determined; they are choices that leaders make.

This emphasis on the role of leadership does not mean that individuals have unlimited power to shape events. Leaders operate within constraints set by institutions, by public opinion, by the actions of other nations, by economic realities. But within those constraints, there is meaningful space for choice. And at critical junctures—moments of crisis, moments when history seems to pivot on decisions made in the present—the space for individual choice expands.

The implication is that the future of global order depends not merely on impersonal forces but on whether the world produces leaders with wisdom, with capacity for moral imagination, with the ability to see the humanity in those labeled as enemies. This is why leadership matters, and why the development of leadership capacity—in education systems, in institutions, in political cultures—matters for global peace.

Trust, Verification, and the Architecture of Peace

One of the most fundamental challenges in international relations is the problem of trust. Nations cannot easily trust each other’s intentions, because intentions can change and because even well-intentioned leaders can be overthrown by those with hostile intentions. This means that national security must ultimately be based not on trust but on capacity to verify that agreements are being honored and, if necessary, to defend oneself if they are violated.

This is why arms control agreements, for instance, require intrusive monitoring and verification mechanisms. It is not that the parties to an agreement necessarily distrust each other in a personal sense; rather, they recognize that the future is uncertain and that countries change leadership and change policies. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia, for instance, included on-site inspections by each side at the other’s military facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency verifies that countries are complying with commitments not to develop nuclear weapons. These mechanisms are not about friendship; they are about creating conditions under which nations can afford to be less heavily armed because they have confidence that violations will be detected.

The broader insight is that international stability depends on building institutions and verification mechanisms that make it costly and difficult to cheat on agreements. If a nation knows that violations will be rapidly detected and met with consequences, then it faces better incentives to honor the agreement. If violations can occur without detection, then the temptation to violate is greater.

This speaks to why Sir Laurie Bristow, a distinguished British diplomat with extensive experience in conflict regions, observes: “I have never seen a time with so many conflicts.” One reason for the multiplication of conflicts is precisely the erosion of the international institutions and verification mechanisms that helped constrain conflict during the Cold War. The United Nations is weaker; powerful nations pay less attention to international law; arms control agreements have been weakened or abandoned; regional organizations are fragmented. In this vacuum of institutional constraint, the barriers to conflict are lower.

Building a more peaceful world requires rebuilding and strengthening these institutions. It requires creating mechanisms by which nations can verify that others are complying with their commitments. It requires establishing clear consequences for violations. It requires creating forums where disputes can be negotiated without escalating to violence. It requires rebuilding trust not through appeals to friendship but through the establishment of mechanisms that make both trust and deterrence work together.

The challenge is that in a multipolar world without a dominant power enforcing rules, this is extraordinarily difficult. During the Cold War, the superpowers had strong incentives to maintain the international order because they feared that allowing chaos would benefit their rival. Today, with power more distributed and with China and Russia questioning the American-led order, the agreement to maintain institutions is weaker. Russia has violated arms control agreements and invaded Ukraine. China is building military capacity in ways that circumvent transparency. The United States, under various administrations, has withdrawn from agreements or failed to ratify them. The net effect is that the architecture of trust and verification is weakening precisely when the need for it is greatest.

Rebuilding this architecture will require leadership willing to make long-term investments in institutions even when the short-term payoff is not obvious. It requires patience—confidence-building measures take years or decades to have effect. It requires the recognition that in a multipolar world, the alternative to international rules and institutions is not freedom but chaos, and chaos hurts everyone.

Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The post-Cold War order has crumbled, not because of any inevitable historical law but because the presumptions on which it was built proved false. The grand narrative of inevitable liberal victory, of the end of history, proved to be a story we told ourselves rather than an accurate description of reality. The structural factors that had constrained great power conflict during the Cold War—the risk of mutual annihilation through nuclear weapons—continued to constrain direct conflict between nuclear powers, but they did not eliminate the competition for influence and advantage. And in the spaces where nuclear deterrence did not apply, conflict returned.

We live now in a world characterized by great power competition, by the persistence of nationalist sentiment, by the appeal of authoritarian solutions to the problems of complexity and uncertainty, by the ongoing threat of extremist violence, by the fragility that complexity creates, and by the shadow of nuclear weapons. This is a frightening landscape, and it would be false to suggest that the path ahead is easy or that success is assured.

Yet the testimonies of those who have studied conflict, those who have lived through it, and those who have dedicated their lives to moving toward peace all point toward the possibility of different choices. Institutions can be built that make war less likely. Grievances can be addressed rather than exploited. Justice can be balanced with reconciliation. Populations can choose nonviolence even in the face of oppression. Humans can change, can overcome resentment, can recognize the humanity of those they have come to see as enemies.

The central question before the world is not whether conflict will disappear—the structural realities that Blattman identifies suggest that some level of conflict will always be a feature of international politics. Rather, the question is whether we can build institutions and foster attitudes that keep conflict within bounds, that prevent the kinds of cascading disasters that a more fragile, complex, and interconnected world is increasingly vulnerable to.

This is fundamentally a question not of capability but of will. We have the knowledge to build more peaceful systems. We have the resources to address the underlying grievances that fuel conflict. We have the examples of successful nonviolent transitions and conflict resolution mechanisms. What is required is the political commitment to prioritize these approaches over the paths of military dominance, the courage to acknowledge the interests that benefit from conflict and work to change incentive structures, and perhaps most fundamentally, the willingness to see those on the other side as fellow human beings rather than as enemies to be destroyed.

The challenge of managing great power competition without escalation to military conflict is perhaps the defining challenge of this era. It requires building institutions and norms that allow nations to compete for influence and advantage without risking mutual annihilation. It requires recognizing that in an interconnected world, the collapse of one part affects all parts, that the fragility of complex systems means that catastrophes can cascade rapidly from one domain to another. It requires understanding that soft power—the ability to attract others to your vision, to shape narratives, to demonstrate the appeal of your model—is ultimately more important than hard power for achieving lasting influence.

Most fundamentally, it requires choosing peace not as a romantic ideal but as a strategic necessity. It requires recognizing that war, even when one might win militarily, is catastrophically costly in the modern age. It requires building systems in which leaders and citizens alike understand that the common interest in avoiding catastrophe outweighs the competitive interests that separate nations.

The global order that emerges from the current crisis will be shaped by these choices. It could be a world of intensifying great power competition that risks catastrophic conflict, in which the pursuit of relative advantage overwhelms recognition of common interest. Or it could be a world in which institutions are strengthened, in which justice is pursued in ways that do not perpetuate cycles of resentment, in which the voices of those who have suffered most from conflict are centered in peace-building efforts. It could be a world in which competing powers recognize that the space is large enough for all of them to prosper if they can avoid the trap of competition that escalates to military conflict.

The choice is not determined by history or by immutable laws of nature. It is determined by the decisions of leaders and citizens in the present. The task now is to make those decisions wisely, with full knowledge of what is at stake and with commitment to building a future in which security is pursued not through domination but through justice, prosperity, and genuine partnership across the boundaries that currently divide us.

The Long View: Learning from History, Building for the Future

History offers both warnings and possibilities. The twentieth century witnessed catastrophic conflicts that killed hundreds of millions and destroyed civilizations. Yet it also witnessed the emergence of international institutions, of human rights frameworks, of nuclear deterrence, of arms control agreements, of peace agreements that have prevented the recurrence of the worst conflicts. The fact that no nuclear weapons have been used in warfare since 1945, despite nuclear weapons existing for over seventy years and despite numerous crises that brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict, testifies to the possibility that even in the face of profound incentives for conflict, humans can choose differently.

The path forward requires learning from both the failures and the successes of the past. It requires understanding why wars occur but also understanding why some potential conflicts have been averted. It requires understanding that conflict is not inevitable, not hardwired into human nature, not determined by some inexorable logic of history. Rather, conflict is the result of specific choices made by leaders and peoples, choices that are shaped by institutions, by beliefs, by narratives, by incentive structures. And if conflict is the result of choices, then peace is also possible through choices.

The voices that have been consulted throughout this article—scholars of conflict, leaders of democracies facing authoritarianism, victims of violence who have chosen forgiveness, those who have dedicated their lives to understanding and preventing conflict—all point toward the same fundamental insight: a more peaceful world is possible. It requires institutional innovation, political will, moral imagination, and collective commitment. It is not guaranteed, and the path is not easy. But it is possible. The task before humanity is to realize that possibility.