Every major conflict, in detail

Trigger

North Korea invaded the South in June 1950 after Soviet and Chinese assurances, believing Washington had written Korea out of its defence perimeter.

Outcome

An armistice in July 1953 froze the front near the pre-war border. No peace treaty was ever signed; the two Koreas remain technically at war.

Key events

• Pusan Perimeter holds through the summer of 1950; UN forces avoid being pushed off the peninsula.
• Inchon landing in September reverses the front almost overnight.
• Chinese intervention in late 1950 pushes UN forces back below the 38th parallel.
• Two further years of attritional fighting along a static line while armistice talks drag on.

Trigger

Soviet deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles to Cuba, partly in response to US Jupiter missiles in Turkey and the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Outcome

Missiles withdrawn within weeks. The crisis produced the Moscow–Washington hotline and the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.

Key events

• U-2 reconnaissance confirms missile sites on 14 October.
• The US imposes a naval quarantine rather than striking, buying negotiating time.
• Soviet submarine B-59 nearly launches a nuclear torpedo after depth-charging.
• A public withdrawal deal is paired with a secret US commitment to remove the Jupiters.

Trigger

Partition after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, followed by a Northern-backed insurgency and escalating US commitment framed by containment theory.

Outcome

Vietnam was reunified under Hanoi. Millions died; the US suffered a generational crisis of confidence in foreign intervention.

Key events

• Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 opens the way to large-scale US deployment.
• Tet Offensive in 1968 is a military defeat for the North but breaks US public support.
• War spreads into Cambodia and Laos.
• Paris Accords in 1973 cover the US withdrawal; Saigon falls in April 1975.

Trigger

Soviet intervention to prop up a collapsing communist government in Kabul, expecting a short stabilisation mission.

Outcome

Soviet withdrawal after a decade, contributing to the USSR's collapse and leaving Afghanistan in a civil war that produced the Taliban.

Key events

• Rapid initial occupation of cities; the countryside is never held.
• Mujahideen resistance is armed externally, including with man-portable air defences from 1986.
• Casualties and economic strain feed domestic Soviet disillusion.
• Withdrawal completed in February 1989; civil war continues without pause.

Trigger

Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990.

Outcome

Kuwait restored; Saddam Hussein stayed in power under sanctions and no-fly zones for another twelve years.

Key events

• UN Security Council authorises force; a broad coalition assembles in Saudi Arabia.
• Five weeks of air campaign destroy Iraqi command and logistics.
• The ground offensive ends in 100 hours.
• Kurdish and Shia uprisings are crushed after the coalition halts at the border.

Trigger

The break-up of Yugoslavia along republic borders that did not match ethnic settlement patterns, driven by nationalist mobilisation.

Outcome

New states, roughly 140,000 dead and the first international tribunals since Nuremberg. Bosnia's settlement still holds uneasily.

Key events

• Slovenia and Croatia secede in 1991; Bosnia follows in 1992.
• Siege of Sarajevo and mass atrocities, including Srebrenica in 1995.
• NATO air campaigns in 1995 and again over Kosovo in 1999.
• Dayton Agreement in 1995 freezes Bosnia's constitutional settlement.

Trigger

The assassination of President Habyarimana amid a stalled peace process, used as the signal for a pre-organised extermination campaign.

Outcome

State reconstruction under the RPF and a regional war in the Congo that killed millions more.

Key events

• Roughly 800,000 people killed in about 100 days.
• The UN mission is reduced rather than reinforced as killings begin.
• The RPF advance ends the genocide militarily in July.
• Mass refugee flows into Zaire ignite the Congo wars.

Trigger

Spillover from Rwanda's genocide, refugee militarisation in eastern Zaire and competition over minerals.

Outcome

The deadliest conflict since 1945 by excess mortality, with eastern provinces still contested.

Key events

• Mobutu is overthrown in 1997.
• The Second Congo War draws in nine countries and dozens of militias.
• Peace deals in 2002–03 end the interstate phase.
• Armed groups persist in North and South Kivu to this day.

Trigger

The 11 September attacks and the Taliban's refusal to hand over al-Qaeda leadership.

Outcome

The Taliban returned to power after twenty years, roughly $2tn spent and over 170,000 deaths.

Key events

• Rapid Taliban collapse in late 2001.
• Attention and resources shift to Iraq from 2003 as the insurgency regenerates.
• Surge and drawdown cycles between 2009 and 2014.
• Doha agreement in 2020; the Afghan government collapses in August 2021.

Trigger

A US-led invasion justified by claims of weapons of mass destruction that were not found.

Outcome

Regime change, hundreds of thousands of deaths, an Iran-aligned Baghdad and a decade-long jihadist insurgency.

Key events

• Baghdad falls within three weeks.
• De-Ba'athification and army dissolution create an unemployed armed opposition.
• Sectarian civil war peaks in 2006–07.
• US withdrawal in 2011 is followed by the rise of ISIS in 2014.

Trigger

Violent suppression of Arab Spring protests in Deraa, escalating into armed rebellion.

Outcome

Over half a million dead, half the population displaced and a fragmented country dependent on foreign patrons.

Key events

• Chemical weapons use in Ghouta in 2013 crosses a declared red line without military response.
• ISIS seizes eastern Syria in 2014; an international coalition intervenes.
• Russian intervention from 2015 reverses the government's decline.
• Frozen zones under Turkish, Kurdish and government control persist into the 2020s.

Trigger

The Houthi seizure of Sanaa and the Saudi-led coalition's intervention to restore the recognised government.

Outcome

A de facto partition with the Houthis controlling the north-west and able to project force into a global trade chokepoint.

Key events

• Air campaign and blockade produce the world's worst humanitarian crisis by 2018.
• Stockholm Agreement in 2018 partially protects Hodeidah port.
• Truce in 2022 sharply reduces frontline fighting.
• Red Sea shipping attacks from late 2023 internationalise the conflict again.

Trigger

A collapse in relations between the federal government and the TPLF after postponed elections, sparked by an attack on a federal army base.

Outcome

Estimates of several hundred thousand deaths including famine mortality. The Pretoria agreement holds, but disputed territories and Eritrean presence remain unresolved.

Key events

• Federal and Eritrean forces take Mekelle in November 2020.
• Tigrayan counter-offensive retakes much of the region in mid-2021.
• Blockade of Tigray restricts food, fuel, banking and communications.
• Pretoria cessation-of-hostilities agreement in November 2022.

Trigger

Russia's annexation of Crimea and proxy war in Donbas in 2014, followed by a full-scale invasion in February 2022 aimed at rapid regime change.

Outcome

The largest European land war since 1945, still unresolved, with NATO enlarged and European rearmament under way.

Key events

• The attempt on Kyiv fails within weeks; the war becomes attritional.
• Ukrainian counter-offensives recover Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022.
• Drone and long-range strike warfare comes to define the front from 2023.
• Nuclear signalling and the 2026 lapse of New START remove the last strategic arms limits.

Trigger

A power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces over integration terms after the 2021 coup.

Outcome

State collapse in large parts of the country, famine conditions and regional spillover into Chad and South Sudan.

Key events

• Fighting erupts in Khartoum in April 2023 and spreads to Darfur.
• Mass atrocities in West Darfur draw genocide warnings.
• The largest displacement crisis in the world develops within a year.
• External backers supply both sides while mediation stalls.

Trigger

The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and the Israeli military campaign that followed.

Outcome

Ongoing, with regional escalation risk that reaches directly into global shipping and energy markets.

Key events

• Ground operations across Gaza with mass displacement of the population.
• Humanitarian access becomes the central diplomatic dispute.
• Escalation with Hezbollah on the northern border and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
• Direct Israel–Iran exchanges break a long-standing shadow-war convention.