Timeline
Wars and conflicts, 1947 to today
21 major conflicts from the opening of the Cold War to the present, each with the trigger that started it and the settlement — or absence of one — it produced. 7 are still active.
- 1947–presentFrozenSouth Asia
India–Pakistan conflicts
Trigger: Partition of British India and the disputed accession of Kashmir.
Outcome: Four wars and repeated crises. Both states went overtly nuclear in 1998; the Line of Control remains the most militarised nuclear frontier on earth.
- 1948–presentOngoingMiddle East
Arab–Israeli conflict
Trigger: The creation of Israel and the war that followed the end of the British Mandate.
Outcome: Interstate wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 gave way to peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, then to an unresolved Israeli–Palestinian conflict that erupted again in Gaza in 2023.
- 1950–1953FrozenEast Asia
Korean War
Trigger: North Korea's invasion of the South, backed by Moscow and Beijing.
Outcome: An armistice, not a peace treaty. The DMZ froze the peninsula in place and set the template for Cold War proxy conflict.
- 1955–1975EndedSoutheast Asia
Vietnam War
Trigger: Communist insurgency in the South after the French withdrawal and the partition at the 17th parallel.
Outcome: US withdrawal in 1973 and northern victory in 1975. It reshaped American appetite for prolonged intervention for a generation.
- 1962EndedCaribbean
Cuban Missile Crisis
Trigger: Soviet deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles to Cuba.
Outcome: Thirteen days at the edge of nuclear war, resolved by a blockade, a public Soviet withdrawal and a quiet US removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. It produced the hotline and the first arms-control treaties.
- 1967–1970 / 1977–1978EndedAfrica
Nigeria–Biafra and Ogaden wars
Trigger: Secession in eastern Nigeria; Somali irredentism in Ethiopia's Ogaden.
Outcome: Both ended in the defeat of the secessionist or invading side, with the Ogaden war notable for a mid-conflict superpower switch of patrons in the Horn.
- 1979–1989EndedCentral Asia
Soviet–Afghan War
Trigger: Soviet intervention to prop up a collapsing communist government in Kabul.
Outcome: Soviet withdrawal after a decade of externally armed insurgency; a major contributor to the USSR's collapse and to the militant networks of the 1990s.
- 1980–1988EndedMiddle East
Iran–Iraq War
Trigger: Iraq's invasion after the Iranian revolution, aiming at the Shatt al-Arab and regime weakness.
Outcome: Roughly a million dead and no border change. Chemical weapons use went largely unpunished, shaping both states' later strategic calculations.
- 1990–1991EndedMiddle East
Gulf War
Trigger: Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.
Outcome: A UN-mandated coalition expelled Iraqi forces in weeks, established the post-Cold War model of coalition warfare, and left a containment regime that ran until 2003.
- 1991–2001EndedEurope
Yugoslav wars
Trigger: The disintegration of Yugoslavia and competing ethno-national claims to territory.
Outcome: Dayton in 1995 and NATO's 1999 Kosovo campaign. Established humanitarian intervention as practice — and, in Moscow's telling, the precedent it later cited for its own actions.
- 1991–presentOngoingHorn of Africa
Somali civil war
Trigger: The collapse of the Siad Barre government and clan-based competition for the state.
Outcome: State collapse, famine, the 1993 US withdrawal, the rise of al-Shabaab and a long African Union stabilisation effort. A federal government now holds Mogadishu while insurgency persists.
- 1994EndedAfrica
Rwandan genocide
Trigger: The shooting down of the presidential aircraft amid a collapsing peace accord.
Outcome: Around 800,000 killed in 100 days while international forces stood down. It drove the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and destabilised the Congo for a decade.
- 1998–2000EndedHorn of Africa
Eritrea–Ethiopia war
Trigger: A border dispute at Badme after Eritrean independence.
Outcome: Tens of thousands dead over contested scrubland, a frozen border until the 2018 rapprochement, and an alignment that later shaped the Tigray war.
- 2001–2021EndedCentral Asia
War in Afghanistan
Trigger: The 11 September attacks and the Taliban's refusal to surrender al-Qaeda leadership.
Outcome: Twenty years of occupation and state-building ended with the 2021 withdrawal and immediate Taliban restoration.
- 2003–2011EndedMiddle East
Iraq War
Trigger: US-led invasion premised on weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Outcome: Regime change, insurgency and sectarian war; the conditions for ISIS and a durable expansion of Iranian influence. It also damaged the credibility of Western intelligence claims.
- 2011–presentOngoingMiddle East
Syrian civil war
Trigger: Repression of Arab Spring protests escalating into armed revolt.
Outcome: Chemical-weapons use, Russian and Iranian intervention, ISIS's rise and fall, mass displacement, and the collapse of the Assad government in late 2024 into a contested transition.
- 2014–presentOngoingEurope
Russia–Ukraine war
Trigger: Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for Donbas separatists in 2014, escalating to full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Outcome: The largest European land war since 1945, sustained nuclear signalling, NATO enlargement to Finland and Sweden, and the effective end of the post-Cold War arms-control architecture.
- 2014–presentOngoingMiddle East
Yemen civil war
Trigger: Houthi seizure of Sanaa and the Saudi-led coalition intervention that followed.
Outcome: One of the world's worst humanitarian crises, and since 2023 a direct threat to Red Sea shipping that reroutes global trade around the Cape.
- 2020–2022EndedHorn of Africa
Tigray war
Trigger: A breakdown between the federal government and the TPLF over elections and command of northern forces.
Outcome: Hundreds of thousands dead from fighting, famine and denial of services; the Pretoria agreement halted major combat but left Amhara and Oromia insurgencies burning.
- 2023–presentOngoingHorn of Africa
Sudan civil war
Trigger: The rupture between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces over integration terms.
Outcome: The world's largest displacement crisis, famine conditions in Darfur and Kordofan, and a proxy contest drawing in Gulf and regional backers.
- 2023–presentOngoingMiddle East
Gaza war and regional escalation
Trigger: The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and Israel's subsequent campaign in Gaza.
Outcome: Mass civilian casualties, direct Israel–Iran exchanges in 2024 and 2025, strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and the closest the region has come to open interstate war in decades.
Compiled from UCDP/PRIO conflict data, SIPRI yearbooks and contemporaneous reporting. Dates mark major combat phases rather than formal declarations.