A quarter of the way through the 21st century, the horror and guilt inspired by two world wars appear to have vanished. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the leaders of Russia, Israel and the United States apparently believe war is an effective method of statecraft.

The Swedish Uppsala Conflict Data Program confirmed last month that states were involved in 65 conflicts in 2025, the highest number since statistics were first gathered in 1946. Conflict claimed nearly 250,000 lives in 2025 alone.

“The West took a holiday from war and now it’s coming back,” Shashank Joshi, outgoing defence editor, now Washington bureau chief, of the Economist said on The Intelligence podcast.

The drone revolution fostered in the Ukraine war has enabled underdogs Ukraine and Iran to hold their own against far more powerful aggressors. Compared to earlier 21st century wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “the Iran war looks far more like the Russia-Ukraine war, with its proliferation of inexpensive, one-way attack drones, rapid advancements in surveillance and targeting, huge use of munitions and the expansion of the battlefield well beyond traditional military targets”, former US defence secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in The New York Times in April.

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Ukraine pioneered the use of large numbers of cheap game drones to achieve transparency on the battlefield. Air superiority no longer provides cover for ground........

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