Continuity and Change in the Evolution of Warfare

The enormous uncertainty surrounding the evolution of the global political system and the future of international war is all the more reason to place current debates in a broader historical context and to examine current trends and future scenarios in terms of long-term patterns and trends in war. For these purposes we begin with a descriptive analysis of historical patterns and trends in warfare. We start with the origins of the modern system at the end of the fifteenth century and continue through the last five centuries. We focus on secular trends and avoid the more problematic question of cyclical trends in war. We then undertake a more detailed analysis of trends in international war during the last two centuries of the modern system, with particular attention to the periods since WWII and since the end of the Cold War. We interpret these trends in terms of some of the major military, economic, and sociopolitical revolutions of the past, and we use this interpretation of past and current trends as a point of departure for speculations about the future of war in a rapidly changing global system. [Author]