effects of war on soldiers essay

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Article contents

The conduct and consequences of war.

• Alyssa K. Prorok Alyssa K. Prorok Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
•  and  Paul K. Huth Paul K. Huth Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.72
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017
• This version: 25 June 2019
• Previous version

The academic study of warfare has expanded considerably over the past 15 years. Whereas research used to focus almost exclusively on the onset of interstate war, more recent scholarship has shifted the focus from wars between states to civil conflict, and from war onset to questions of how combatants wage and terminate war. Questioned as well are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarship has also shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are attentive to individual-level motives and explanations of spatial variation in wartime behavior by civilians and combatants within a country or armed conflict. Today, research focuses on variations in how states and rebel groups wage war, particularly regarding when and how wars expand, whether combatants comply with the laws of war, when and why conflicts terminate, and whether conflicts end with a clear military victory or with a political settlement through negotiations. Recent research also recognizes that strategic behavior continues into the post-conflict period, with important implications for the stability of the post-conflict peace. Finally, the consequences of warfare are wide-ranging and complex, affecting everything from political stability to public health, often long after the fighting stops.

• interstate war
• laws of war
• civilian victimization
• war termination
• war severity
• post-conflict peace

Updated in this version

Updated introduction, subheadings, references, and substantial revision throughout.

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Three simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the early 2000s. First, studies of the dynamics of civil war have proliferated. Second, war is conceptualized as a series of inter-related stages in which the onset, conduct, and termination of wars as well as post-war relations are analyzed theoretically and empirically in a more integrated fashion. Third, studies have shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are sensitive to spatial variation in behavior within a country or conflict.

This article reviews and assesses this body of recent scholarship, which has shifted the focus from war onset to questions of how combatants wage war and what are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarly research examines the conduct and consequences of both interstate and civil wars.

The analysis is organized into three main sections. It begins with research on how states and rebel groups wage war, with particular attention given to questions regarding war expansion, compliance with the laws of war, and war severity. Section two turns to the literature on war duration, termination, and outcomes. Different explanations are discussed, for when and why wars come to an end; then, the question of how war’s end influences the prospects for a stable post-war peace is considered. In section three, recent scholarship is examined on the consequences of war for post-war trends in political stability and public health. The concluding discussion addresses some of the important contributions associated with recent scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war as well as promising directions for future research.

The Waging of Civil and International Wars

What accounts for the nature of the wars we see? This broad question drives a new research tradition in conflict studies that compliments traditional analyses of war onset by shifting the focus to state behavior during war. This research goes beyond understandings of why states fight one another to engaging questions of why states join ongoing wars, when and why they follow the laws of war, and what explains the severity of wars. Taken together, these questions open the black box of wartime behavior.

Intervention and the Expansion of Interstate Wars

Research on war expansion developed as a natural outgrowth of analyses of war onset: scholars studying why states initiate conflict shifted focus to understand why third parties join ongoing wars. The link between alliances and joining behavior has been central to studies of war expansion, spawning a broad research tradition that focuses on alliances and geography, differences among types of alliances, and the characteristics of alliance members. Siverson and Starr ( 1991 ), for example, find a strong interaction effect between geography and alliances, in that a warring neighbor who is an ally increases the likelihood of a state joining an existing conflict. Leeds, Long, and Mitchell ( 2000 ) also find that the specific content of alliance obligations is critical to understanding when states choose to intervene, and that states uphold the terms of their alliance commitments nearly 75% of the time. Most recently, Vasquez and Rundlett ( 2016 ) found that alliances are essentially a necessary condition for war expansion, highlighting the importance of this factor in explaining joining behavior.

Alliance behavior is also an important topic in the study of democratic wartime behavior. While Choi ( 2004 ) presents findings suggesting that democracies are particularly likely to align with one another, Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) provide counter-evidence that democracies are willing to align with non-democracies when it serves their strategic interests. Given the tendency to uphold alliance obligations, and empirical evidence showing that war initiators are more successful when their adversary does not receive third-party assistance (Gartner & Siverson, 1996 ), recent theoretical research suggests that states, understanding joining dynamics, might manipulate war aims to reduce the likelihood of outside intervention (Werner, 2000 ).

These studies suggest that war expansion should be understood as the consequence of a decision calculus undertaken by potential joiners. While much of the contemporary literature focuses on alliance behavior, this only indirectly gets at the question of who will join ongoing conflicts. A full explanation of war expansion from this perspective would also require that we explain when states form alliances in the first place. Further, the analyses of Gartner and Siverson ( 1996 ) and of Werner ( 2000 ) suggest that strategic thinking must be the focus of future research on war expansion. Recent research begins to address this issue: DiLorenzo and Rooney ( 2018 ) examine how uncertainty over estimates of third party resolve influence war-making decisions of states, finding that rival states are more likely to initiate conflict when domestic power shifts in potential joiner states (i.e., allies) increase uncertainty over the strength of that alliance commitment. Future research should continue to investigate the links between expectations of third-party behavior and initial war initiation decisions, as this research highlights important selection processes that empirical research has not yet fully explored.

Finally, recent research goes further to connect war initiation and expansion by arguing that commitment problems—one of the key bargaining failures leading to war initiation—also helps explain war expansion. Shirkey ( 2018 ) finds that wars caused by commitment rather than information problems are more likely to expand, as they are generally fought over greater war aims, are more severe, and last longer. These factors generate risks and rewards for intervention that encourage expansion.

The literature on interstate war expansion has made progress in the last decade with much closer attention to modeling strategic calculations by combatants and potential interveners. The result has been a better understanding of the interrelationship between onset and joining behavior and the realization that the timing and the sequence in which sides intervene is critical to war expansion (Joyce, Ghosn, & Bayer, 2014 ).

Expansion of Civil Wars

The analog to studies of war expansion in the interstate context has traditionally been the study of intervention in the civil war context. Research in this field treats the decision to intervene in much the same way as the war expansion literature treats the potential joiner’s decision calculus. That is, intervention is the result of a rational, utility-maximizing decision calculus in which potential interveners consider the costs and benefits of intervention as well as the potential for achieving desired outcomes. Understood in these terms, both domestic and international strategic considerations affect the decision to intervene, with the Cold War geopolitical climate much more conducive to countervailing interventions than the post-Cold War era has been (Regan, 2002a ), and peacekeeping-oriented interventions most likely in states with ethnic, trade, military, or colonial ties to the intervening state (Rost & Greig, 2011 ).

Whether states are most likely to intervene in easy or hard cases is a central question. While Aydin ( 2010 ) showed that states will delay intervention when previous interventions by other states have failed to influence the conflict, Rost and Grieg ( 2011 ) showed that state-based interventions for peacekeeping purposes are most likely in tough cases—long ethnic wars and conflicts that kill and displace large numbers of civilians. Finally, Gent ( 2008 ) shows that the likelihood of success may not affect the intervention decision equally for government and opposition-targeted interventions. He finds that both types of intervention are more likely when governments face stronger rebel groups, thus implying that intervention in support of rebel groups occurs when the likelihood of success is highest, but intervention supporting governments is most likely when states face their most intense challenges.

There are two likely sources of the discrepancies in this literature. First, most analyses have focused exclusively on the intervener’s decision calculus, or the supply side, failing to account for variation in the demand for intervention. Second, there is significant inconsistency in the literature’s treatment of the goals of interveners. Some analyses assume that states intervene to end conflicts, while others don’t make this limiting assumption but still fail to distinguish among interventions for different purposes.

Newer research takes important strides to address these issues. First, Salehyan, Skrede Gleditsch, and Cunningham ( 2011 ) developed a theory of third party support for insurgent groups that explicitly modeled both supply-side and demand-side factors driving the intervention decision. They found that demand is greatest among weak rebel groups, but supply is greatest for strong groups. Second, research by Cunningham ( 2010 ) explicitly measured whether third party states intervene with independent goals, and Stojek and Chacha ( 2015 ) theorized that intervention behavior is driven by economic motivations. Trade ties increase the likelihood of intervention on the side of the government.

Finally, Kathman ( 2010 ) focused on contiguous state interveners in examining motives for intervention. He developed a measure of conflict infection risk that predicts the likelihood of conflict spreading to each contiguous state. Empirically, he finds that, as the risk of contagion increases, so does the probability of intervention by at-risk neighbors. This research develops a convincing mechanism and empirical test to explain a subset of interventions and provides a clear link from intervention research to recent research on civil conflict contagion. While the contagion literature is too broad to review here, mechanisms posited for civil war expansion across borders range from refugee flows (Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2006 ), to ethnic kinship ties (Forsberg, 2014 ), to increased military expenditures in neighboring states (Phillips, 2015 ).

The literature on intervention into civil wars has grown significantly over the past decade as internationalization of civil conflicts has become common and often results in escalatory dynamics that are of deep concern to analysts and policymakers.

Compliance With the Laws of War

Scholars have recently begun studying the conditions under which compliance with the laws of war is most likely and the mechanisms most important in determining compliance. This research shifts the focus toward understanding state behavior during war and the strategic and normative considerations that influence decision-making processes of states. Two key questions drive scholarship in this tradition; first, does international law constrain state behavior, even when the state is threatened by severe conflict, and second, can observed compliance be attributed to ratification status, or is it instead a result of strategic decision making?

Scholars have yet to provide conclusive answers to these questions; while compliance is observed in many circumstances, most scholars attribute observed restraint to factors other than international law. Legro ( 1995 ), for example, found that international agreements had limited impact on Britain and Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, and chemical weapons during WWII. In analyses of civilian targeting during interstate war, Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2006 ) also found that international law itself has little impact on a state’s propensity for civilian targeting. Downes argued that civilian targeting occurs most often when states are fighting protracted wars of attrition and desire to save lives on their own side, or when they intend to annex enemy territory with potentially hostile civilians. Valentino et al. ( 2006 ) similarly found that the decision to target civilians is driven by strategic considerations and is unconstrained by treaty obligations relating to the laws of war. Finally, Fazal and Greene ( 2015 ) found that observed compliance is explained by identity rather than law; violations are much more common in European vs. non-European dyads than in other types of dyads.

While these analyses suggest that international law has little effect on state behavior and that observed compliance is incidental, Price ( 1997 ) and Morrow ( 2014 ) argued that law does exert some influence on compliance behavior. Price attributed variation in the use of chemical weapons to the terms of international agreements, arguing that complete bans are more effective than partial bans. Morrow ( 2014 ), however, demonstrated that law’s impact varies depending upon issue area, regime characteristics, and adversary identity. Of eight issue areas, he found the worst compliance records on civilian targeting and prisoners of war, which perhaps accounts for the largely negative conclusions drawn by Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2006 ). Additionally, Morrow found, unlike Valentino et al., that democratic states are more likely to comply after ratification than before, suggesting that obligations under international law do affect state behavior, at least in democracies. Finally, he demonstrated that compliance increases significantly when an adversary has also ratified a given treaty, arguing this effect is due to reciprocity.

More recent scholarship expands this research, showing that law may affect state behavior through additional mechanisms that previous research had not considered. For example, Kreps and Wallace ( 2016 ) and Wallace ( 2015 ) found that public support for state policies as diverse as drone strikes and torture of prisoners of war are critically influenced by international law. International condemnation of U.S. policies reduces public support most when such condemnation focuses on legal critiques. This suggests that international law influences state behavior in democracies through its effect on public opinion, not through liberal norms of nonviolence. Additionally, Appel and Prorok ( 2018 ) and Jo and Thompson ( 2014 ) showed that external constraints influence states’ compliance behavior. Specifically, Appel and Prorok showed that states target fewer civilians in interstate war when they are embedded in alliance and trade networks dominated by third party states who have ratified international treaties prohibiting the abuse of non-combatants during war. Jo and Thompson showed that states are more likely to grant international observers access to detention centers when they are more reliant upon foreign aid. These findings suggest that international law can influence state behavior indirectly, through pressure exerted by international donors and backers.

Scholarship on compliance with the laws of war in interstate wars has made considerable progress over the past decade. We now know much more about the contingent support of democratic state leaders and publics for compliance with the laws of war. This key finding opens up new areas of research on the strategic efforts of political and military leaders to convince publics of their commitment to international law and whether those strategies are likely to be successful.

Civilian Targeting in Civil War

The mistreatment and deliberate targeting of civilian populations is an active area of research by scholars who study civil wars (Hultman, 2007 ; Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006 ; Kalyvas, 2006 ; Valentino et al., 2004 ; Weinstein, 2007 ; Wickham-Crowley, 1990 ). Most research on this topic treats the use of violence against civilians as a strategic choice; that is, combatants target civilians to induce their compliance, signal resolve, weaken an opponent’s support base, or extract resources from the population. In his seminal work on the topic, Kalyvas ( 2006 ) demonstrated that combatants resort to the use of indiscriminate violence to coerce civilian populations when they lack the information and control necessary to target defectors selectively. Similarly, Valentino ( 2005 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2004 ) found that incumbents are more likely to resort to mass killing of civilians when faced with strong insurgent opponents that they are unable to defeat through more conventional tactics.

More recent analyses have built upon these earlier works, adding levels of complexity to the central theories developed previously and examining new forms of violence that previous studies did not. Balcells ( 2011 ) brought political considerations back in, finding that direct violence is most likely in areas where pre-conflict political power between state and rebel supporters was at parity, while indirect violence is most likely in locations where the adversary’s pre-war political support was highest. Wood ( 2010 ) accounted for the impact of relative strength and adversary strategy, finding that weak rebel groups, lacking the capacity to protect civilian populations, will increase their use of violence in response to state violence, while strong rebel groups display the opposite pattern of behavior. Lyall ( 2010a ) also found conditionalities in the relationship between state behavior and insurgent reactions, demonstrating that government “sweep” operations are much more effective at preventing and delaying insurgent violence when carried out by forces of the same ethnicity as the insurgent group. Finally, Cohen ( 2016 ) advanced research by focusing on wartime sexual violence. She found that rape, like other forms of violence, is used strategically in civil war. Specifically, armed groups use rape as a socialization tactic: groups that recruit through abduction engage in rape at higher rates, to generate loyalty and trust between soldiers.

This large body of research provides many insights into the strategic use of violence against civilians during civil war. However, until recently, little research addressed questions of compliance with legal obligations. With the recent formation of the International Criminal Court, however, states and rebel groups are now subject to legal investigation for failure to comply with basic principles of the laws of war.

Emerging research suggests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international law more generally do affect the behavior of civil war combatants. For example, Hillebrecht ( 2016 ) found that ICC actions during the Libyan civil war reduced the level of mass atrocities committed in the conflict, while Jo and Simmons ( 2016 ) found that the ICC reduces civilian targeting by governments and rebel groups that are seeking legitimacy, suggesting international legal institutions can reduce violations of humanitarian law during civil war. These findings should be tempered, however, by recent research suggesting that ICC involvement in civil wars can, under certain conditions, extend ongoing conflicts (Prorok, 2017 ).

Finally, beyond the ICC, Stanton ( 2016 ) and Jo ( 2015 ) both demonstrated that international law constrains civil war actors by establishing standards against which domestic and international constituencies judge the behavior of governments and rebel groups. Particularly when rebels are seeking legitimacy, Jo argues, they are more likely to comply with international legal standards in a variety of areas, from protection of civilian populations to child soldiering. This research suggests that even without direct intervention by the ICC, international law can influence the behavior of governments and rebels engaged in civil war.

While recent research has shown that the laws of war can influence civilian targeting in civil wars, the large loss of civilian life in the Syrian civil war highlights how fragile the commitment to international law can be. It points to important future research questions about when threats of various sanctions by the international community against non-compliance are actually credible and which actors can apply effective coercive pressure.

Losses Suffered in Wars

Recent scholarship has taken up the issue of war severity. Empirical research suggests that the tactics and strategies used by states during war, and the political pressures that compel them to adopt those policies, affect the severity of conflict. Biddle ( 2004 ), for instance, argued that war-fighting strategies influence the magnitude of losses sustained during war, and found that states employing the modern system of force reduce their exposure to lethal firepower, thus limiting losses. Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2010 ) examined the reasons behind different strategic choices, arguing that democratic sensitivity to the costs of war pressure democratic leaders to adopt military policies designed to limit fatalities. They found that increasing military capabilities decreases civilian and military fatalities, while reliance on guerrilla or attrition strategies, as well as fighting on or near one’s own territory, increases fatalities. They reported that democracies are significantly more likely to join powerful alliances and less likely to use attrition or guerrilla strategies, or to fight on their own territory.

Speaking to the conventional wisdom that interstate warfare is on the decline, recent research by Fazal ( 2014 ) suggests that modern medical advances mean that, while war has become less fatal, it has not necessarily become less severe. This raises questions about common understandings of broad trends in conflict frequency and severity as well as questions about best practices for measuring conflict severity. Future research should grapple with both of these issues.

Civil war studies have recently begun to focus more on conflict severity as an outcome in need of explanation. Many key explanatory factors in early research mirrored those in interstate war research, making comparison possible. For example, like interstate war, civil war scholarship consistently finds that democracies suffer less severe conflicts than nondemocracies (Heger & Salehyan, 2007 ; Lacina, 2006 ; Lujala, 2009 ). Regarding state military strength, research by Lujala ( 2009 ) demonstrated that relative equality between government and rebel forces leads to the deadliest conflicts, as rebels with the strength to fight back will likely inflict more losses than those without the ability to sustain heavy engagement with government forces. Finally, recent research by Balcells and Kalyvas ( 2014 ) mirrored work on interstate war by focusing on how the military strategies adopted by combatants affect conflict intensity. They found that civil conflicts fought via conventional means tend to be more lethal than irregular or symmetric nonconventional (SNC) wars, as only the former involve direct confrontations with heavy weaponry. While research on conflict severity is still developing, these studies suggest that democracy, military strength, and strategy are consistent predictors of conflict severity, although the mechanisms posited for the effects of these variables sometimes differ between civil and interstate war.

What this research does not provide clear answers on is how battle losses trend throughout the course of conflict, as most factors examined in the above research are static throughout a conflict. As our ability to measure conflict severity at a more micro temporal and spatial level has improved, emerging research is beginning to address these questions. For example, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2014 ) find that increasing UN troop presence decreases battlefield deaths by increasing the costs of perpetrating violence. Dasgupta Gawande, and Kapur ( 2017 ) also found reductions in insurgent violence associated with implementation of development programs, though the pacifying effects of such programs are conditional upon local state capacity. Additional research shows that trends in violence in Islamist insurgencies vary predictably, with violence suppressed due to anticipated social disapproval during important Islamic holidays (Reese, Ruby, & Pape, 2017 ). Recent research also suggests local variation in cell-phone coverage affects local levels of insurgent violence, as increasing cell-phone communication improves the state’s ability to gather information and monitor insurgent behavior, thereby reducing insurgent violence (Shapiro & Weidmann, 2015 ). These recent studies represent an important trend in conflict severity research that more carefully examines the dynamics of escalation and de-escalation within given conflicts, both spatially and temporally. We encourage additional research in this vein.

The Duration, Termination, and Outcome of War

What accounts for the duration, termination, and outcomes of interstate and civil wars, and the durability of the peace that follows these conflicts? These questions represent a central focus of contemporary conflict studies, and are closely linked in terms of their explanations. A major innovation in this literature in the past 10 to 15 years has been the extension of the bargaining model of war from its original application in the context of war onset (Blainey, 1973 ; Fearon, 1995 ) to its use in the context of war duration, termination, and outcome.

The turn to bargaining models has placed relative military capabilities and battlefield developments at the center of much of the theoretical literature in this area. This focus, however, has spawned a backlash in recent years, as patterns that contradict the implications of bargaining models are detected and theorized. The bargaining approach and its critiques are discussed in the following sections.

Duration of Wars

Understood within the bargaining framework, war duration is closely linked to factors that influence the relative strength of combatants. Theoretical and empirical research suggests that longer wars occur when opponents of relatively equal strength cannot achieve breakthroughs on the battlefield (Bennett & Stam, 1996 ; Filson & Werner, 2007b ; Slantchev, 2004 ), although this pattern does not hold for wars involving non-state actors where a large asymmetry in power increases war duration (Sullivan, 2008 ).

Additional research suggests, however, that relative military strength may not be the best predictor of war duration. Bennett and Stam ( 1996 ), for example, demonstrated that military strategy has a large impact on war duration, independent of military strength, with attrition and punishment strategies leading to longer wars than maneuver strategies. The type of political objectives sought by a war initiator may also offset the impact of military strength, as war aims that require significant target compliance generally lead to longer wars (Sullivan, 2008 ). Still others argue that domestic political sensitivity to concessions-making increases conflict duration, while domestic cost sensitivity leads to shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007a ; Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Thus, democracies are expected to fight shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007b ), whereas mixed regimes will fight longer wars as they gamble for resurrection in the face of high domestic costs for war losses (Goemans, 2000 ). Research by Lyall ( 2010b ), however, suggests that this relationship is conditional upon conflict type, as he found no relationship between democracy and war duration in the context of counterinsurgency wars.

Biddle ( 2004 ) more directly challenged bargaining models of war duration by comparing the predictive power of models including traditional measures of relative military capabilities to those accounting for combatants’ methods of force employment. Biddle demonstrated that models taking force employment into account generate more accurate predictions of war duration than those assuming an unconditional relationship between military power and war duration. A second important challenge to traditional applications of bargaining models comes from Reiter ( 2009 ). He demonstrated that the argument that decisive battlefield outcomes promote quick termination is conditional upon the absence of commitment problems. When compliance fears dominate information asymmetries, battle losses and the expectation of future losses may not be sufficient to end conflict, as belligerents will continue fighting in pursuit of absolute victory to eliminate the threat of the losing state defecting from post-war settlements. Reiter thus demonstrates that commitment problems and information asymmetries have varying effects on war duration, and both must be accounted for in models of conflict duration and termination.

Despite these critiques, more recent research continues to approach the question of war duration from the bargaining perspective. Shirkey ( 2012 ), for example, argued that late third-party joiners to interstate conflicts lengthen those disputes by complicating the bargaining process. Joiners add new issues to the war and increase uncertainty about relative power among combatants, thus requiring additional fighting to reveal information and find a bargained solution. Weisiger ( 2016 ) similarly focused on information problems, but attempts to unpack the mechanism by focusing on more specific characteristics of battlefield events. Using new data on the timing of battle deaths for specific war participants, Weisiger found that settlement is more likely after more extensive fighting, and that states are more likely to make concessions after their battle results have deteriorated. Finally, recent research has also begun to problematize resolve, considering how variation in actors’ resolve affects their willingness to stay in a fight or cut losses (Kertzer, 2017 ). This represents a fruitful area for future research, as conceptually and empirically unpacking resolve will shed new light on costs of war and how they relate to war onset, duration, and termination.

Scholars studying the duration of civil wars also commonly apply a rationalist perspective. Factors that increase the costs of sustaining the fight generally shorten wars, while those that raise the costs of making concessions tend to lengthen conflicts. Along these lines, research suggests that the availability of contraband funding for rebel groups lengthens conflicts by providing rebels with the economic resources to sustain their campaigns (Fearon, 2004 ). However, additional research demonstrates that the influence of contraband is mitigated by fluctuations in its market value (Collier, Hoeffler, & Söderbom, 2004 ), by how rebels earn funding from resources (through smuggling versus extortion; Conrad, Greene, Igoe Walsh, & Whitaker, 2018 ), and by the composition of state institutions (Wiegand & Keels, 2018 ).

Research suggests that structural conditions also affect civil war duration, such as the stakes of war, ethnic divisions, and the number of combatants involved. For example, ethnic conflicts over control of territory are generally longer than those fought over control of the central government (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon, 2004 ). Regarding the role of ethnicity, Wucherpfennig, Metternich, Cederman, and Skrede Gleditsch ( 2012 ) demonstrated that the effect of ethnic cleavages is conditional on their relationship to political institutions. Regarding the complexity of the conflict, Cunningham ( 2011 ) found that civil wars with a greater number of combatants on each side are longer than those with fewer combatants. Findley ( 2013 ), however, showed that the number of conflict actors has varying effects across different stages of conflict, encouraging cooperation early on while impeding lasting settlement.

Third party intervention has also received significant attention in the civil war duration literature, with scholars generally arguing that intervention affects duration by augmenting the military strength of combatants. Empirical findings in early studies are mixed, however; while results consistently show that unbiased intervention or simultaneous intervention on both sides of a conflict increase war duration (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, & Joyce, 2008 ; Regan, 2002b ), biased interventions generate more inconsistent results.

In a valuable study addressing limitations of earlier research, Cunningham ( 2010 ) focused on the goals of third parties, and found that when interveners pursue agendas that are independent of those of the internal combatants, wars are more difficult to terminate due to decreased incentives to negotiate and a higher likelihood that commitment problems stymie settlements. This suggests that the empirical finding that intervention lengthens war may be driven by a subset of cases in which third parties intervene with specific goals. Ultimately, analyses focused on intervention do not account for the potential selection effect that influences when states will intervene. If Gent ( 2008 ) is correct, biased intervention should be most likely when the power ratio between government and rebel forces is close to parity, a factor which, if ignored, may bias the results of these analyses.

More recent studies have continued to unpack intervention, demonstrating that there are important distinctions beyond the biased versus balanced debate. Sawyer, Cunningham, and Reed ( 2015 ), for example, showed that different types of external support affect rebel fighting capacity differently. Specifically, fungible types of support like financial and arms transfers are particularly likely to lengthen conflict because they increase uncertainty over relative power. Similarly, Narang ( 2015 ) also focused on the uncertainty induced by external support. He showed that humanitarian assistance inadvertently increases both actors’ uncertainty over relative power, thereby prolonging civil war.

Until recently, this literature suffered from a major weakness in that it relied empirically on state-level variables that did not fully capture the dyadic nature of its theoretical propositions. Cunningham, Skrede Gleditsch, and Salehyan ( 2013 ) new dyadic data represents an important contribution to the field, as it explicitly measures the relative strength, mobilization capacity, and fighting capacity of rebel groups and applies a truly dyadic empirical approach. New research in this field should continue to approach questions of war duration and outcome with dyadic data and theory along with more micro-level studies that seek to explain variation in rebel and state fighting across different geographic locations and over time (e.g., Greig, 2015 ).

Ending Wars as a Bargaining Process

Interstate wars rarely end in the complete destruction of the defeated party’s military forces. Instead, new information is revealed through combat operations and negotiating behavior which enables belligerents to converge on a mutually agreeable settlement short of total war. Wittman ( 1979 ) provided the first formal articulation of the bargaining model in the context of war termination. He argued theoretically that war continues until both adversaries believe they can be made better off through settlement. Subsequent analyses have focused on both the battlefield conditions and strategies of negotiations leading states to believe settlement is the better option.

These analyses show that, as a state’s resources are depleted from battle losses, it has incentives to negotiate a settlement more acceptable to its adversary rather than suffer total defeat (Filson & Werner, 2002 ; Smith & Stam, 2004 ). Further, fighting battles reduces uncertainty by revealing information about resolve, military effectiveness, and the true balance of power between adversaries, causing expectations on the likely outcome of the war to converge, and making settlement possible (Wagner, 2000 ). Wartime negotiations provide adversaries with additional information, which Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued makes war termination more likely.

Challenging traditional notions regarding the likelihood of termination in the face of large asymmetries in capabilities, Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued that war termination depends upon states’ abilities to both impose and bear the costs of fighting. If a weaker state can minimize the costs it bears while forcing its adversary to expand its war effort, the benefits of fighting relative to its costs are reduced, and the stronger state may choose termination. The implication of this argument relates closely to Biddle’s ( 2004 ) empirical critique of the bargaining literature, which finds modern methods of force employment can mitigate losses during war, thereby shifting the balance of costs and benefits independent of relative military capabilities. Reiter’s ( 2009 ) critique of bargaining approaches also has implications for war termination. While traditional approaches argue that fighting battles reveals information and increases the likelihood of termination, Reiter suggested that this is only the case if belligerents expect their opponent to comply with the post-war status quo. If commitment problems are severe, information revealed during battles and war-time negotiations will have little effect on termination.

Biddle’s argument that country-year measures of military capabilities are inexact and crude proxies for the concepts advanced in theoretical models is a strong one that should be taken seriously by scholars. We therefore appreciate the contributions of Ramsay ( 2008 ) and Weisiger ( 2016 ), which use more fine-grained battle trend data rather than country-level measures of military capabilities to empirically test the implications of bargaining theories of war termination, and advocate future research adopting this strategy for testing the implications of bargaining theories.

Much of the literature on civil war termination also focuses on how battlefield developments affect the termination of civil wars. Collier et al. ( 2004 ) built on the idea of war as an information revelation mechanism, arguing that the probability of settlement should increase as war duration increases and more information is revealed regarding the relative strength of each side. Others focus on the costs of battle, with research showing that settlements are more likely when the costs of battle are high and the relative payoffs from victory decrease (Walter, 2002 ). Also, a relatively equal balance of power between combatants creates a mutually hurting stalemate, in which neither side can achieve victory, and settlement becomes more likely (Walter, 2002 ).

Empirical results support many of these theoretical predictions. Several scholars show that the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to terminate (Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon,, 2004 ; Regan, 2002b ), and that the probability of negotiated settlement increases as conflict duration increases (Mason, Weingarten, & Fett, 1999 ). The magnitude of conflict, measured as total war deaths, also correlates positively with the probability of adversaries initiating negotiations (Walter, 2002 ). Finally, Walter ( 2002 ) found that military stalemates significantly increase the likelihood of negotiations as well as the implementation of a ceasefire.

While these results support the theoretical predictions surrounding “hurting stalemates,” Walter’s coding of stalemates does not account for the timing of the stalemate or the number of stalemates that occur throughout the course of conflict. We therefore see great value in more recent research that uses new micro-level data to more closely capture actual battle dynamics and incorporate more information at the conflict and group-level. For example, Hultquist ( 2013 ) used a novel troop strength measure to better capture relative strength between rebel and government forces. He found that relative power parity increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement, while power imbalances extend civil war. Making use of fine-grained data on battle event dates and locations, Greig ( 2015 ) showed that the location, and changes in location over time, of battle events relays information to combatants that, in turn, affects their willingness to negotiate and settle their conflicts. We encourage additional research in this vein moving forward.

Domestic-Level Factors and War Termination

Recent research suggests that domestic political conditions influence war termination. Specifically, domestic political accountability, the domestic audience’s expectations, and cost-sensitivity affect leaders’ decisions to continue fighting versus settling on specific terms (Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Along these lines, Goemans ( 2000 ) argued that the postwar fate of leaders influences their choice between terminating and continuing a war. The threat of severe punishment by domestic actors increases the costs of war losses for leaders of semi-repressive regimes, leading them to continue fighting a war they are losing in the hope of achieving victory. Thus, war termination does not follow strictly from battle trends.

Empirically, Goemans ( 2000 ) found that losing mixed regimes suffer significantly more battle deaths than democratic or autocratic losers, and that wars fought against losing mixed regimes last, on average, almost twice as long as those fought against either democratic or autocratic losers. Taken together, these results suggest that mixed regime leaders are likely to sustain rather than terminate a losing war, and more generally, that regime type significantly influences war termination. Croco ( 2015 ) refined Goemans’s work by arguing that the individual responsibility of leaders for involving their country in a war has important effects on war termination patterns, with culpable leaders more likely to fight for victory in order to avoid being punished domestically for poor wartime performance. Croco and Weeks ( 2013 ) refined this logic further, showing that only culpable leaders from democracies and vulnerable nondemocracies face increased punishment risk from war losses. Koch and Sullivan ( 2010 ) provide another take on the relationship between domestic politics and war termination, demonstrating that partisanship significantly affects democratic states’ war termination decisions. Faced with declining approval for military interventions, their results demonstrate, right-leaning governments will continue the fight, while left-leaning executives will be more likely to end their military engagements.

The analog to studying domestic-level factors in interstate conflict would be to examine the effect of internal state and rebel characteristics on civil war termination. Traditionally, civil war studies have focused only on state characteristics, as data on rebel groups’ organization and internal characteristics has been unavailable. Early research argued that state capacity, regime characteristics, and ethnic/religious divisions influenced war termination by influencing the balance of power, accountability of leaders, and stakes of conflict, but empirical results provided mixed support for these theories (e.g., DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ; Svensson, 2007 ; Walter, 2002 ).

More recent research has made significant strides in understanding how internal characteristics of combatants affect civil conflict termination by using new data to explore how the composition and practices (i.e., leader characteristics, governance, and internal cohesion) of rebel groups influence civil conflict dynamics. This research demonstrates that some of the same leader-accountability mechanisms that affect interstate war termination also influence civil conflict. For example, Prorok ( 2016 ) used novel data on rebel group leaders to show that culpable leaders are less willing to terminate or settle for compromise outcomes than their non-culpable counterparts in civil wars, just like in interstate conflicts. Heger and Jung ( 2017 ) also advanced existing research by using novel data on rebel service provision to civilian populations to explore how good rebel governance affects conflict negotiations. They found that service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and to achieve favorable results, arguing that this reflects the lower risk of spoilers from groups with broad support and centralized power structures. Finally, Findley and Rudloff ( 2012 ) examined rebel group fragmentation’s effects on conflict termination and outcomes. Using computational modeling, they find that fragmentation only sometimes increases war duration (on fragmentation, also see Cunningham, 2014 ).

These studies underscore the value of exploring rebel group internal structures and practices in greater detail in future research, as they have an important impact on how, and when, civil wars end.

Victory/Defeat in Wars

Recent scholarship on victory and defeat in war suggests, as in the duration and termination literatures, that domestic politics, strategies of force employment, military mechanization, and war aims mediate the basic relationship between military strength and victory. Empirical results show that strategy choices and methods of force employment have a greater impact on war outcomes than relative military capabilities (Biddle, 2004 ; Stam, 1996 ), that high levels of mechanization within state militaries actually increase the probability of state defeat in counterinsurgency wars (Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ), and that weak states win more often when they employ an opposite-strategy approach in asymmetric conflicts (Arreguin-Toft, 2006 ) or when the stronger party’s war aims require high levels of target compliance (Sullivan, 2007 ). High relative losses and increasing war duration also decrease the likelihood of victory for war initiators, even if prewar capabilities favored the aggressor (Slantchev, 2004 ).

More recent research focuses on counter-insurgent conflicts, using new micro-level data and modeling techniques to address questions of counterinsurgent effectiveness in these complex conflicts. For example, Toft and Zhukov ( 2012 ) evaluated the effectiveness of denial versus punishment strategies, finding that denial (i.e., increasing the costs of expanding insurgent violence) is most effective, while punishment is counterproductive. Relatedly, Weidmann and Salehyan ( 2013 ) used an agent-based model applied to the U.S. surge in Baghdad to understand the mechanisms behind the surge’s success. They found that ethnic homogenization, rather than increased counterinsurgent capacity, best accounts for the surge’s success. Finally, Quackenbush and Murdie ( 2015 ) found that, counter to conventional wisdom, past experiences with counterinsurgency or conventional warfare have little effect on future success in conflict. States are not simply fighting the last war.

An important area of research that has fostered significant debate among scholars focuses on explaining the historical pattern of high rates of victory by democracies in interstate wars. The strongest explanations for the winning record of democracies center on their superior battlefield initiative and leadership, cooperative civil-military relations, and careful selection into wars they have a high probability of winning (Reiter & Stam, 2002 ). Challenging these results both theoretically and empirically, however, Desch ( 2002 ) argues that “democracy hardly matters,” that relative power plays a more important role in explaining victory. This debate essentially comes down to the relative importance of realist-type power variables versus regime type variables in explaining military victory; while scholars such as Lake ( 1992 ) and Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) argued that regime type matters more, Desch asserted that relative power is the more important determinant of military victory.

Ultimately, we find Desch’s objections to the relevance of democracy to be overstated and his theoretical and empirical justifications to be largely unconvincing. First, Desch’s analysis is biased against Reiter and Stam’s argument because it is limited to dyads that Desch labels “fair fights,” that is, dyads with relatively equal military capabilities. This does not allow Desch to test the selection effect that Reiter and Stam discuss. Second, Desch failed to recognize that many of the realist variables he attributes the greatest explanatory power to are actually influenced by the foreign and military policies adopted by democratic leaders (Valentino et al., 2010 ). Democracy thus has both a direct and an indirect effect on war outcomes, and because Desch ignores the latter, he underestimates democracy’s total impact. Finally, the impacts of power variables may be overstated, as recent research demonstrates that military power’s influence is conditional upon method of force employment and military mechanization (Biddle, 2004 ; Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ).

More recent research examines some of the mechanisms suggested for the unique war-time behavior of democracies, raising some questions about existing mechanisms and suggesting alternatives to explain democratic exceptionalism. For example, Gibler and Miller ( 2013 ) argued that democracies tend to fight short, victorious wars because they have fewer territorial (i.e., high salience) issues over which to fight, rather than because of their leaders’ political accountability. Once controlling for issue salience, they find no relationship between democracy and victory. Similarly, using novel statistical techniques that allow them to account for the latent abilities of states, Renshon and Spirling ( 2015 ) showed that democracy only increases military effectiveness under certain conditions, and is actually counterproductive in others. Finally, new research by Bausch ( 2017 ) using laboratory experiments to test the mechanisms behind democracy and victory suggested that only some of these mechanisms hold up. Specifically, Bausch found that democratic leaders are actually more likely to select into conflict and do not mobilize more resources for war once involved, contrary to the selection and war fighting stories developed by Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ). He did find, however, that democratic leaders are less likely to accept settlement and more likely to fight to decisive victory once conflict is underway, and that democratic leaders are more likely to be punished than autocrats for losing a war. Thus, the debate over the democratic advantage in winning interstate wars continues to progress in productive directions.

Theoretical arguments regarding civil war outcomes focus on state/rebel strength, positing that factors such as natural resource wealth, state military capacity, and third-party assistance influence relative combatant strength and war outcomes. Empirical studies find that increasing state military strength decreases the likelihood of negotiated settlement and increases the probability of government victory (Mason et al., 1999 ). Characteristics of the war itself also affect outcomes, with the probability of negotiated settlement increasing as war duration increases (Mason et al., 1999 ; Walter, 2002 ), and high casualty rates increasing the likelihood of rebel victory (Mason et al., 1999 ).

Debate remains over how third-party interventions affect civil war outcomes. UN intervention decreases the likelihood of victory by either side while increasing the probability of negotiated war terminations (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ). This impact is time sensitive, however (Mason et al., 1999 ). Further, the impact of unilateral interventions is less clear. While Regan ( 1996 ) found intervention supporting the government to increase the likelihood of war termination, Gent ( 2008 ) found military intervention in support of rebels to increase their chance of victory but that in support of governments to have no significant impact. More recent research by Sullivan and Karreth ( 2015 ) helps explain this discrepancy. They argued that biased intervention only alters the chances for victory by the supported side if that side’s key deficiency is conventional war-fighting capacity. Empirically, they show that because rebels are generally weaker, military intervention on their behalf increases their chance of victory. For states, however, military intervention only increases their odds of victory if the state is militarily weaker than or at parity with the rebels.

Additional new research by Jones ( 2017 ) also represents an important step forward in understanding the effects of intervention in civil war. By examining both the timing and strategy of intervention, Jones demonstrated that the effects of intervention on conflict outcomes are much more complex than previous research suggests.

Post-War Peace Durability

As with studies on war duration, termination, and outcomes, much of the literature on the stability of post-war peace grows from extensions of the bargaining model of war. For these scholars, recurrence is most likely under conditions that encourage the renegotiation of the terms of settlement, including postwar changes in the balance of power (Werner, 1999 ) and externally forced ceasefires that artificially terminate fighting before both sides agree on the proper allocation of the spoils of war (Werner & Yuen, 2005 ). Building off of commitment problem models, Fortna ( 2004b ) argued that strong peace agreements that enhance monitoring, incorporate punishment for defection, and reward cooperation help sustain peace. Specific measures within agreements, however, affect the durability of peace differently. For example, troop withdrawals and the establishment of demilitarized zones decrease the likelihood of war resumption, while arms control measures have no significant impact (Fortna, 2004b , p. 176).

Postwar intervention is also expected to increase peace duration by ameliorating commitment problems, as peacekeepers act as a physical barrier and reduce security fears, uncertainty, and misperceptions between former adversaries (Fortna, 2004a ). Empirical results support this theoretical prediction, and while the size of the force is not significant, both monitoring and armed forces missions increase the durability of post-war peace (Fortna, 2004a ).

The debate that remains in this literature is whether or not peace agreements can effectively mitigate the influence of relative power variables. Recent research by Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter ( 2008 ) suggests that they cannot. They demonstrated that cease-fire agreement strength has almost no significant impact on post-war peace duration, while factors encouraging renegotiation receive partial support. While discrepancies in results may be in part attributable to differences in time periods covered, this result essentially confirms Warner and Yuen’s ( 2005 ) finding that externally imposed war termination invites resumption of conflict, regardless of the presence of strong cease-fire agreements.

If, at the end of a civil conflict, each side maintains its ability to wage war, issues of credibility can undermine the peace and cause the conflict to resume. Thus, wars ending in negotiated settlements are more likely to recur than those ending with a decisive victory because both sides have the ability to resume fighting to gain greater concessions and neither can credibly commit to the peace (Licklider,, 1995 ; Walter, 2002 ). More recent research confirms that conflicts ending in military victory are less likely to recur than those ending in settlement (Caplan & Hoeffler, 2017 ; Toft, 2009 ), though Toft suggested that this is particularly true for rebel victories.

This understanding of post-war peace in terms of the bargaining model’s commitment problem has led scholars to examine three primary avenues through which commitment problems might be overcome and peace maintained. First, partition has been advanced as a possible solution to post-war instability. The separation of warring factions is expected to reduce security fears by creating demographically separate, militarily defensible regions (Kaufmann, 1996 ). Empirical evidence generally supports this strategy. Partitions that successfully separate warring ethnic groups significantly reduce the risk of renewed conflict (Johnson, 2008 ), while those that do not achieve demographic separation increase the risk of renewed hostilities (Tir, 2005 ). Further, relative to de facto separation, autonomy arrangements, or maintenance of a unitary state, partition is significantly less likely to lead to war recurrence (Chapman & Roeder, 2007 ).

Second, third-party intervention is expected to play a role in ameliorating the security dilemma arising from commitment problems in post-conflict states (Fearon, 2004 ; Walter, 2002 ). Empirical results confirm that third-party security guarantees are critical to the signing and durability of peace settlements (Walter, 2002 ). Once settlement has been reached, third-party guarantees and international peacekeeping establish punishments for defection (Fortna, 2008 ; Walter, 2002 ), thereby reducing incentives for and increasing costs of renewed conflict. More recent research that employs more fine-grained data on the size and composition of UN peacekeeping forces suggests, however, that this type of third-party guarantee is most effective when it has the military power to enforce the peace. Specifically, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2016 ) found that increasing UN troop presence increases peace durability, but the presence of other types of UN monitors has little effect on peace duration. By using more fine-grained data, this study makes an important contribution by allowing us to parse the mechanisms driving the role of third party guarantees in promoting peace.

Third, the incorporation of power-sharing arrangements that guarantee the survival of each side into the postwar settlement is also expected to solve post-civil war commitment problems (Walter, 2002 ). These arrangements allow adversaries to generate costly signals of their resolve to preserve the peace, thus ameliorating security fears (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ). Empirical results indicate that given a negotiated settlement, the agreement’s ability to ameliorate security concerns is positively associated with the preservation of peace. Thus, the more regulation of coercive and political power included in an agreement, and the greater the number of dimensions (political, territorial, military, economic) of power sharing specified, the more likely agreements are to endure (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ).

More recently, scholars have begun to extend this research by focusing more broadly on settlement design. Whereas previous research tended to simply count the number of power-sharing dimensions, newer analyses focus on issues such as the quality of the agreement (Badran, 2014 ) and equality in the terms of settlement (Albin & Druckman, 2012 ). Martin ( 2013 ), for example, found that provisions that share power at the executive level are less effective than those that regulate power at the level of rank-and-file or the public, as elite-level power-sharing is relatively easy for insincere actors to engage in at a relatively low cost. Cammett and Malesky ( 2012 ) found that proportional representation provisions are particularly effective at stabilizing post-conflict peace because of their ability to promote good governance and service provision, while Joshi and Mason ( 2011 ) similarly found that power-sharing provisions that expand the size of the governing coalition result in more stable peace. These analyses suggest that delving further into the design and content of settlement agreements is a positive avenue for future research. Future research should also examine how implementation of peace agreements proceeds, and how the timing and sequencing of implementation affects the durability of peace (e.g., Langer & Brown, 2016 ).

Finally, emerging research on civil war recurrence also shifts focus toward rebel groups and how their composition and integration affect post-conflict peace. For example, new research finds that rebel group fragmentation hastens the recurrence of civil war (Rudloff & Findley, 2016 ), while greater inclusion of former rebels in government improves prospects for post-conflict peace (Call, 2012 ; Marshall & Ishiyama, 2016 ). Emerging research on post-conflict elections also represents an important area for further study, as debate remains over how elections affect conflict recurrence. While some argue that they destabilize the peace (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ), others suggest they actually reduce the risk of conflict recurrence (Matanock, 2017 ).

The Longer-Term Consequences of Wars

What are the political, economic, and social consequences of interstate and civil wars, and what explains these postwar conditions? As Rasler and Thompson ( 1992 ) recognized, the consequences of war are often far-reaching and complex. Given this complexity, much of the literature varies significantly in quality and coverage; while post-war political change has received significant attention from political scientists, the social and health-related consequences of war are less well-known.

Post-War Domestic Political Stability and Change

Scholarship on post-war political stability focuses on both regime and leadership change, positing political accountability as a central mechanism in both cases. Interstate war has been theorized to induce internal revolution both indirectly (Skocpol, 1979 ) and directly (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ; Goemans, 2000 ). Empirical results support the accountability argument, as war losses and increasing costs of war increase the likelihood of post-war leadership turnover (Bueno De Mesquita & Siverson, 1995 ) as well as violent regime overthrow (Bueno De Mesquita, Siverson, & Woller, 1992 ). Related work shows that accountable leaders are also more likely to face foreign-imposed regime change at the hands of war victors (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ).

A central focus of recent research has been the conditional relationship between war outcomes and regime type. In his seminal study, Goemans, 2000 ) found that leaders of mixed and democratic regimes are more likely to be removed from office as a result of moderate losses in war than are leaders of autocracies. These findings, however, have been challenged by recent scholarship. Colaresi ( 2004 ) finds no difference in leadership turnover rates across all regimes types under conditions of moderate war losses, and Chiozza and Goemans ( 2004 ), employing a different measure of war outcomes and discounting the impact of termination over time, find that defeat in war is most costly for autocratic leaders and has no significant impact on tenure for democratic leaders.

Recently, research in the civil war literature has begun to focus more on post-war democratization, elections, and how groups transition from fighting forces to political parties. Much of the early work in this area focused on the link between war outcomes and the development of democratic institutions in the post-war period, specifically arguing that negotiated settlements facilitate democratization by requiring the inclusion of opposition groups in the decision-making process (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ; Gurses & Mason, 2008 ). More recent research, however, challenges this conventional wisdom, showing that the benefits of negotiated settlement are limited to the short-term and that economic factors are better predictors of post-war democratization (Fortna & Huang, 2012 ).

Recognizing that not all negotiated settlements are created equal, scholars have also begun to examine how variation in power-sharing provisions influences democratization. Debate remains on this topic as well, however. While some argue that power-sharing facilitates democratization by generating costly signals that create the stability necessary for democratization (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2005 ), others argue that they undermine democratization by reifying wartime cleavages, incentivizing political parties to seek support only from their own wartime constituencies, and undermining public confidence in governmental institutions (Jung, 2012 ). However, after accounting for non-random selection into power-sharing, Hartzell and Hoddie ( 2015 ) found that the inclusion of multiple power-sharing provisions in peace agreements increases post-civil war democratization. Future research should delve further into this debate, and consider more carefully whether specific types of provisions or institutional designs vary in their ability to promote democracy. Joshi ( 2013 ) represents an important first step in this direction, finding that institutional designs that favor inclusivity (e.g., parliamentary systems and proportional representation) are more successful at producing democracy.

Debate also continues over the effects of international intervention on post-conflict democratization. While some scholars expect intervention to facilitate postwar democratization by mitigating commitment problems and raising the costs of defection (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ), others suggest it is used as a tool by interveners to impose amenable, generally non-democratic, institutions in the target country (Bueno De Mesquita & Downs, 2006 ). Doyle and Sambanis ( 2006 ) found multidimensional UN missions incorporating economic reconstruction, institutional reform, and election oversight, to be significantly and positively correlated with the development of postwar democracy. However, Gurses and Mason ( 2008 ) and Fortna and Huang ( 2012 ) challenged this finding, reporting no significant relationship between UN presence and postwar democratization, and Paris ( 2004 ) and Bueno de Mesquita and Downs ( 2006 ) showed that peacebuilding missions and UN interventions actually decrease levels of democracy.

Future research should attempt to reconcile many of these open debates in both the interstate and civil conflict literatures. It should also build upon emerging research on post-conflict elections (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ; Matanock, 2017 ) and rebel governance (Huang, 2016 ). Huang’s work on rebel governance, in particular, shows that how rebels interact with civilian populations during conflict has important implications for post-conflict democratization.

Public Health Conditions in the Aftermath of Wars

Social scientists have recently begun to study the consequences of war for the postwar health and well-being of civilian populations. Theoretical arguments developed in this literature generally do not distinguish between interstate and civil war, instead developing mechanisms that apply to both types of conflict. The most direct public health consequence of war, of course, results from the killing and wounding of civilian populations. Scholars argue, however, that more indirect mechanisms cause longer-term public health problems as well. War, for example, is expected to undermine long-term public health by exposing populations to hazardous conditions through the movement of refugees and soldiers as vectors for disease (Ghobarah, Huth, & Russett, 2003 ; Iqbal, 2006 ), damaging health-related facilities and basic infrastructure (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Plümper & Neumayer, 2006 ), and reducing government spending and private investment on public health (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ).

Many empirical analyses, unfortunately, do not directly address the mechanisms outlined above. Overall, findings indicate that both civil and interstate war increase adult mortality in the short and long term (Li & Wen, 2005 ) and decrease health-adjusted life-expectancy in the short term (Iqbal, 2006 ). Conflict severity is also influential; while low-level conflict has no significant effect on mortality rates, severe conflict increases mortality and decreases life-expectancy in the long run (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Hoddie & Smith, 2009 ; Iqbal, 2006 ). Comparing the health impacts of interstate and civil wars, analysts have found interstate conflict to exert a stronger, negative impact on long-term mortality rates than civil war, despite the finding that civil war’s immediate impact is more severe (Li & Wen, 2005 ). Finally, many analysts have found that the negative, long-term effects of war are consistently stronger for women and children (Ghobarah, et al., 2003 ; Plümper & Neumayer ( 2006 ) than for men.

This developing field provides important new insights into the civilian consequences of war, but remains underdeveloped in many respects. First, while some evidence suggests that civil and interstate war might affect public health differently, the mechanisms behind these differences require further elaboration. Research by Hoddie and Smith, represented an important contribution in this respect, as it distinguishes between different conflict strategies, finding that conflicts involving extensive violence against noncombatants have more severe health consequences than those in which most fatalities are combat-related. Second, theoretical models are generally much more developed and sophisticated than the data used to test them. While data availability is limited, efforts should be made to more closely match theory and empirics.

Third, analyses that employ disaggregated measures of health consequences (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ) provided a more thorough understanding of the specific consequences of war and represent an important avenue for additional theoretical and empirical development. Iqbal and Zorn ( 2010 ) thus focus specifically on conflict’s detrimental impact on the transmission of HIV/AIDS, while Iqbal ( 2010 ) examines the impact of conflict on many different health-based metrics, including infant mortality, health-associated life expectancy, fertility rates, and even measles and diphtheria vaccination rates. These studies represent important advances in the literature, which should be explored further in future research to disentangle the potentially complex health effects of civil and interstate conflict.

Finally, recent research has begun to conceptualize health more broadly, accounting for the psychological consequences of wartime violence. Building upon research in psychology, Koos ( 2018 ) finds that exposure to conflict-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone generates resilience: affected households display greater cooperation and altruism than those unaffected by such violence during conflict. Bauer et al. ( 2016 ) similarly find that conflict fosters greater social cohesion and civic engagement in the aftermath of war. This is an important area for future research. As conceptions of conflict-related violence broaden, our conceptualizations of the consequences of violence should also expand to include notions of how conflict affects psychological health, community cohesion, and other less direct indicators of public health.

This final section highlights some of the contributions generated by scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war, as well as some of the gaps that remain to be addressed. First, this body of scholarship usefully compliments the large and more traditional work of military historians who study international wars, as well as the work of contemporary defense analysts who conduct careful policy analyses on relevant issues such as wartime military tactics and strategy as well as weapon system performance. The bargaining model of war has also proven a useful theoretical framework in which to structure and integrate theoretical analyses across different stages in the evolution of war.

Second, a number of studies in this body of work have contributed to the further development and testing of the democratic peace literature by extending the logic of political accountability models from questions of war onset to democratic wartime behavior. New dependent variables, including civilian targeting, imposition of regime change, the waging of war in ways designed to reduce military and civilian losses, and victory versus defeat in war have been analyzed. As a result, a number of new arguments and empirical findings have improved our understanding of how major security policy decisions by democratic leaders are influenced by domestic politics.

Third, this literature has advanced scholarship on international law and institutions by examining questions about compliance with the laws of war and the role played by the UN in terminating wars and maintaining a durable post-war peace. The impact of international law and institutions is much better understood on issues relating to international political economy, human rights, and international environmental governance than it is on international security affairs. As a result, studies of compliance with the laws of war, the design of ceasefire agreements, or international peace-building efforts address major gaps in existing literature.

Fourth, this new body of research has explicitly focused on the consequences of war for civilian populations, a relatively neglected topic in academic research. Research on questions such as the deliberate targeting of civilians during wars and the longer-term health consequences of war begin to address this surprising gap in research. As such, this new literature subjects the study of terrorism to more systematic social science methods and also challenges the common practice of restricting terrorism to non-state actors and groups when, in fact, governments have resorted to terrorist attacks on many occasions in the waging of war.

While this literature has advanced scholarship in many ways, there remain several theoretical and empirical gaps that future research should aim to address, two of which are highlighted here. First, while research on interstate war duration and termination is more theoretically unified than its civil war counterpart, the dominance of the bargaining model in this literature is currently being challenged. Recent research on asymmetric conflict suggests that the basic tenants of the bargaining model may not hold for non-symmetric conflict, while research on force employment and mechanization suggest that traditional power measures exert a conditional impact at best. Additional research is needed to determine the conditions under which bargaining logic applies and its relative importance in explaining wartime behavior and war outcomes.

Second, the accumulation of knowledge on civil war’s conduct and consequences has lagged behind that on interstate war, partially because the civil war literature is younger, and partially because sub-national level data is only now becoming more readily available. While bargaining logic is often applied to civil war, we have little cross-national information on relative capabilities and battle trends, and thus a very limited understanding of the way in which these variables affect civil war duration and outcomes. New micro-level data and studies that are beginning to address these problems represent a promising direction forward for civil conflict research.

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• v.5(1); 2006 Feb

Mental health consequences of war: a brief review of research findings

R. srinivasa murthy.

1 Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, World Health Organization, Post Box 7608, Abdul Razak Al Sanhouri Street, Naser City, Cairo 11371, Egypt

RASHMI LAKSHMINARAYANA

2 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, UK

Among the consequences of war, the impact on the mental health of the civilian population is one of the most significant. Studies of the general population show a definite increase in the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders. Women are more affected than men. Other vulnerable groups are children, the elderly and the disabled. Prevalence rates are associated with the degree of trauma, and the availability of physical and emotional support. The use of cultural and religious coping strategies is frequent in developing countries.

The year 2005 is significant in understanding the relationship between war and mental health. This is the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war and of the start of the war in Lebanon. Every day the media bring the horrors of the ongoing "war" situation in Iraq. Some recent quotations from the media depict the impact of war on mental health: "We are living in a state of constant fear" (in Iraq); "War takes a toll on Iraqi mental health"; "War trauma leaves physical mark"; "War is hell... it has an impact on the people who take part that never heals"; "War is terrible and beyond the understanding and experience of most people"; "A generation has grown up knowing only war".

Wars have had an important part in psychiatric history in a number of ways. It was the psychological impact of the world wars in the form of shell shock that supported the effectiveness of psychological interventions during the first half of the 20th century. It was the recognition of a proportion of the population not suitable for army recruitment during the Second World War that spurred the setting up of the National Institute of Mental Health in USA. The differences in the presentation of the psychological symptoms among the officers and the soldiers opened up new ways of understanding the psychiatric reactions to stress.

During the last year, a large number of books and documents have addressed the effects of war on mental health. They include the WPA book "Disasters and mental health" ( 1 ); the World Bank report "Mental health and conflicts - Conceptual framework and approaches" ( 2 ); the United Nations (UN) book "Trauma interventions in war and peace: prevention, practice and policy" ( 3 ); the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) document "The state of the world's children - Childhood under threat" ( 4 ); the book "Trauma and the role of mental health in postconflict recovery" ( 5 ) and a chapter on "War and mental health in Africa" in the WPA book "Essentials of clinical psychiatry for sub-Saharan Africa" ( 6 ).

Though there have not been any world wars since the Second World War, there have been wars and conflicts throughout the last 60 years. For example, in the 22 countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region of the World Health Organization (WHO), over 80% of the population either is in a conflict situation or has experienced such a situation in the last quarter of century ( 7 ).

War has a catastrophic effect on the health and well being of nations. Studies have shown that conflict situations cause more mortality and disability than any major disease. War destroys communities and families and often disrupts the development of the social and economic fabric of nations. The effects of war include long-term physical and psychological harm to children and adults, as well as reduction in material and human capital. Death as a result of wars is simply the "tip of the iceberg". Other consequences, besides death, are not well documented. They include endemic poverty, malnutrition, disability, economic/ social decline and psychosocial illness, to mention only a few. Only through a greater understanding of conflicts and the myriad of mental health problems that arise from them, coherent and effective strategies for dealing with such problems can be developed.

The importance that the WHO attributes to dealing with the psychological traumas of war was highlighted by the resolution of the World Health Assembly in May 2005, which urged member states "to strengthen action to protect children from and in armed conflict" and the resolution of the WHO Executive Board in January 2005, which urged "support for implementation of programmes to repair the psychological damage of war, conflict and natural disasters" ( 8 ).

The WHO estimated that, in the situations of armed conflicts throughout the world, "10% of the people who experience traumatic events will have serious mental health problems and another 10% will develop behavior that will hinder their ability to function effectively. The most common conditions are depression, anxiety and psychosomatic problems such as insomnia, or back and stomach aches" ( 9 ).

This paper briefly reviews the evidence from published literature about the impact of war on the mental health of the general population, the refugees, the soldiers and specific vulnerable groups. For the purpose of this paper, the term "war" is used to include both wars waged between countries (e.g., the Iraq-Kuwait war) and conflicts within countries (e.g., Sri Lanka). The review presents data concerning some major wars/conflicts (the countries involved are considered in alphabetic order) and then briefly outlines the risk factors emerging from the literature.

IMPACT OF WAR ON MENTAL HEALTH

Afghanistan.

More than two decades of conflict have led to widespread human suffering and population displacement in Afghanistan. Two studies from this country are significant in terms of both their scope and their findings.

The first study ( 10 ) used a national multistage, cluster, population based survey including 799 adult household members aged 15 years and above. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported experiencing at least four trauma events during the previous ten years. Symptoms of depression were found in 67.7% of respondents, symptoms of anxiety in 72.2%, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 42%. The disabled and women had a poorer mental health status, and there was a significant relationship between the mental health status and traumatic events. Coping strategies included religious and spiritual practices.

The second study ( 11 ), using a crosssectional multicluster sample, was conducted in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, to estimate the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms, identify resources used for emotional support and risk factors, and assess the present coverage of basic needs. About 1011 respondents aged 15 years and above formed the sample. Nearly half of the population had experienced traumatic events. Symptoms of depression were observed in 38.5% of respondents, symptoms of anxiety in 51.8% and PTSD in 20.4%. High rates of symptoms were associated with higher numbers of traumatic events experienced. Women had higher rates than men. The main sources of emotional support were religion and family.

The Balkans

The conflict in the Balkans is probably one of the most widely studied ( 12 - 14 ) in recent years. Mental health of survivors of both sides was examined ( 15 ).

An initial study ( 16 ) among Bosnian refugees demonstrated an association between psychiatric disorders (depression and PTSD) and disability. A threeyear follow-up study on the same group concluded that former Bosnian refugees who remained living in the region continued to exhibit psychiatric disorders and disability after initial assessment ( 17 ).

A cross-sectional cluster sample survey among Kosovar Albanians aged 15 years or older found that 17.1% (95% CI 13.2%-21.0%) reported symptoms of PTSD ( 18 ). There was a significant linear decrease in mental health status and social functioning with increasing amount of traumatic events in those aged 65 years or older, and with previous psychiatric illnesses or chronic health conditions. Internally displaced people were at increased risk of psychiatric morbidity. Men (89%) and women (90%) expressed strong feelings of hatred towards the Serbs, with 44% of men and 33% of women stating that they would act on these feelings.

In a study of the mental health and nutritional status among the Serbian ethnic minority in Kosovo, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-28 scores in the subcategories of social dysfunction and severe depression were high, with women and those living alone or in small family units being more prone to psychiatric morbidity ( 19 ). In a community sample of 2,796 children aged between 9 and 14 years, high levels of post-traumatic symptoms and grief symptoms were reported ( 20 ). This was related to the amount and type of exposure. Girls reported more distress than boys.

Cambodia has had a long history of violence, highlighted by the civil war in the 1960s, culminating with the "Khmer Rouge" rule that destroyed the social fabric of the society. Studies have found that refugees had high levels of psychiatric symptomatology after 10 years ( 21 ).

A household survey of 993 adults from Site 2, the largest Cambodian displaced- persons camp on the Thailand- Cambodia border, found that more than 80% felt depressed and had a number of somatic complaints despite good access to medical services ( 22 ). Approximately 55% and 15% had symptom scores that correlated with Western criteria for depression and PTSD, respectively. However, despite high reported levels of trauma and symptoms, social and work functioning were well preserved in the majority of respondents. Cumulative trauma continued to affect psychiatric symptom levels a decade after the original trauma events ( 23 ). This study also reported that there was support for the diagnostic validity of PTSD criteria, with the notable exception of avoidance. The inclusion of dissociative symptoms increased the cultural sensitivity of PTSD. Psychiatric history and current physical illness were found to be risk factors for PTSD ( 24 ).

Changes in the structure of the society have led to a breakdown of the existing protective networks such as the village chief and the elders in the village, especially for women ( 25 ). Traditional healers (monks, mediums, traditional birth attendants), who played an important role in maintaining the mental health of communities in the past, have lost their designated positions in the community following the conflict ( 26 ).

Twenty-seven Cambodian young people, who were severely traumatized at ages 8 to 12, were followed up 3 years after a baseline evaluation. A structured interview and self-rating scales showed that PTSD was still highly prevalent (48%) and that depression was present in 41% ( 27 ).

The human rights abuses in the Chechen population have been well documented ( 28 ). A report on a small number of Chechen asylum seekers in the UK adds to the evidence on the abuses and related psychological fallouts ( 29 ). Psychosocial issues were explored in a survey conducted in settlements housing displaced people (n=256) ( 30 , 31 ). Two thirds of respondents agreed with the statement that the conflict has triggered mental disturbance or feelings of being upset. Nearly all respondents indicated that they had family members having difficulty in coping with their disturbance or upset feelings. Coping strategies used were praying, talking, keeping busy, and seeking the support of family members.

Iraq has been at war at numerous times in history: a series of coups in the 1960s, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the anti-Kurdish Al-Anfal campaign within the country (1986-1989), the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait resulting in the Gulf war (1991), and the conflict starting in 2003. The UN-imposed economic sanctions following the Gulf war have had a profound impact on the health of Iraqis. The human rights abuses have also been recorded ( 32 ).

There are few studies on the impact of these conflicts on mental health. A study on 45 Kurdish families in two camps reported that PTSD was present in 87% of children and 60% of their caregivers ( 33 ). A study on 84 Iraqi male refugees found that poor social support was a stronger predictor of depressive morbidity than trauma factors ( 34 ). During the last three years of occupation by foreign forces, there have been many news reports about the mental health of the population, but no systematic study.

Israel has been in a situation of conflict for over four decades. A large number of systematic studies have been undertaken in different population groups. A recent study ( 35 ) found that 76.7% of subjects exposed to war-related trauma had at least one traumatic stress-related symptom, while 9.4% met the criteria for acute stress disorder. The most common coping mechanisms were active information search about loved ones and social support. Another study ( 36 ) reported that, twenty years after the war with Lebanon, an initial combat stress reaction, PTSD-related chronic diseases and physical symptoms were associated with a greater engagement in risk behaviours.

Lebanon has been ravaged by a civil war (1975-1990) and by an Israeli invasion in 1978 and 1982. The mental health impact of these conflicts has been studied extensively.

A random sample of 658 people aged between 18 and 65 years was randomly selected from four Lebanese communities exposed to war ( 37 ). The lifetime prevalence of DSM-III-R major depression varied across the communities from 16.3% to 41.9%. Exposure to war and a prior history of major depression were the main predictors for current depression.

The correlation between mother's distress and child's mental health was explored in a study in Beirut ( 38 ). The level of perceived negative impact of war-related events was found to be strongly associated with higher levels of depressive symptomatology among mothers. The level of depressive symptomatology in the mother was found to be the best predictor of her child's reported morbidity. In a study carried out in 224 Lebanese children (10-16 years), the number of traumatic experiences related to war was positively correlated to PTSD symptoms, with various types of war traumas being differentially related to the symptoms ( 39 ).

A cross-sectional study conducted among 118 Lebanese hostages of war ( 40 ) found that psychological distress was present in 42.1% of the sample compared to 27.8% among the control group. Significant predictors for distress were years of education and increase in religiosity after release.

During the last decade a large number of studies have reported high levels of psychosocial problems among children and adolescents, women, refugees and prisoners in Palestine.

A study conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme among children aged 10-19 years ( 41 ) revealed that 32.7% suffered from PTSD symptoms requiring psychological intervention, 49.2% from moderate PTSD symptoms, 15.6% from mild PTSD symptoms, and only 2.5% had no symptoms. Boys had higher rates (58%) than girls (42%), and children living in camps suffered more than children living in towns (84.1% and 15.8% respectively).

A study on Palestinian perceptions of their living conditions during the Second Intifada ( 42 ) found that 46% of parents reported aggressive behaviour among their children, 38% noted bad school results, 27% reported bed wetting, while 39% stated that their children suffered from nightmares. The study also revealed that more refugee (53%) than non-refugee (41%) children behaved aggressively. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents said that shooting was the main influence, 34% stated that it was violence on TV, 7% cited confinement at home and 11% reported that it was the arrest and beating of relatives and neighbours. Seventy percent of refugees and non-refugees stated that they had not received any psychological support for the problems of their children.

In a series of studies during the last 10 years from the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre ( 43 ), the most prevalent types of trauma exposure for children were witnessing funerals (95%), witness to shooting (83%), seeing injured or dead strangers (67%) and family member injured or killed (62%). Among children living in the area of bombardments, 54% suffered from severe, 33.5% from moderate and 11% from mild or doubtful levels of PTSD. Girls were more vulnerable.

The physical and mental health problems of the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda have been well documented ( 44 ). In a recent community based study examining 2091 subjects ( 45 ), 24.8% met symptom criteria for PTSD, with the adjusted odds ratio of meeting PTSD symptom criteria for each additional traumatic event being 1.43. Respondents who met PTSD criteria were less likely to have positive attitudes towards the Rwandan national trials, suggesting that the effects of trauma need to be considered if reconciliation has to be successful. There have been reports on the state of health among the large numbers of refugees (500,000-800,000 in five days) who fled to Goma, Zaire following the capture of the capital Kigali, but none of them has considered the mental health dimension.

The conflict between the majority Sinhala and minority Tamil population in Sri Lanka has been ongoing for nearly 30 years. One of the first studies that looked into the psychological effects of the conflict on the civilian population was an epidemiological survey ( 46 ), which reported that only 6% of the study population had not experienced any war stresses. Psychosocial sequelae were seen in 64% of the population, including somatization (41%), PTSD (27%), anxiety disorder (26%), major depression (25%), alcohol and drug misuse (15%), and functional disability (18%). The breakdown of the Tamil society led to women taking on more responsibilities, which in turn made them more vulnerable to stress ( 47 ). Children and adolescents had higher mental health morbidity ( 48 ).

A study carried out in ex-combatants in Somalia found high psychiatric morbidity and use of khat ( 49 ). A UNICEF study found evidence of psychological effects of the prolonged conflict situation in a high proportion of a sample of 10,000 children ( 50 ). There is near total disruption of the mental health services in the country.

Sudanese refugees fled into northern Uganda in two major waves in 1988 and 1994. Symptoms of PTSD and depression were found to be highly prevalent among Sudanese children living in the refugee camps ( 51 ). Refugees had higher rates of individual psychopathology than the general population, and it was observed that the cumulative stress grew as the years in exile progressed. The consequences of long-term exile were still present 5-15 years later, with an increase in the rates of suicide and alcohol use.

RISK FACTORS

From the large amount of studies reviewed, some broad risk factors and associations can be drawn.

Women have an increased vulnerability to the psychological consequences of war. There is evidence of a high correlation between mothers' and children's distress in a war situation. It is now known that maternal depression in the prenatal and postnatal period predicts poorer growth in a communitybased sample of infants. Social support and traditional birth attendants have a major role in promoting maternal psychosocial well being in war-affected regions. The association between gender- based violence and common mental disorders is well known. Despite their vulnerability, women's resilience under stress and its role in sustaining their families has been recognized.

There is consistent evidence of higher rates of trauma-related psychological problems in children. The most impressive reports are those from Palestine. Of the different age groups, the most vulnerable are the adolescents.

The direct correlation between the degree of trauma and the amount of the psychological problems is consistent across a number of studies. The greater the exposure to trauma - both physical and psychological - the more pronounced are the symptoms.

Subsequent life events and their association with the occurrence of psychiatric problems have important implications for fast and complete rehabilitation as a way of minimizing the ill effects of the conflict situations.

Studies are consistent in showing the value of both physical support and psychological support in minimizing the effects of war-related traumas, as well as the role of religion and cultural practices as ways of coping with the conflict situations.

CONCLUSIONS

The occurrence of a wide variety of psychological symptoms and syndromes in the populations in conflict situations is widely documented by available research. However, research also provides evidence about the resilience of more than half of the population in the face of the worst trauma in war situations. There is no doubt that the populations in war and conflict situations should receive mental health care as part of the total relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction processes. As happened in the first half of the 20th century, when war gave a big push to the developing concepts of mental health, the study of the psychological consequences of the wars of the current century could add new understandings and solutions to mental health problems of general populations.

A number of issues have emerged from the extensive literature on the prevalence and pattern of mental health effects of war and conflict situations. Are the psychological effects and their manifestation universal? What should be the definition of a case requiring intervention? How should psychological effects be measured? What is the long-term course of stress-related symptoms and syndromes? ( 52 ). All these issues need to be addressed by future studies.

It is important to report that the WHO and some other UN-related bodies have recently created a task force to develop "mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings" ( 53 - 55 ), which is expected to complete its activity in one year.

The Psychological Costs of War: Military Combat and Mental Health

In The Psychological Costs of War: Military Combat and Mental Health (NBER Working Paper No. 16927 ), authors Resul Cesur , Joseph Sabia , and Erdal Tekin report that the mere length of deployment or breaks between deployments are far less significant for veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the frequency of actual exposure to firefights. These researchers exploit the variation in overseas assignments that control for mental health prior to deployment in order to study the relationship between military combat and young adults' mental health. They find that U.S. soldiers who serve in combat zones are at greater risk of PTSD and are more likely to receive psychological or emotional counseling than their counterparts serving outside the United States in non-combat zones.

The authors estimate that just the combat-induced PTSD imposes two-year costs of $1.5 to $2.7 billion on the U.S. health care system. They determine that the psychological costs of combat are largest for soldiers who kill someone (or believe they have killed someone), are injured in combat, or witness the death or wounding of a civilian or a coalition member. These troops are at substantially increased risk of suicide or thoughts of suicide, depression, and PTSD. Interestingly, the authors find that observing the killing, death, or wounding of the enemy has no independent adverse psychological consequences. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that strong feelings of guilt may accompany the death of non-combatants or fellow soldiers.

The data used in this study come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), conducted by the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Add Health is a nationally representative, school-based longitudinal study that began surveying U.S. adolescents in seventh to twelfth grades in the mid-1990s. Follow-up studies contain a relatively large sample of military servicemen and women and provide information on whether active-duty servicemen and women were deployed to a combat zone, assigned to a non-combat zone outside of the United States, or served on active-duty in the United States exclusively. Violent combat events are self-reported, and because the survey reaches back to adolescence, the authors of this paper have information on the respondent's mental health prior to any military deployment.

The measure of depressive symptoms used here comes from a version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) Scale; additional measures of mental health are generated by respondents' answers to a question about whether they had "received psychological or emotional counseling in the past 12 months" and whether "a doctor, nurse or other health care provider ever told you that you have or had post-traumatic stress disorder?"

This analysis provides credible estimates of the causal effect of combat service on young adults' psychological well-being. However, the authors caution that their estimates of the cost of PTSD include only the short-run costs for younger soldiers. Future research that follows soldiers as they transition back into civilian life will be able to provide further information on the longer-run effects of combat service.

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How to feel about war: On soldier psyches, military biopolitics, and American empire

• Original Article
• Published: 19 June 2018
• Volume 14 , pages 274–299, ( 2019 )

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• Kenneth MacLeish   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4815-9291 1  

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The basic structure of contemporary military biopolitics, in which military bodies and minds are kept alive and allowed to die, entails both an institutional problem of how to shore up life that is exposed to harm and a cultural problem of how to reckon with a routinized trade in life and death that happens not incidentally, but on purpose. Amidst this tension, the military psyche becomes both an inhabited, embodied site and an imaginative point of reference for the question of how to feel about war . This article takes stock of the contemporary landscape of war-related mental affliction via three relatively novel interventions: military suicide prevention, the framing post-traumatic stress as “moral injury,” and resiliency training meant to inoculate soldiers against the stress of the battlefield. Drawing on a range of clinical and media sources and ethnographic research with post-9/11 military personnel, I show how each of these efforts constructs specific forms of war-related psychic destruction as objects of public and institutional concern, normalizes the institutional arrangements that produce it, and informs public perceptions of what war is by constructing figures of what it does to those who fight it.

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This project included over a year of continuous participant observation in 2007-08 and numerous follow-up visits in the following two years. Over the course of this time, I also conducted approximately 50 interviews with soldiers, military spouses, and military and civilian service providers and advocates. All participants are referred to here by pseudonyms and some identifying information is changed to protect their identities in accordance with an IRB-approved set of privacy and confidentiality practices.

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Acknowledgements

Portions of this work have been presented as conference papers at meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the American Ethnological Society, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, and the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and benefited greatly from the generous input of colleagues in those settings. An early draft was presented at the workshop Contested Global Biopsychiatry: Establishing an International Partnership for Critical and Constructive Global Mental Health, held at Vanderbilt University in February 2015. Research and analysis were supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Traineeship, a Robert Penn Warren Center for the Study of the Humanities faculty fellowship, and research funds from the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University. Special thanks to Dominique Béhague, Aimi Hamraie, Rachael Pomerantz, Laura Stark, Juliette Wagner, and Zoë Wool for their support and feedback. Thanks to David Kieran for sharing his insights about the Gold Book and to Ellen Wang for research and bibliographic support. And thank you to the editors of Biosocieties and the three anonymous reviewers of this piece. This manuscript is composed of material that is not under review elsewhere. The study on which the research is based was subject to appropriate ethical review by the institutional review boards of the author’s home institutions. The author has no competing financial or intellectual interests in the research described in this manuscript.

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MacLeish, K. How to feel about war: On soldier psyches, military biopolitics, and American empire. BioSocieties 14 , 274–299 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-018-0127-y

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Background: war, trauma, military service, and implications for survivor health, research context: vietnam’s red river delta, acknowledgments.

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Physical and Mental Health Consequences of War-related Stressors Among Older Adults: An Analysis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Arthritis in Northern Vietnamese War Survivors

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Kim Korinek, Peter Loebach, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Physical and Mental Health Consequences of War-related Stressors Among Older Adults: An Analysis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Arthritis in Northern Vietnamese War Survivors, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B , Volume 72, Issue 6, November 2017, Pages 1090–1102, https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbv157

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We examine the impacts of trauma exposures and family stressors associated with the Vietnam War on musculoskeletal health and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outcomes in elderly Vietnamese who were widely impacted by the war as young adults. Noting that wars’ impacts extend beyond male veterans in most survivor populations, we give attention to male and female war survivors placed in a variety of roles vis-a-vis the war.

Utilizing data from the 2010 Vietnam Health and Aging Pilot Study ( N = 405), we use logistic and Poisson regression models to estimate the effect of wartime trauma exposures and family stressors on disabling arthritis and PTSD symptoms in male and female northern Vietnamese adults aged 55 and older.

The odds of experiencing recent PTSD symptoms are greater in respondents who report involvement in killing/causing severe injury and who observed war atrocities. In women, PTSD is positively correlated with war era child death and spousal separation. Arthritis also exhibits a significant, positive association with killing/causing severe injury.

Our study provides insights into the burden of conflict upon health among populations of the global south that survived war and are now entering older adulthood. The pattern of results, indicating greatest suffering among those who inflicted or failed to prevent bodily harm or loss of life, is consistent with the concept of moral injury.

Cold-war proxy conflicts and civil wars following late twentieth century decolonization traumatized large populations of the global south. Many survivors affected by these wars remain alive in the Global South today, yet their experiences of war’s persistent health effects are poorly understood. Because populations of the global south have been largely underrepresented in scholarship linking military service and war trauma to later life health, the full spectrum of war exposure and range of affected populations have not informed this body of knowledge (de Jong et al., 2001; Murray & Lopez, 1997 ; Pederson, 2002 ; Korinek & Teerawichitchainan, 2014 ).

Efforts to understand how exposure to war influences health have focused almost exclusively upon male veterans returning to industrialized, Western societies from conflicts waged in less-developed, nonwestern societies (e.g., Vietnam and Iraq). Critically, however, in postconflict societies wars have not been experienced solely by male veterans. War-survivor populations in the global south encompass men and women from diverse social strata, affected by war and exposed to war’s traumas across a spectrum of participatory roles—as soldiers, paramilitary volunteers, and civilians. Although civilians may lack battlefield exposure, they frequently have lost family members, witnessed war violence firsthand, and endured myriad wartime hardships.

This study examines health outcomes in a war-affected population that experienced prolonged armed conflict on their own soil. We analyze key determinants of mental health and physical health, that is, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and arthritis, in a cohort of northern Vietnamese older adults whose adolescence and young adulthood coincided with protracted war with the Americans from 1965 to 1975 and other wars in the adjacent decades. Overwhelming numbers of casualties and broad-based “People’s War” mobilization, which engaged men and women across society in the war effort ( Tetreault, 2000 ), make Vietnam a fitting setting to understand war’s wide-ranging and long-term health consequences.

Veteran-focused research reveals that the stressful encounters and hazards of military service often impact multiple dimensions of health, for decades postconflict, into middle- and late adulthood. Numerous studies, focused largely upon American veterans of foreign wars, have observed significantly greater rates of PTSD and other mental health problems, as well as circulatory, nervous system, digestive, musculoskeletal, and respiratory diseases in veterans relative to comparable nonveterans, and veterans who experienced combat as compared with those who did not ( Beckham et al., 2014 ; Boscarino, 1997 , 2004 ; Elder, Shanahan, & Colerick Clipp, 1997 ; Schnurr & Green, 2004 ; Schnurr, Spiro, & Paris, 2000 ; Wilmoth, London, & Parker, 2010 ). How aging veterans’ health fares in comparison with that of their nonveteran counterparts in postconflict societies, where war was intricately interwoven into lives across social strata, and where service in the war effort was a matter of degree rather than a binary division between soldier and civilian, remains an open question.

Another body of research examines the health impacts of trauma upon the “victims” of armed conflict, such as refugees in camps or resettlement settings ( Hollifield et al., 2002 ; Laban, Gernaat, Komproe, van der Tweel, & De Jong, 2005 ; Mollica et al., 1993 , 2001 ; Shrestha et al., 1998 ). Comparable with veteran-oriented studies, this research often concludes that exposure to traumas heightens the risk of PTSD and other mental health disorders. What remains rare in the literature are studies that examine nonclinical, community-based samples of war survivors in which nonveterans’ exposures to trauma are diverse, and women have also been involved in waging war, including as perpetrators and witnesses to violence (de Jong et al., 2001). A few exemplary studies examining trauma exposure and civilians’ health in immediate postconflict periods, for example, Cardozo, Vergara, Agani, and Gotway’s (2000) investigation of Kosovar Albanians, suggest that postconflict morbidities are numerous and serious, they extend beyond soldiers who endured life threatening combat, and they may heavily burden health care and elderly support institutions. The present study aims to shed light on this matter and illuminate war’s long-term toll on health in one population of survivors.

Research associating war exposure with physical and mental health outcomes emphasizes extreme stress or trauma encountered during military service, especially in combat, as inducing psychological and physiological adaptations which heighten susceptibility to mental health disorders (e.g., Fontana & Rosenheck, 1994 ). PTSD has been the most prevalent outcome of concern in Vietnam-era veteran health studies, but increasingly scholars explore the pathogenic processes linking war era stress and trauma to physical health problems. Susceptibility to arthritis, in particular, has been associated with trauma exposure and stressful life events ( Stojanovich & Marisavljevich, 2008 ). While one school of thought maintains the centrality of PTSD as a primary mechanism linking trauma exposure to poor physical health ( Beckham et al., 2014 ), others view multiple, chronic, and/or severe traumas, irrespective of PTSD, as causal to dysregulation of physiological systems (e.g., hypothalamic-pituitary axis) and subsequent bodily “wear and tear” which diminishes health over the long term ( McEwen & Stellar 1993 ; Sledjeski, Speisman & Dierker, 2008 ; VanItallie, 2002 ).

The complex physiological underpinnings associated with the stress-disease pathogenic process are debated elsewhere ( Boscarino, 2004 ; Sledjeski et al., 2008 ; VanItallie, 2002 ). These frameworks, while emphasizing different linking mechanisms between cumulative and extreme stress and physical and psychological morbidities, suggest the importance of examining individuals’ positions vis-à-vis the diverse stressors of war, and attending to “both the physiological and psychological aspects of traumatic” phenomena in order to effectively understand and treat affected populations ( Boscarino, 2004 , p. 15). Increasingly scholars recognize that to focus only on direct war exposure, without attending to a wider set of stressful war-related circumstances, such as changes in family structure, is to oversimplify the nature of war’s impacts upon health ( Miller & Rasmussen, 2010 ).

In Vietnam and other countries impacted by war on home soil, “affected populations” can subsume entire cohorts, with exposure differentiated by geography, gender and other aspects of social position, and one’s role in the fighting. In postconflict populations the long-term health effects of wars can be drastic and weigh heavily upon civilians, subtracting years from life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy ( Ghobarah, Huth, & Russett, 2004 ). Although military personnel face the brunt of combat operations and are directly threatened by and involved in perpetrating violence, others, including civilians in close proximity to conflict or drawn into fighting in guerrilla warfare, are also exposed to myriad stressors during wartime.

Besides violent armed conflict episodes, wars also precipitate changes within families that may greatly unsettle individuals’ sense of security and threaten regular social functioning. De Jong and colleagues (2001) , for example, found that distinct from battlefield traumatic exposures and other “extreme” events such as torture, the experience of death and separation among family members significantly increased the risk of PTSD in 1990s post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Another study conducted among community-dwelling residents impacted by Sri Lanka’s civil war found that displacement, food deprivation, and a relative’s death were among the common stressors encountered by civilian noncombatants that heightened risk of PTSD and somatic illness ( Somasundaram & Sivayokan, 1994 ). These results and others observing ill health effects of lengthy separation and premature child death, suggest we not overlook the more “mundane,” widely occurring, wartime exposures which may jeopardize the health of men and women in broad segments of the population ( Rousseau, Mekki-Berrada, & Moreau, 2001 ; Steel, Silove, Phan, & Bauman, 2002 ). Due to the gendering of wartime roles, which tend to locate women closer to the domestic sphere, protecting home and family, while men are positioned closer to the battlefield, traumatic exposures will not only differ for men and women, but they may be processed differently by men and women. In other words, gender not only structures types of exposure, but may structure their processing and interpretation, such that specific wartime traumas (e.g., the death of one’s child) yield different impacts upon the health of men and women.

The emphasis upon male soldiers’ experiences in analyses of war exposure and health reflects the almost exclusive service of men in the U.S. military until recently, wherein women comprised no more than 2% of the armed forces from World War II until the end of conscription and transition to an all-volunteer force in 1973 ( Goldman, 1973 ). As recent scholarship which has discovered marked gender differences in PTSD susceptibility and other war-related health outcomes attests ( Hourani, Williams, Bray, & Kandel, 2015 ), a framework adequate to ascertain the burden of conflict upon global public health must attend to men’s and women’s positions vis-à-vis armed conflict and the gendered health consequences of war ( Murray, King, Lopez, Tomijima, & Krug, 2002 ). While women are often a small share of formal militaries, combatant women with direct experience of war’s violence are far more numerous when paramilitary forces, in addition to formal militaries, are taken into account ( McEvoy, 2009 ). Furthermore, disproportionately female and youth civilians living in close proximity to armed conflict endure losses and witness traumas the types of which exert lasting impacts on health ( Rousseau et al., 2001 ).

Recent scholarship has scrutinized morally injurious experiences during war, that is, experiences which disrupt an individual’s sense of personal morality and capacity to behave in a just manner, as potentially causing lasting psycho-bio-social impairment ( Litz et al., 2009 , p. 696). As compared with combat in general, killing in the context of war exhibits unique associations with PTSD, functional impairment, and violent behavior ( Fontana & Rosenheck, 1999 ; Maguen, Metzler, & Litz, 2009 ). Witnessing and failing to prevent war atrocities also exhibit stronger associations with PTSD than global reports of combat exposure ( Litz et al., 2009 ; Yehuda, Southwick & Giller, 1992 ). Collectively, these works suggest that war survivors have endured a range of stressors, and among these, it is acts of killing and other acts which transgress deeply held ethics that most strongly impact survivors’ own postconflict suffering. Although the moral injury literature emphasizes soldiers’ encounters in wars, witnessing atrocities, and suffering psychologically for bearing witness while failing to save lives, is not limited to soldiers, or to men. “Moral conflict-colored injury” ( Litz et al., 2009 ) might be argued to afflict civilians in war zones, and women among them, if, for instance, they survived mass violence when others perished, or if they were unable to save children’s lives in the face of wartime violence and deprivation. The moral injury perspective, then, suggests that “scars” of war upon health are widely felt and linked not only to life-threat traumas (per the PTSD framework) but also to “harm received to one’s moral center as a result of things experienced, seen, and done” in war zones ( Drescher and Foy, 2008 , p. 91).

An estimated one million Vietnamese casualties took place during the Vietnam War, overwhelming the approximately 58,000 American service member deaths ( Hirschman, Preston, & Vu, 1995 ). Military mobilization defined young adulthood during the decades of war. Draft laws made service in the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) nearly universal for North Vietnamese young men from the 1960s to 1980s ( Teerawichitchainan, 2009 ), and wartime service often entailed stressful combat and lengthy, uninterrupted deployments. Women, too, were mobilized in the VPA, fulfilling duties that included direct involvement in combat roles ( Turner-Gottschang & Phan, 1998 ). Alongside the VPA, northern Vietnamese civilians were widely mobilized to join paramilitary support and defense groups and charged with duties ranging from providing support to VPA regulars on combat duties to production, repair, and transport duties ( Guillemot, 2009 ; Pike, 1986 ). Many of the key paramilitary assignments which primarily drew upon young women’s efforts, such as clearing and maintaining the Ho Chi Minh trail, entailed great physical hardships and risks ( Prados, 1999 ; Turner-Gottschang & Phan, 1998 ).

Our hypotheses emerge from a burden of conflict perspective which emphasizes the influence of a range of wartime experiences on health. In particular, we focus our analysis on two health conditions in the mental and physical health domains: PTSD and arthritis. Each of these conditions has been found to link to stress, to have relatively high prevalence in U.S. veterans ( Dominick, Golightly & Jackson, 2006 ), and to pose significant costs to patients and public health institutions ( Brooks, 2006 ; Murray & Lopez, 1997 ).

We hypothesize that veteran status will correlate positively with later life PTSD and arthritis (H1), reflecting this group’s particularly pronounced degree of exposure to highly stress-inducing war traumas relative to other older adults. We acknowledge that the many traumas, stresses, and strains associated with war and which bear heavily on health are not universally experienced by all those involved in formal military service, nor are they experienced by formal service members alone. We hypothesize that both war trauma exposures and family stressor experiences will exhibit significant, positive associations with PTSD and arthritis as individuals, encompassing men and women across social-military roles, will be more susceptible to PTSD and arthritis if they’ve endured particularly stressful traumas in the course of war (H2, H3).

The concept of moral injury suggests a pattern of physical or psychological suffering that is particularly pronounced among those who, net of their military involvement and other stress exposures, either took part in perpetrating mortal violence or witnessed egregious violent acts ( Litz et al., 2009 ). Therefore, we hypothesize that war survivors who engaged in killing or inflicting severe injury will be particularly likely to experience PTSD symptoms (H4). Although extant research has yet to establish an association linking morally injurious events with physical health problems, especially in the Vietnamese setting where somatization of psychological suffering commonly occurs ( Lin, Carter, & Kleinman, 1985 ), we expect to observe such a relationship. Accordingly, we hypothesize that killing or inflicting severe injury will exhibit a significant, positive association with disabling arthritis (H5).

Segments of the Vietnamese population, male and female, veteran and civilian alike, were not immune to witnessing the violent destruction of homes and lives in their midst. Seeing mass violence is a widely experienced traumatic stressor in Vietnamese war survivors and has been associated with moral injury in other war-affected populations ( Yehuda et al., 1992 ). Thus, we hypothesize that having witnessed war atrocities will increase the risk of suffering PTSD, as well as arthritis, in older adulthood (H6). This association will emerge irrespective of gender or military service status, as severe, unsettling war violence was witnessed widely in Vietnam.

Gender structured men’s and women’s wartime roles and their exposure to particular traumatic experiences. Killing and inflicting injury in the line of duty was largely confined to men, and thus the health implications of these acts confine to men. As women’s moral duties were bound with home and family to a greater extent than men’s, and because they tended to have closer emotional and spatial proximity to their children, we hypothesize, following the moral injury perspective’s emphasis on “acts that transgress moral expectations” ( Litz et al., 2009 , p. 695), that experiencing a child’s death will exert greater negative impact upon the health of women than men (H7).

We analyze data from the 2010 Vietnam Health and Aging Pilot Study (VHAPS). Conducted in a northern Vietnam commune of the Red River Delta, the study is situated in one of Vietnam’s most populous regions and one widely affected by U.S. bombing campaigns during the war ( Merli, 2000 ). Aiming to fill a notable gap on Vietnamese survivors’ experiences, the VHAPS explores the current health and well-being of Vietnamese men and women who entered early adulthood during the Vietnam War (i.e., those born in 1955 or earlier) and are now entering late adulthood (i.e., aged 55 and older in June to July, 2010).

In total, 405 respondents were interviewed in the VHAPS. One segment of the sample ( N = 215) consists of persons who were originally sampled in the 1995–1998 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey (VLS). The VLS utilized a two-stage stratified random sampling approach. The original VLS did not examine health status or details of military service, and focused on adults who, in the mid-1990s, were aged 15 to 65 years. At the time of the VHAPS in 2010, we attempted to follow-up 100% of VLS respondents who were at least 55 years old in 2010 (1965–1975). The rate of follow-up with VLS respondents in the designated age group for the VHAPS was 70%, and most sample attrition between 1995–1998 and 2010 was due to mortality in the intervening years.

In order to achieve sufficient sample size to analyze the correlates of military service and war exposure, the VHAPS also supplemented the 215 VLS follow-up respondents with an additional random sample of older adults from the commune’s household registration system ( N = 190). The response rate for this supplementary sample was greater than 90%.

To assess our sample’s representativeness of the cohort born roughly between 1930 and 1955, we have compared the VHAPS sample demographics to those of the district, province, and region within which it is embedded. Analysis of population characteristics from the 2009 census of Vietnam suggests that VHAPS sample demographics (e.g., sex, age, marital status, and education) do not diverge significantly from regional or provincial demographics.

Variable Measurement

Our first dependent variable, the experience and extent of recent PTSD symptoms, is assessed through a count variable of up to five symptoms the respondent experienced in the past 12 months that are related to a set of six queried wartime experiences (e.g., participating in combat, being exposed to toxic chemicals, and being a civilian in a warzone). Specifically, we calculate the count variable, ranging from zero to five, based on the number of the following symptoms that respondents report experiencing in the past year and that are perceived to be linked to stressful wartime experiences: (i) upsetting memories/dreams; (ii) trouble feeling “normal” feelings such as love or happiness; (iii) loss of interest in things once enjoyed; (iv) trouble sleeping/concentrating; and (v) feeling jumpy or easily startled. For a score of 5, for example, the respondent may link an experience of all five symptoms to one event such as combat. Or the respondent may associate two symptoms to one event (e.g., living in a warzone) and three to another (e.g., death of a child). The list of PTSD symptoms and perceived stressful “triggering” events is adapted from the World Health Organization’s Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) PTSD assessment ( Robins et al., 1988 ), which has been widely implemented in cross-national research (de Jong et al., 2001; Kessler & Üstün, 2004). As a caveat, we do not suppose that our count measure of PTSD symptoms approximates a diagnosis of psychiatric disorder. Rather, by assessing the extent to which war survivors experience PTSD-like symptoms we aim to capture the degree to which war exposures continue to exert recent, negative psychological impact in older adulthood.

To construct our second dependent variable, we identify subjects who indicated that they are currently suffering from arthritis. Subjects were further asked whether their arthritis was diagnosed by a medical professional and the extent to which it caused disability in daily life. Those with “disabling arthritis” report that the condition caused “rather serious” or “more or less serious” disability in daily life. Nearly half of the VHAPS sample reported that they were currently suffering arthritis (43%) that caused some degree of disability in daily life. Of these, a large majority (82%) reported that the condition had been diagnosed by a health professional. We retain in our analyses the few cases of arthritis lacking professional diagnosis so as not to bias the sample in ways that may exclude subjects lacking access to formal health care services. There are no substantive differences in our results when analyzing all disabling arthritis cases versus physician-diagnosed cases.

Independent Variables

Our independent variables capture war exposures and family-related stressors. First, we employ a categorical variable specifying respondents’ military service; whether they are veterans of the VPA; former volunteers in paramilitary units; or nonveterans with civilian status over their lifetimes. Because few women sampled in the VHAPS served in the formal military, in gender-disaggregated analyses we group female VPA veterans ( N = 7) and female paramilitary volunteers ( N = 53) into a single category. Although paramilitary volunteers lacked the formal status of VPA soldiers, our data and historical accounts suggest that women in these roles frequently performed duties and endured stressors on par with their VPA counterparts ( Guillemot, 2009 ).

Our second set of independent variables address war trauma exposures. Specifically, we introduce three dichotomous variables designating whether respondents self-report the following: (i) having experienced combat; (ii) having killed or seriously injured another human being in war; and (iii) having witnessed mass violence/atrocities. The latter two relate to the moral injury construct. Importantly, questions about these exposures were posed to all VHAPS respondents. Although the first two are largely confined to veterans, and to a lesser extent paramilitary volunteers, the third trauma exposure—having witnessed mass violence or atrocities—was experienced by soldiers and civilians, and men and women.

A third set of independent variables captures family-related stressors. These stressors are not restricted to those who fought in war but who experienced personal distress resulting from a family member’s service or proximity to the fighting. We employ four binary-coded variables based upon respondents’ self-reports: (i) whether or not the respondent experienced any separation of 1 year or longer from his/her spouse in the war era (prior to 1975); (ii) whether or not the respondent experienced any such spousal separation after the war (1975 to present); (iii) whether or not the respondent experienced the unexpected loss of a child during the war era (prior to 1975); and (iv) whether or not the respondent experienced the unexpected loss of a child after the war (1975 to present). Of the pre-1975 spousal separations, 70% ( N = 53) occurred during the Vietnam War decade (1965–1975). Of the pre-1975 child deaths, two thirds ( N = 20) occurred between 1965 and 1975. We are cautious in our interpretation of war era separations and child deaths as we are unable to definitively link them to specific wartime events (e.g., deployments and bombings).

Control Variables

Our analyses include as control variables the following covariates: current age; gender; current marital status; and educational attainment (whether the respondent attained nine or more years of education, or fewer). Both models also include a covariate for emotional well-being as indicated by the 5-item Mental Health Inventory ( Ware and Sherbourne, 1992 ), derived by aggregating answers to questions about the frequency of experiencing the following affects in the previous month: feeling happy, calm, peaceful, nervous, or depressed. We reverse coded negative affect measures to arrive at a continuous variable, with higher scores suggesting greater emotional well-being.

In the models estimating PTSD symptoms an additional control covariate includes, as a proxy of potentially health-buffering social capital, a binary-coded covariate specifying whether or not respondents participate in organized community activities or meetings at least once a month. We include as additional controls in models estimating arthritis the following: whether the respondent worked in agriculture (versus another sector) as a main lifetime occupation; and whether or not the respondent currently has health insurance or a free health care certificate. A covariate for lifetime smoking behavior is also included, as previous research has associated smoking with arthritis risk ( Silman, Newman, & Macgregor, 1996 ).

Analytical Approach

We explore bivariate and multivariate associations between military service, trauma exposure, family-related stressors, and our dependent variables. In light of the gendered pattern of military service and trauma exposure, we opt to present multivariate analyses for our full VHAPS sample side-by-side with separate analyses of the male and female subsamples. We employ a logistic regression approach to examine the binary-coded dependent variable indicating whether respondents currently experience disabling arthritis. As a sizable share of respondents (62%) report experiencing zero PTSD symptoms, we rely upon Poisson regression, which is suited to zero-inflated distributions, to model this count variable, which indicates the number of PTSD symptoms (from zero to five) experienced in the past year. We present two models for each sample/subsample and outcome variable in order to assess how observed health and military service associations coincide with specific traumatic exposures and family stressors hypothesized to exacerbate the risks of mental and physical maladies.

Table 1 presents sample descriptive statistics. The mean number of PTSD symptoms in the VHAPS sample is less than one, reflecting an underlying range in which 61.7% report no current symptoms, and 14.6%, 8.9%, 10.1%, and 4.7% report experiencing one, two, three, and four or five current symptoms, respectively. Forty-three percent of the sample indicates that they currently experience disabling arthritis, a prevalence rate that is significantly higher in sampled women (51.6%) than in sampled men (32.5%).

Descriptive Statistics by Gender, Adults Age 55 and Older in Northern Vietnam

Notes. PTSD = posttraumatic stress disorder.

t test of mean difference by gender; Chi-square test for gender difference: * p < .05; ** p < .01, *** p < .001.

Regarding military service, approximately 27% of the sample served in the VPA and 22% served in paramilitary organizations. The gendered nature of engagement across a spectrum of military roles is apparent. Although relatively few women are VPA veterans (3.2%), a sizable share (24.4%) involved in the war effort by engaging in paramilitary organizations.

Our sample has experienced varying degrees of exposure to the three measured experiences of war trauma, and as with military service, these exposures are highly differentiated by gender. Combat was experienced by 18% of respondents. The act of killing or injuring another person is reported by 8.6% of respondents. A full 37.5% indicate having witnessed mass violence or atrocities. Combat and killing are almost entirely domains of male trauma exposure. Although men’s greater levels of military service increased their exposure to mass violence and atrocities relative to women, more than a quarter of women report having observed these violent episodes during war time.

Family-related stressors have also been commonplace in the lives of Vietnamese older adults. Lengthy separations were particularly common, such that more than 27% of respondents report having lived away from their spouse for greater than 1 year in the war era, with the majority of separations lasting more than 3 years. The unexpected loss of a child was also widely experienced in wartime, with more than 13% of respondents indicating such a loss. Marital separations and the unexpected loss of children are not reserved to the war era, but they are reported significantly less often in the postwar period. Sampled men and women do not differ significantly in having experienced these family-related life stressors.

Regarding social and demographic characteristics of the sample, respondents’ average age was 66.6 years ( SD = 9.4). Approximately 74% of respondents, and significantly more men than women, are currently married. Approximately 46% of respondents have nine or more years of schooling, with almost twice the share of men having attained this level of education compared with women. Agriculture is the dominant lifetime occupation in the sample. The health, health behavior, and social capital covariates also illustrate significant gender differences. Men are more likely to engage in community activities (54.8%, relative to 31.8% of women) to have health insurance (68.1%, relative to 56.2% of women), and to have ever smoked (72.3%, relative to 2.3% of women), in comparison with their female counterparts. The MHI-5 index score is significantly higher in sampled men (20.4) than in sampled women (18.8), indicating greater self-reported emotional well-being in the male subsample.

Table 2 displays bivariate associations for the full sample and separately by gender. In male respondents, the arthritis prevalence is highest (38.2%) in military veterans as compared with nonveterans (20.4%), and those who volunteered with paramilitaries (32.4%). Arthritis is more common among sampled women than among men (51.6% versus 32.5%, respectively).

Crosstabulation of Military Service, Trauma Exposures, and Family Stressors With Older Adulthood Health Conditions, Adults Aged 55 and Older, Northern Vietnam

Notes: PTSD = posttraumatic stress disorder.

Cells representing ≤5 cases are denoted with —.

Difference of group means t test and Chi-square test significance: † p ≤ .10, * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001.

In the VHAPS sample, and in particular in the male subsample, we find that the rate of disabling arthritis is significantly higher in veterans compared with nonveterans, and among those who experienced the trauma event of killing/seriously injuring another person, relative to those who did not experience this traumatic stressor. Similarly, current levels of PTSD symptoms are significantly greater in men who are veterans, who engaged in combat, who killed/seriously injured, and who witnessed mass violence in comparison with sampled men without such experiences. For women, there is a greater level of current PTSD symptoms for those who witnessed mass violence in comparison with those without such exposure.

Certain family stressors also exhibit significant bivariate associations with disabling arthritis and PTSD symptoms. Specifically, both outcomes are slightly greater in segments of the full sample that experienced spousal separations during the war era as compared with those without such spousal separation. Compared with those who have not lost a child unexpectedly, those who have had this experience witness a greater prevalence of arthritis and more PTSD symptoms, but this association reaches statistical significance only within the female subsample.

Turning toward multivariate analyses, Table 3 presents Poisson regressions estimating the presence and level of current PTSD symptoms on military service, wartime trauma exposures, family stressors, and control variables. For each sample and outcome variable, we first present a model that includes our three-category military service variable, and control variables, and then a model that incorporates war traumas and family stressors, in order to delineate the constellation of traumas and stressors associated with the dependent variable. For the sake of brevity, we only present independent variables relating to our hypotheses in the tables.

Military Service, Trauma Exposure, Family Stressors, and Count of Current Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms, Northern Vietnamese Adults Aged 55 and Older: Select Poisson Regression Results

Notes . Coefficients for the following control variables not shown: current age, educational attainment, marital status, involvement in community organizations/activities, and mental health inventory score.

* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

The results in Table 3 are largely consistent with our hypotheses. Specifically, we observe a significant, positive association between veteran status and current PTSD symptoms, supporting our first hypothesis. The pattern of results in Model 1 reflects veterans’ greater exposure to the stress-inducing war traumas of killing and witnessing atrocities, each of which exhibit significant, positive associations with PTSD in the full sample, consistent with hypothesis 2, and which largely attenuate the association between military service and PTSD symptoms. Notably, the general measure of participating in combat does not exhibit a significant association with PTSD when other trauma exposures are included in the model.

The distinct pattern of results across the male and female subsamples demonstrates that the full sample results mask important gender differences in the correlates of PTSD. The strong, positive association of killing or injuring another person with PTSD symptoms concentrates within the male sample, conforming to hypothesis 4. The modest association of witnessing mass violence in the war with current PTSD symptoms, supporting hypothesis 6, appears to maintain among both men and women, but the small sample size lacks statistical power when disaggregated by gender. The significant associations observed in the full sample between the family stressor variables and PTSD remain statistically significant in the female subsample, but not the male subsample, a pattern consistent with hypothesis 7. Specifically, lengthy spousal separation and the unexpected death of one’s child each correlate with greater PTSD symptoms in older female war survivors.

Table 4 presents binary logistic regressions estimating the odds of disabling arthritis. The results are again largely consistent with hypotheses and resemble the pattern observed for PTSD. First, we note that the significant, positive coefficient for veteran status is reduced to insignificance when war trauma and family stressor covariates are introduced into the models. In the full sample, and underlying this, in the male subsample, having killed or seriously injured another person exhibits a notably strong association with disabling arthritis (supporting hypothesis 5). Combat and bearing witness to atrocities are not significant covariates in the arthritis models, thus leading to mixed support for hypothesis 6. In the female subsample, the only significant independent variable in the arthritis logistic regression model is having experienced the unexpected death of a child in the years after the war. At the same time, the family stressor covariates do not reach statistical significance in the models predicting arthritis among men. Jointly these results conform to the gender differences posited in hypothesis 7.

Military Service, Trauma Exposure, Family Stressors, and Disabling Arthritis Among Northern Vietnamese Adults Aged 55 and Older: Select Logistic Regression Results

Notes. Coefficients for the following control variables not shown: current age, educational attainment, marital status, involvement in community organizations/activities, and mental health inventory score.

The experiences of war defined a generation coming of age in 1960s and 1970s Vietnam. Many of those now elderly endured years in combatant roles, witnessing traumatic events and family stressors that our analyses only begin to capture. Others were in civilian roles, but proximate to the fighting and not immune to traumatic stressors, and familial loss and strain. In this article, we have shown how early-life military service and wartime trauma exposure are associated with older-adult health. It is one step toward grasping the ways that wars, over the long term, weigh upon public health and older-adult well-being in postconflict developing societies.

Analyses of the VHAPS data indicate that war’s impacts on mental and physical health are not restricted to veterans, but rather encompass men and women who experienced traumas and family stressors in the course of war. Compared with their nonveteran counterparts, veterans of the Vietnam People’s Army are particularly prone to suffering symptoms of PTSD, as well as debilitating arthritis. Further exploration of the details of men’s and women’s wartime trauma and family stressor experiences reveals the pivotal exposures which, differentially intersecting with military service roles, underlie the occurrence of these mental and physical health problems in older adulthood. As our analyses of arthritis and PTSD each indicate, the trauma associated with being a combatant is not significantly associated with either outcome in the full sample (or in the male subsample, which contains the vast majority of combat-exposed respondents). Rather, we see that having killed or seriously injured another person—a trauma exposure that just under half of combatants in the VHAPS sample report experiencing—has the clearest, strongest association with both PTSD and arthritis. This result mirrors previous research which has found that acts of killing in a warzone are uniquely consequential for veterans’ mental health, in particular the experience of PTSD ( Maguen, Metzler, & Litz, 2009 ). It is also consistent with recent conceptualizations of moral injury as a distinctive, particularly detrimental, element of the combat experience that weighs upon soldiers in their postconflict lives ( Litz et al., 2009 ). In the full sample, we observed a positive association between witnessing wartime atrocities and PTSD symptoms. This result also mirrors previous scholarship which suggests that moral injury underpins the association between the traumas of war and psycho-bio-social impairments ( Litz et al., 2009 ; Yehuda et al., 1992 ).

Our analyses also identify several stressors encountered in wartime and visited upon families that elevate the odds of arthritis and PTSD in survivors. Specifically, women who report experiencing the unexpected death of a child exhibit significantly higher odds of debilitating arthritis in older adulthood than counterparts who did not endure such losses. Although the etiology of this relationship warrants further exploration, we interpret these results to indicate that stresses of combat are not the only events with long-term implications for survivors’ health. Rather, living under the conditions of war can bring a wide array of stresses and strains to families which scar health in the population broadly for the long term. This result also suggests that moral injury may underpin the consequences of traumas off the battlefield, especially when women’s socially constructed moral duty to protect children’s lives is transgressed in contexts of violent armed conflict.

Research on the health of older adults in postconflict settings brings to mind several forms of selectivity which may influence our results. The “healthy warrior” effect, which points to positive health bias in military recruitment and training processes ( Kang & Bullman, 1996 ), may apply in this context, leading to a positive health status bias among those selected into VPA service. In addition, differential mortality since the end of the war may have led to selective survival of particularly resilient, hardy war survivors. These matters of selection warrant further attention in future research, such as through controls for early life socioeconomic and health characteristics in the analyses.

Despite the relatively small sample, we attempt to address women’s wartime experiences and exposures to stress and trauma in order to consider war’s lasting effects across the population. We find, importantly, that older women’s health appears to bear the scars of war exposure, in particular through the strains and losses they endured in the family realm. But women were not only affected by the war in their roles as mothers and wives. Women’s contributions to the war effort were many, varied and important ( Taylor, 1999 ; Turner-Gottschang & Phan, 1998 ). Further research with a more sizable sample of female veterans would yield valuable insights into the gendered consequences of trauma exposure for health.

We are mindful of several additional caveats. First, a more complete enumeration of distress events in a larger sample, such as one incorporating details of combat exposure, would yield more robust and generalizable results and provide greater insight into stress exposure-health physiological pathways. Second, we are ill-equipped to determine the timing of arthritis onset and whether respondents are reporting upon rheumatoid arthritis (which has been examined in association with PTSD in veterans), osteoarthritis, or some combination of conditions. Additionally, although the CIDI PTSD instrument has been previously utilized among Southeast Asian war refugees, our understandings of war’s influence upon Vietnamese elders’ mental health may be enhanced through exploration of more diverse, multidimensional measurements.

This study conveys that lingering symptoms of PTSD and high arthritis prevalence are among the lasting health impacts of war upon an aging generation of survivors. Although those who served in the army are particularly prone to developing arthritis, the effect of military service is actually concentrated among those soldiers more likely to have been troubled by moral injury due to their involvement in killing and injuring others. Additionally, we see that arthritis emerges more often in respondents, women in particular, who have lost a child unexpectedly. We find additional evidence, in particular the observed associations between killing, witnessing atrocities, and the health maladies under study, that those uniquely harmed by war are not necessarily or only those who were threatened by violence, but those who perpetrated or witnessed egregious violence against others that may be “colored by moral conflict,” and subsequently experience the “scars” of moral injury ( Litz et al., 2009 ).

Our study results suggest that the health of the aging population in Vietnam, and many other developing countries, is imprinted with the stressors of war. As wars continue to be waged and recent armed conflicts concentrated within developing societies lacking resources for postwar recovery and services to victims ( Summerfield, 2000 ), our findings provide an impetus for further investigating war exposures’ long-term effects on health in the global south.

The Vietnam Health and Aging Pilot Study was supported by the grants from the University of Utah’s Funding Incentive Seed Grant Program and from Singapore’s Ministry of Education Academic Research Funding Tier 1 through Singapore Management University (C242/MSS9S010).

We thank Charles Hirschman, Nguyen Huu Minh, Mark VanLandingham, and Vu Manh Loi for providing valuable support in conceiving and implementing the project. The VLS Health and Aging Pilot Study that provides the data for the present analyses was supported by grants from the University of Utah’s Funding Incentive Seed Grant Program and Singapore Management University’s Office of Research (C242/MSS9S010).

K. Korinek planned the study, participated in the data collection efforts, performed the data analysis, and wrote the article. P. Loebach contributed to writing and revising the article. B. Teerawichitchainan participated in the data collection efforts and contributed to writing and revising the article.

Beckham J. C. Moore S. D. Feldman M. E. Hertzberg M. A. Kirby A. C. , & Fairbank J. A . ( 2014 ). Health status, somatization, and severity of posttraumatic stress disorder in Vietnam combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder . American Journal of Psychiatry , 155 , 1565 – 1569 . doi: 10.1176/ajp.155.11.1565

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Author notes

Decision Editor: Deborah Carr, PhD

• mental health
• military personnel
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• wounds and injuries
• older adult

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The Trauma of War: PTSD and Moral Injury

War inflicts psychological damage on the innocent..

Posted March 2, 2022 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• What Is Trauma?
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There is a war in Europe. This statement seems out of place in the 21st century, but the war in Ukraine is, unfortunately, very real. Tales of heroism and resistance fill the television bulletins. We see housewives preparing Molotov cocktails, which they plan to use against the invaders. We also see determined men, many of whom had never touched a gun before in their lives, holding AK-47s and telling Western journalists that they are willing to shoot at the enemy in order to defend their homeland. We see, too, scenes of destruction, injured children and countless refugees desperately seeking asylum in neighboring countries, overwhelmed with fear and sadness. Young conscripts and bombed and displaced civilians are the inevitable, often forgotten, and anonymous victims of war, particularly since "total war" was invented in the last century. I can’t help feeling that there is a painful dissonance between the grandiloquent rhetoric of war and the pain of the powerless caught up in the horrors of an armed conflict.

War generates untold amounts of psychological trauma, in addition to all the other losses and injuries associated with it. The pain of post- traumatic stress may linger long after the event, particularly if the violence is sustained and ongoing. The aggressor’s propaganda dehumanizes the victims in order to facilitate and justify the bloodshed inflicted on them.

Good and Bad Wars, PTSD, and Moral Injury

History has divided recent conflicts into “good” and “bad” wars. The First World War is seen as a “bad” war because, according to popular perception, it was fought by the common man in order to satisfy the ambitions of their rulers, and didn’t achieve anything. Vietnam is also seen as a “bad” war, for similar reasons. In contrast, the Second World War is often seen as a “good” war, in which good triumphed against evil, even though it was also the single most horrible, cruel, and catastrophic event in the history of our species. Curiously, we associate PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) much more strongly with “bad” wars, like the First World War (at the time they called it " shell shock ") and with Vietnam, than with the Second World War. It is as if the perceived moral dimension of a given war should determine whether a soldier, or a civilian for that matter, should be traumatized by it or not. This does actually happen, and the phenomenon has been termed " moral injury ." A soldier asked to exert violence against an innocent civilian, for instance, may experience moral injury in the form of painful traumatic emotions and equally painful memories after the event.

However, I very much doubt that fewer people are traumatized in “good” wars, or that their trauma is significantly less severe, even when they have the desired outcome for the morally good side in the conflict. In all wars, including the current one in Ukraine, we all wish the victims of aggression to fare well and the invading aggressor to fail. Above all, however, we need to be very clear that war is essentially a very bad thing. It is crucial never to forget the suffering of the innocents and to ask our leaders to do all they can to avoid future wars. Too often, they haven’t.

Rafa Euba is a retired seasoned consultant psychiatrist, based in London. He has lectured in several universities and written many articles in the general and academic press, as well as three books.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

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Essay on War and Its Effects

Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Its Effects in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

Introduction.

War is a state of armed conflict between different countries or groups within a country. It’s a destructive event that causes loss of life and property.

The Devastation of War

Wars cause immense destruction. Buildings, homes, and infrastructure are often destroyed, leaving people homeless. The loss of resources makes it hard to rebuild.

The human cost of war is huge. Many people lose their lives or get injured. Families are torn apart, and children often lose their parents.

Psychological Impact

War can cause severe psychological trauma. Soldiers and civilians may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

War has devastating effects on people and societies. It’s important to promote peace and understanding to prevent wars.

250 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, a term that evokes immediate images of destruction and death, has been a persistent feature of human history. The consequences are multifaceted, influencing not only the immediate physical realm but also the socio-economic and psychological aspects of society.

Physical Impact

The most direct and visible impact of war is the physical destruction. Infrastructure, homes, and natural resources are often destroyed, leading to a significant decline in the quality of life. Moreover, the loss of human lives is immeasurable, creating a vacuum in societies that is hard to fill.

Socio-Economic Consequences

War also has profound socio-economic effects. Economies are crippled as resources are diverted towards war efforts, leading to inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Social structures are disrupted, with families torn apart and communities displaced.

Psychological Effects

Perhaps the most enduring impact of war is psychological. The trauma of violence and loss can have long-term effects on mental health, leading to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Society at large also suffers, with the collective psyche marked by fear and mistrust.

In conclusion, war leaves an indelible mark on individuals and societies. Its effects are far-reaching and long-lasting, extending beyond the immediate physical destruction to touch every aspect of life. As we continue to study and understand these impacts, it underscores the importance of pursuing peace and conflict resolution.

500 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, an organized conflict between two or more groups, has been a part of human history for millennia. Its effects are profound and far-reaching, influencing political, social, and economic aspects of societies. Understanding the impact of war is crucial to comprehend the intricacies of global politics and human behavior.

The Political Impact of War

War significantly alters the political landscape of nations. It often leads to changes in leadership, shifts in power dynamics, and amendments in legal systems. For instance, World War II resulted in the downfall of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, giving rise to democratic governments. However, war can also destabilize nations, creating power vacuums that may lead to further conflicts, as seen in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Social Consequences of War

Societies bear the brunt of war’s destructive nature. The loss of life, displacement of people, and the psychological trauma inflicted upon populations are some of the direct social effects. Indirectly, war also affects societal structures and relationships. It can lead to changes in gender roles, as seen during World War I and II where women took on roles traditionally held by men, leading to significant shifts in gender dynamics.

Economic Ramifications of War

Economically, war can have both destructive and stimulating effects. On one hand, it leads to the destruction of infrastructure, depletion of resources, and interruption of trade. On the other, it can stimulate economic growth through increased production and technological advancements. The economic boom in the United States during and after World War II is an example of war-induced economic stimulation.

The Psychological Impact of War

War leaves a deep psychological imprint on those directly and indirectly involved. Soldiers and civilians alike suffer from conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, societies as a whole can experience collective trauma, impacting future generations. The psychological scars of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings continue to affect Japanese society today.

In conclusion, war is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with profound effects that can shape nations and societies in significant ways. Its impacts are not confined to the battlefield but reach deep into the political, social, economic, and psychological fabric of societies. Therefore, understanding its effects is not only essential for historians and political scientists but also for anyone interested in the complexities of human societies and their evolution.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Kargil War
• Essay on Disadvantages of War
• Essay on Consequences of War

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635 War Topics to Write about & Examples

Can’t think of interesting wars to write about? Check out this list for inspiration! Here, you will find best war topics to write about, be it WW1, Vietnam War, or the Cold War. Choose a catchy title for war-themed paper or speech, and don’t forget to read our essay examples!

🔝 Top 10 War Essay Topics to Write About

🏆 best war topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on war, 📌 simple & easy war title ideas, 🎓 writing prompts for war, 💡 interesting war topics to write about, 📑 good research topics about war, ❓ research questions about war, ✅ war argumentative essay topics.

• The Evolution of Warfare
• The Economic Impact of Wars
• Is Just War Theory Ethical?
• How War Impacts Civilians
• War Crimes and International Justice
• The Role of Women in Armed Conflicts
• Triggering Factors and Aftermath of World War I
• What Is the Role of Media in War Propaganda?
• The Psychological Effects of War on Soldiers
• Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Stability
• Similarities and Differences Between Korean and Vietnam Wars There were also several differences such as the way of development of the conflicts where the Korean War was during three years, and the Vietnam War was the prolonged struggle, the participation of the Chinese […]
• War and Peace in Modern World It should be realized that not only people of each country should become civilized but the governments as well because welfare of the whole world rather than of separate countries is at stake and with […]
• Analysis of the Russian War in Ukraine The war is the first in the history of Europe, which occurs during the time of the existence of social networks, and cell phones.
• Effects of War on Economics, Politics, Society It is unfortunate that the major victims of any war are usually women and their children. Most of them are prone to sexual slavery and brutality in during the war.
• “The Cold War: A New History” by John Lewis Gaddis In Chapter 1 “Return of Fear”, Gaddis states that the Cold War was caused due to the competing and divergent ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union.
• First World War: Causes and Effects This later led to the entry of countries allied to Serbia into the war so as to protect their partners. In conclusion, the First World War led to the loss of many lives.
• Positive and Negative Effects of WW1 on Canada: Essay Nonetheless, the war led to great negative impacts such as loss of lives, economic downtrend, and the generation of tensions involving the Francophones and Anglophones who disagreed after the emergence of the notion of conscription.
• Sociological Criticism of Twain’s “The War Prayer” In the given essay, it is discussed that The War Prayer cannot be viewed solely as a story of a pacifist, as the main argument is weak and unjustified. That is why The War Prayer […]
• The Destructive Impact of War: Causes and Consequences The movie Paths of Glory is one of the best examples of the absurdity of war. The author’s opinion is that the soldiers are not entirely aware of their position.
• American Dream After World War I People lost vision of what this dream was supposed to mean and it became a dream, not of the vestal and industrious, but of the corrupt coterie, hence corrupting the dream itself.
• The Conclusion of The Civil War The main reason that the Confederacy succeeded from the Union was the issue of States’ rights which are guaranteed by the Constitution but were almost completely lost following the Civil War.
• The World War 2 Positive and Negative Repercussions The Effects Of The 2nd World War: The fall of world major powers: The war did not just end, but it had some positive and negative effect to the countries both involved and those that […]
• War, Its Definition, History and Aspects It should be known that there are a lot of moral theories that revolve around war and this is something that the society needs to understand.
• Miscommunication Problems: the US and Japan in World War II At the beginning of 1945, the leaders of such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China offered the document that outlined the conditions of the Japanese surrender under which Hirohito could stay […]
• Main Characters in “War” Story by Luigi Pirandello Upon considering the main characters in the short story “War” by Luigi Pirandello, I feel that I identify with the least is the mother of the boy being sent off to war.
• Are 18-21 Years Old Psychologically Mature Enough to Go for War/Military? This was done to improve the overall welfare of the service and the inclusion of the eighteen years old meant that they were psychologically fit to offer service in the military and war.
• American history: The Civil War (1861-1865) It was a belief of Federalists that in order to ensure the union does not collapse, there was need for the federal government to hold on to power.
• Propaganda During World War II The Second World War was a complicated time for both the general public and the authorities since while the former worried for their safety, family, and homeland, the latter needed to maintain the national spirit […]
• Music as a Weapon During the Vietnam War Music to the soldiers in Vietnam acted as a tool to remind all troops of the responsibility that they had taken by being on the battlefield.
• Could the US Prevent the Start of World War II? Some believe that the United States of America could prevent the outbreak of the war. Therefore, it is possible to assume that the USA could not have prevented the start of the Second World War […]
• Causes of World War II Therefore the desire by the Germans under Hitler to conquer other countries and the desire by the Japanese to expand their territory was the key cause of the war in Europe and subsequently the World […]
• “The One Day War” by Judith Soloway Review The author describes the project, in which all the events of the Civil War are shown shortened to only one day.
• World War 2 Consequences The major causes of this Great War were the unresolved issues that resulted from the World War 1. Another thing that led to the World War 2 was the failure of the League of Nations.
• The Cold War and the Balance of Power Theory The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Communist Block have led to a complete change in the balance of power in the international arena.
• The 1930s English Poetry: Pen at War Auden’s poem uses conventional structure in the form of a sonnet although the the rhymes are not as smooth and lyrical, but the substance of the poetry remains in the era of the 1930s.
• Kien’s Experience in The Sorrow of War by Ninh The Vietnam War was perceived as injustice because of the discrepancy between the loose form it took and the form the soldiers had been trained to identify and label as such.
• “The Sorrow of War” by Bao Ninh: Memory as a Central Idea The image of soldier Kien in The Sorrow of War demonstrates the difficulties of the Vietnamese people before, through and after this war.
• World War II Innovations Named as the Manhattan Project during World War II, the nuclear program of the Allies led to catastrophic consequences for the Axis forces, particularly in the context of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which […]
• Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries This essay seeks to outline several evidences to prove that peace is the most important thing in the world The Second World War was one of the most destructive battles in the world.
• The Western Front: First World War A common assessment of the Battle of Pozieres is that the Australians were facing a formidable enemy in the form of the Germans.
• War and Violence Metaphors in Newspaper Headlines For both purposes, the use of metaphorical language in headlines is crucial to catch the people’s attention and to trigger a chain of association that will direct the readers’ focus to a particular side of […]
• War and Violence: Predisposition in Human Beings Past wars and violence have shown that most wars emanated out of the need to accumulate resources. This suggests that we have to comprehend war economies and the role of greed in perpetuating violence.
• The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars Comparison To me, one of the most striking features connecting the works was the resemblance between Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and Han Solo in A New Hope.
• Reflecting the Horrors of War People learn more about the horrors of war through literature but do not infer from experience they gain; the only way they apply the knowledge about the war is the development of more sophisticated weapon […]
• “The Sorrow of the War” by Bao Ninh The cause of the Vietnam War is partly because of the policies of the United States in meddling with the affairs of the Vietnam government.
• Modern War and Successful Warfare WWII became a critical stage in the history of humanity and governments and resulted in the reconsideration of the approach to military campaigns and measures needed to attain success.
• The Cola Wars Case: Industry Analysis In light of the fact that there are many similar products available for the target market, the bargaining power of consumers is very high.
• Total War of World War I The paper will demonstrate that the First World War was a total war since it bore most the hallmark characteristics of the total war including unlimited warfare, prioritization of armament efforts, involvement of the civilian […]
• Shintoism and World War II in Japan The impact of religions on the world throughout history is undeniable, it can be seen how different religions include in their teachings all of the life aspects and affect them in a way or another.
• World War II, Causes and Outcomes: Lesson Plan It includes the key concepts, objectives, materials, and the description of the activities that teachers can use to introduce new material to the students in the 11th and 12th grades.
• The Film Industry During Cold War The end of world war two marked the start of the cold war between the Unites States of America and the Soviet Union.
• “The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War” by Downs At the very outset, it was clear to the soldiers that the war in Indochina was not being conducted in terms of the glory myths on which they had been raised. The second part of […]
• Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War The Vietnam War caused unintended consequences for the civil rights movements of the 1960s as it awakened the African-Americans’ consciousness on the racism and despotism that they experienced in the United States.
• Korean War: History, Causes, and Effects The Korean War which is termed as the forgotten war was a military conflict that started in June 1950 between North Korean who were supported by peoples republic of China backed by Soviet Union and […]
• Why the Reconstruction After the Civil War Was a Failure The reconstruction era refers to the period following the civil war whereby the numerous different affiliations in the government intended to find a solution to the socio-economic and political problems imposed by the civil war, […]
• Effects of the Pact of Steel Agreement on World War II He was a strong believer in the strength of the people as the backbone of the country and not the strength of the individual.
• Prisoner of War Camp as an Economic Network The paper forms a thesis statement that ” a viable economic network would be formed even when there are severe restrictions and a common currency is evolved and that the currency is subjected to ups […]
• The Role Played by Texans in World War II Involvement in the war was expected because the US was against Japan’s entry into Middle East, and colonization of Africa and certain regions of Europe by Germany and Italy. The US was greatly perturbed after […]
• World War I Technology Although the question of the origins of the Great War is highly debated, and although this war is considered by many as the beginning of a new stage in history and the real starting point […]
• The Vietnam War in the “Child of Two Worlds” Therefore, in the future, he is like to live in the outside world rather than in the inside one. Therefore, Lam wants to start a new life in the US and forgets his roots, which […]
• Lysistrata: An Anti-War Play The action evolves around the idea to come about the salvation of Greek people that is hatched by the main heroine of the play Lysistrata who encourages all women of Greece to withhold their marriage […]
• How the Vietnam War Polarized American Society It galvanized the enemy and opponents of the war in both Vietnam and America and led many to question the ethics of the campaigns.
• The Mexican-American War Therefore, for the interest of peace in the region, the US should not have engaged Mexico in this bloody war. However, the US should not have engaged in the war.
• Peloponnesian War: Summary, Causes, & Effects According to Bagnall, the major cause of the war as accounted by Thucydides was the indiscriminate expansion of Athenian power. The honor was for his contribution to the cautious policy that the Spartans employed during […]
• War Impacts in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien The book gives a true reflection of the effect of war on soldiers from the perspective of a soldier who directly participated in a war to defend his country.
• Post-Cold War Challenges At the time when strained relations between the US and the Soviet Union ended, the financial systems of several countries, particularly those in Eastern Europe, were in the process of collapsing.
• A Historical Literary Analysis: The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bau Nihn The nonlinear narrative coupled with a series of reminiscences and flashbacks, enhances the realism of the story in that it is indicative of the human memory process and the mind’s ability to cope with and […]
• Effects of War on Humanity in Terms of Human Rights The effects not only affect the coalition governments in war, but also members of the attacked countries for instance, Iraq people recorded the greatest number of fatalities and casualties during the Iraq war.
• The Beat Poets Generation in Post-war America The poetry of the Beat Generation exuded of the ideal of the Beat Generation that was to “escape” in a “vision”.
• World War 2 Leaders Comparison: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler World War 2 remains one of the most significant and historically important events in the entire world because the United States of America, Japan, and the majority of European countries were involved in it.
• Technology vs. Nature in ‘ War Horse’ by Steven Spielberg One of the ways the film uses to stress the distinction between the beasts of war and military machinery is lighting.
• The Effects of the Korea Division on South Korea After the Korean War The Korean War of 1950 to 1953, was a war between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, backed up by China and the Soviet Union; and the Republic of Korea, backed by the United States […]
• Positive Results of the War on Drugs The present section argues that the War on Drugs yielded some significant results in the United States, mainly thanks to the country’s advantageous geographic position, in terms of reducing both production and consumption of drugs […]
• Drug Issue in “America’s Unjust Drug War” by Michael Huemer In a report on the unjust drug war in America, the author proposes that legislation on the use of recreational drugs is improper.
• Why Did the United States Lose the Vietnam War? The Office of the Secretary of Defense had become demoralized due to the events that had taken place; hence, it was unwilling to escalate the war further due to the decline of the army troops […]
• Air Defense Artillery in the Gulf War Operation Desert Storm is the first combat use of the missile MIM-104C Patriot, which became the backbone of the Allied air defense system.
• Two Main Causes of Wars For instance, wars have existed since the time of the civilization revolution and even the wars are constantly recorded in the holy books such as the bible and the Koran respectively.
• World War II Propaganda and Its Effects The purpose of this paper is to examine the confrontation between the German and the Soviet propaganda machines during the period of the Second Patriotic War, outline the goals and purposes of each, and identify […]
• Effects of the Industrial Revolution in Relation to World War I During the last period of the 19th century all the way to the early 20th century, Europe and America experienced revolutions in communication, transportation and weapons which were very crucial particularly in the manner in […]
• The Use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War The Association of American Advancement of science prompted the US government to allow investigations into the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam in 1968.
• “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu Sun Tzu is also known to have written the book, The Lost Art of War, which is related to the first book.
• Themes in “The Wars” Novel by Timothy Findley The title of the story, The Wars, is not that simple and represents two different types of war, which are inherent to people: the war that happens on the battlefield, and the war that happens […]
• Role of the Woman During the Spanish Civil War This impact of the Spanish war is even clearer by consideration of the fact that the war had the implications of making women take up the jobs that originally belonged to men in the industries […]
• The Turning Point of War; Stalingrad Battle The Stalingrad battle began in September 1942 during the winter, led by the “German commander of the sixth army, General Paulus and assisted by Fourth Panzer Army”; indeed, General Paulus was ordered by Hitler to […]
• How Did War Change People This is one of the main issues that should be considered because it throws light on the motives that drive the actions of the narrator.
• UAE Involvement in the Iran-Iraq War This paper will argue that the UAE contributed to the lengthy duration of the war due to the monetary support offered to the Iraqis and the Iranians.
• Federal Government Expansion During World War I The period between 1914 and 1918 was marked by the increased role of the federal government in the United States and the dramatic expansion of its bureaucracies.
• Outcomes of the Wars of the Roses The wars ended with the ascendancy of Henry, of the House of Tudor, to the throne. This marked the start of the war of the roses as Richard Duke of York and his supporters sought […]
• The War of 1812 Impacts on the United States The war was fought from June 1812 and it climaxed in the spring of 1815 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, although the battle failed to solve the issues that had made it […]
• Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
• Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway and War Experiences The thesis of this paper is in the form of an argument to convince the readers that Krebs’s laziness comes from his inability to adapt himself to the changing patterns of life, which society imposes […]
• Yugoslav Wars: Ethnic Conflicts and the Collapse of Power However, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the end of this era and the start of the post-Cold War period, with its unique peculiarities of the international discourse.
• The Thirty Years’ War The unwillingness of Calvinists to adhere to terms of the Peace of Augsburg and the formation of military alliances by Lutheran and Catholic rulers contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War.
• Civil War in America: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce For instance, in his story, Bierce gives specific details of the setting of the story, which is during the civil war in Alabama.
• The Office of Strategic Services Operational Groups in World War II The study of the importance of O.S. To investigate the impact of O.S.
• The First World War’s Long- and Short-Term Causes Numerous conflicts witnessed in Europe towards the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th formed the basis for resentment, hate, and the arms race that led to the Great War.
• “Charlie Wilson’s War” by Nichols The 2007 movie, featuring award-winning actors Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, portrays the involvement of the US in the Soviet-Afghan conflict.”Charlie Wilson’s War” is based on a true story and presents the […]
• The Causes and Effects of World War I To this end, the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and the Enforcement of Penalties met in Paris in 1919. It is impossible to name a single reason for the initiation […]
• Germany’s Aims in the First World War Thus, Fischer insisted on the acceptance of the revolution as a means of warfare and the aim of Germany in the First World War.
• Countries That Suffered the Greatest as a Result of the Cold War After the Second World War, there was a long period of tension between the democracies of the Western World and the communists’ countries of Eastern Europe, which is called The Cold War.
• First Fitna: Islamic Civil War Evaluating the situation, it appears that the First Islamic Civil war led to the split in the Muslim religion caused by the effects of the Arbitration Agreement developed after the battle of Siffin.
• The Martians in “The War of the Worlds” by H.D. Wells The first time the reader encounters the Martians is in the chapter “The Cylinder Opens” and this encounter suggests the evident difference of appearances of the Martians and men.
• Nationalism in World War II Another critical “nation-statehood making” is the break of the Soviet Union and the end of cold war between Soviet Union republic and the United States.
• Role of United Arab Emirates in the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait Initially, UAE’s operations in the Middle East were considered to have fuelled the Iraq- Kuwait conflicts during the early 1990s. Before the onset of the war, UAE was among the first Arab countries to object […]
• Causes and Effects of the Vietnamese War To the U.S.the war was a loss, because the reunion of South and North Vietnamese citizens marked the end of the war, hence U.S.’s undivided support for the southern region yielded nothing, apart from numerous […]
• “War” and “The other Wife” It is through the characterization of Marc and Alice, the contrasting of Alice with Marc’s ex-wife, that the story’s themes are revealed.
• Bitterness and Cruelty of War: “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Facing It” Although both concerning the subject of war, the settings of the two poems are quite different.”Dulce Et Decorum Est” is set in a trench of the First World War and dedicated to description of a […]
• Aboriginal Soldiers in the World War I and II Additionally, the paper will argue that the role and experiences of Aboriginal soldiers and the manner in which they have been overshadowed by other significant events in Australian history.
• The Effects of War and Destruction in Poetry This essay aims to analyze the theme of the effects of war and destruction in the poem The End and the Beginning by Wislawa Szymborska and the lyrics Harry Patch by Radiohead.
• The Causes of the Islamic Civil War The power was passed from father and son, and the Quraish of the Hashemites handed power to the Umayyads after the murder of Muttalib.
• Mueller’s “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’” Instead, the second half of the 20th and the early years of the 21st century have seen a significant increase in the number of civil wars.
• Realism, Strategies and War The reality is that people expect the worst and have to create plans for such occurrences. Realism is a philosophical branch of thinking that tries to expand the knowledge of people and explain what reality […]
• The Hurt Locker: Sergeant James’ Obsession With War Our essay is devoted to the investigation of a question: was the war an obsession and a drug for Sergeant James, the main character of the movie?
• Fort Sumter, South Carolina – Civil War The 1812 war spurred the need for construction of a fort to strengthen the United States military along the coast which led to construction of fort Sumter.
• “War and Innocence” by Robert Fullinwinder In the closing part of the article, the researcher concludes that absent of self-defense should be compensated by the introduction of the legal conventions justifying killing in war.
• Investigation of War Causes Between the USA and Japan Nevertheless, it is necessary to dive into the depth of Pacific War causes analysis in order to understand its relation to the events in Europe and outline the basic effects it brought to the countries; […]
• “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien People also tend to use these memories to have a purpose and goals in life.”How to tell a true war story” by Tim O’Brien is a story told about the encounters and experiences of war […]
• Refugees as a Tactic in War: History, Types, and Number A refugee is defined as a person who due to a justifiable reason of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a certain social or a political group is out of the […]
• “Victims: A True Story of the Civil War” by Phillip Shaw Paludan The course of this war and the way it affected the people who suffered from it presents the main concern for the author of the book.
• The Battle of Chickamauga in the American Civil War The topic that is the focus of this paper is the battle of Chickamauga and its influence on the course of the Civil War.
• Vietnam War in the “Platoon” Movie by Oliver Stone In the context of the war, the confrontation between two non-commissioned officers, the cruel-hearted Barnes and the humane Elias, is depicted.
• All Diplomacy Is a Continuation of War by Other Means It should also be known that diplomacy is a continuation of war based on the fact that one party might be involved in diplomacy to get enough support in defense of war.
• The Neutrality of Vatican City During World War II Despite the moves made by the Pope Pius XII for the Vatican City to remain neutral in the World War II, the actions he made were seen as a great violation of stance.
• The Book “The First World War” by John Keegan However, the emergence of the bill of the right to people’s life across the globe is owed to the occurrence of the First and the Second World War.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: World War II Hero and U.S. President In addition to his leading role as a peace and desegregation crusader, prior to his election as the 34th American president and even after his rise to the top seat, Eisenhower was a well known […]
• The Aftermath of World War I for Germany In spite of the fact that Germany was one of the most powerful European states before the war’s start in 1914, World War I led to the political, economic, and social decline in the country […]
• How Americans Won the Revolutionary War? Thus, the Revolutionary War resulted in the victory of the American colonists because the experienced British army was defeated with the help of the new military techniques, approaches, and strategies, the Americans had the territory […]
• The Role of Women in the Vietnam War For example, women in the Navy Nurse Corps and Army Nurse Corp were sent to take part in the Vietnam War and the Korean War.
• Why and How Did the US Get Involved in the Korean War? On the surface, the Korean War seemed like a normal war between North and South Korea; however, there was more to it than what met the eye.
• Doing Academic World War II Research Researchers can use the information on the authors at Britannica to determine the reliability of the information provided on the website.
• Why Wars Happen: Liberal, Realist, Identity Perspectives The Kuwaiti attack by Iraq saw the torching of oil fields, the death of several Iraq and Kuwaiti soldiers as well as the citizens of the two countries.
• The Spanish American War The Spanish American War started in 1898, and the reason of this conflict was the liberation of Cuba. The war started after Spain’s rejection of the American request for the resolution of the Cuban struggle […]
• The House I Live In: War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration Yet the way in which the comparison between the Holocaust and the War on Drugs makes the most sense is the fact that mass incarceration for drug-related offenses disproportionally targets one group of population.
• Latin America and the Cold War In the conditions of the Cold War, namely in the middle of the 1940s-1970s, Latin America was the arena of the struggle for the spheres of influence of the US and the Soviet Union.
• Cold War: Summary, Causes, History, & Facts The plot of the Soviet Union to spread the issue of communism to all parts of the world stands out as the major cause of the Cold War.
• War in Poems by Dickinson, Hardy, and Jarrell Dickinson experienced a great amount of attachment towards the Civil War and her expression for the cause had been expressed through the expression of death in its spiritual and eternal nature.
• Individualism as an Ideal of Civil War in America Most of the Americans believe that James town is the birth place of the distinctive, secular and unique ideals of America that led to America’s freedom and prosperity.
• The Cold War: Causes and Consequences United States, which sustained the minimal damage during the apocalyptic war, was elevated to the status of the savior of the new world in the west whilst mighty Soviet Union whose winters not only mercilessly […]
• The Vietnam War in American History Since early fifties the government of the United States began to pay special attention to Vietnam and political situation in this country, because, it was one of the most important regions in the Southeast Asia.
• The Break-up of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia-Hecergovina S, the end of Cold the War in 1989 led to the disintegration of Communist federations of the Soviet Union including Yugoslavia and the other nations in Eastern Europe.
• Anglo-Zulu 1879 War Analysis The Zulu nation had been invaded by Voortrekkers and up to the time it was subdued by the British, it had fought numerous battles and even when the Zulu finally lost to the British, they […]
• The End of the Cold War Analyzing Gorbachevs actions and his incentives in the economy of the USSR, it is possible to conclude that the primary aim of these actions was the destruction of the welfare of the country, the growth […]
• World War II in “Slaughterhouse-Five“ Novel by Kurt Vonnegut To make a detailed description of the expressed opinion and to prove it, we should consider the characteristic features of the heroes and the general perception of novels which are directed at the description of […]
• Strategy Ideas From ”The Art of War” by Sun Tzu In its turn, this particular requirement is predetermined by the fact that the activity in question is the subject to the rules of thermodynamics something that makes it possible to proceed with it in a […]
• The First and Second Chechen Wars Comparison The ethnic and linguistic composition of the population of this region probably makes the range of the Caucasus the most varied area in the world.
• Hard or Soft Power in the Cold War’s End One of the biggest motivations that triggered the involvement of the United States in the cold war was the need to stop the Soviet Union spreading their communist ideologies into other parts of the world.
• The Trojan War: A New History by Barry Strauss The intentions of Strauss are displayed at once in the title of the book: the author claims to introduce an updated view of the Trojan War to the general public.
• The Film “Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go To War” The film Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go To War produced by the Public Broadcasting Service throws light on the actions of the political leaders who were involved in the confrontation that could result in […]
• The Iraq War: Background and Issues After the end of the gulf war, the relationship between the US and Iraq was characterized by conflict which culminated into the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies namely the United Kingdom, […]
• Religious Values in War and Peace Although war is a natural thing, which occurs in the presence of humanity, the maintenance of ethical and moral values is of great significance.
• Women in World War II The involvement of women in the war was quite significant to the women as they were able to have a strong arguing point after the war and this made it possible for the women to […]
• Hanoi and Washington: The Vietnam War The Vietnam War was a conflict that was military in nature, occurred between the years 1954 and 1975, and was between the communists and the non-communists.
• The Mass Media and War The media can decide to become actively involved in the war which can be of help when finding a resolution to the conflict or it can lead to escalation of the conflict.
• Music of the Civil Wars, Civil Rights & Freedom Movements of Europe, Africa, North & South America During the 20th Century The aim of Giovinezza was to reinforce the position of Mussolini as the leader of the Fascist Movement and of Italy.
• “War Horse” (2011) by Steven Spielberg The setting of this movie is before the onset of the First World War. The way Ted dresses and his flask of alcohol help give a date to this movie.
• World War 1 Origins (How and Why the War Started) William Anthony Hay claims that according to McMeekin, a tutor of international relations, “The war’s real catalyst lay in Russia’s ambition to supplant the waning Ottoman Empire in the Near East and to control the […]
• Civil War Paper: Valley of the Shadow The valley of the shadow explains the history the citizens especially the blacks had to go. The free blacks got involved in farming as this constituted a large part of the valley prosperity and wealth.
• Tim O’Brien: The True War Storyteller In How to Tell a True War Story, author Tim O’Brien directs the reader’s attention to the idea of truth, not simply in the telling and retelling of certain events from the Vietnam War that […]
• Stories From the Vietnam War In the dissonance of opinions on the Vietnam War, it appears reasonable to turn to the first-hand experiences of the veterans and to draw real-life information from their stories.
• The Role of the US in the Gulf War The paper will also analyse importance of the Gulf region as a major world supplier of oil and the role played by the US in guiding the UN in making the resolutions for Iraq’s withdrawal […]
• International Relations: Atomic Bombs and Cold War The dropping of the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the United States directly contributed to the initiation of the Cold War. The utilization of the bombs led the Soviet Union to see the […]
• The First World War: Role of Aviation The main features of aviation in that period were the simplicity of aircraft design and the rapid improvement of models depending on combat requirements. The use of aviation had a great influence on the development […]
• The World War II Propaganda Techniques All the parties to the war, including Germany, the Soviet Union, and Britain, invested many resources in propaganda, but the present essay will focus on the United States’ effort. Furthermore, propaganda messages were created to […]
• America’s Involvement in World War I The issues that led to America’s involvement in this were the German’s resumption of unexpected submarine attacks and the Zimmerman telegram.
• The Cold War and the Events of September 11 The anxieties arising from the issue of European immigrants echo the sentiments of securitization and Islamophobia following the events of September 11.
• Oleg Penkovsky, a Double Agent of the Cold War The political race of the Soviet Union and the United States began after the end of the Second World War. In 1953, Penkovsky began working in GRU and was sent to work in Turkey as […]
• Photos of Vietnam War The role of the media in the Vietnam War also raises issues of what the media ought to censor and report to the public.
• The American Civil War: Causes and Aftermath The war happened because of economical, political and cultural differences between the Northern states and the Southern states. In the late 1970s to 1860s, slavery was the norm in most of the Southern states.
• The Costs Effects of the War in Afghanistan This highlights the causes of the war and Justifies the United States Action to invade Iraq on the argument of self-defense based on the UN Charter.
• The Spanish Civil War in Picasso’s, Siqueiros’, Dali’s Paintings The piece conveys the horrors and losses of the event dead adults and children, a horse in agony as an important symbol in Spain, and the suffering of survivors are present here. In various ways, […]
• The Connection of Hockey, Violence, and War
• Consequences of the Hundred Years’ War Between England and France
• Importance of Diplomacy in Preventing and Stopping Wars
• War Justification in The Iliad and The Bhagavad-Gita
• Soldiers’ Letters From American Civil War
• “Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-45” by C. Merridale
• War Ethics in “The Sirens of Baghdad” by Yasmina Khadra
• Underlying Causes of the Sierra Leone Civil War
• Anti-War Sentiments in the Play “The Trojan Women”
• Life of Soldiers During the World War I
• Religion as the Cause of Wars
• Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Role in World War II
• Comparison Between Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Machiavelli’s Art of War
• Entering the Great War in War is a Blessing, Not a Curse
• Effects of World War I on the Development of Modern Art
• The Causes and Consequences of World War Two
• New and Old Wars Comparison
• Why Did Conflicts in Yugoslavia Lead to War in the 1990s?
• The Impacts of the Second World War on Asia
• The Cold War: US Foreign Policy
• Cold War and a Bipolar World
• Protests and Music of the Vietnam War
• The Progressive Movement and the American Entry Into World War I
• Polybius vs. Livy on the Second Punic War
• V-2 Rocket and Its Impact on World War II and Today US Army
• Causes of the Civil War: Battle on the Bay
• The Factors That Led to the Outbreak of the Yemeni Civil War
• Causes and Conflict of the Peloponnesian Wars
• The History of the Mexican–American War
• The Late 19th Century and the First World War, 1850-1918
• Political and Social Forces During and After the Vietnam War
• Dynastic Wars’ Impact on England’s Development
• US Holocaust Policy During World War II
• The Post-Civil War Era in the Lives of African Americans
• Reasons for Soviets Losing the Cold War
• The Cold War: Reassessing the Cold War and the Far-Right
• The Role of Women in the Civil War
• The War in Ukraine: Weapons of Mass Destruction
• World War I as the Catastrophe of the 20th Century
• The American Civil War Period
• Canada’s Role and Experiences in World War II
• The Civil War by K. Burns Film Review
• The American Civil War and Its Main Stages
• The Bonds or Bondage World War II Poster Analysis
• The Unfinished Journey: The US During the Cold War
• The Cold War Ideologies’ Impact on the American History
• Strategies in the Peloponnesian War
• Cold War Impact on Germany
• The Cold War: The US vs. the Soviets Polarization
• Canadian Martial Art and a World at War
• Women Who Fought in the American Civil War
• Civil War in Shaara’s The Killer Angels and Glory Film
• “How War Fuels Poverty” Article by McCarthy
• Important Questions on America Since World War II
• World War I: American Policy of Neutrality
• Role of Terrorism in Russo-Ukrainian War
• The Barbary Wars’ Impact on the US
• Game Theory Applied to the Russo-Ukrainian War
• The US Foreign Policy in the Post-World War II Era
• Causes of the Cold War’s End
• Diaries on Australia in the Pacific War
• Search for Identity After Dirty War in Argentina
• The War of 1812: A Narrative History
• Implications of the Russia–Ukraine War for Global Food Security
• The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces
• Justification of War Based on Falklands War Example
• Texas War of Independence: The Main Challenges
• “The War’s Price Tag for Russia…” Article by Aris
• Economic Causes of World War I
• The Role of Canada in World War I
• American History: Bacon’s Rebellion & King Phillip’s War
• The Election of 1860: The Final Step to Civil War
• Smallpox During the American Revolutionary War
• Challenges of Managing the Army and War
• The Life of the US After the Civil War
• The Texas War for Independence
• Russo-Ukrainian War: Global Effects
• American Cities and Urbanization After the Civil War
• Researching and Analysis of the Vietnam War
• The Afghanistan War From a Utilitarian Point of View
• Post-Traumatic Growth in Student War Veterans
• The Barbary Wars of the United States
• World War II and the US Decision to Stay Out
• The Cold War as a Turning Point in History
• Latin America Impacted by Global Cold War
• Contribution of Media Text to World Wars’ Propaganda
• Afro-American Position on Spanish-American War
• The Result Japan’s Fall in World War II
• War’s Effect on Perception in Literary Characters
• The Civil War in Ukraine (2014 – Present)
• The Ethics of War: A Contractarian Ethics of War
• The Role of Propaganda During World War II
• Russia and Ukraine War in News From February to April
• Wartime Conferences of World War II
• The Events of 1968 in American History and the Cold War
• African American Soldiers in the Civil War
• D-Day: The Role in World War II
• Promoting Production During World War II
• The World War II Discussion: The Convoy Tactics
• The War in Ukraine and Exchange Rates
• The Sino-Vietnamese War: The Ending and the Consequences
• The Russo-Ukrainian War’s Impact on the World
• America’s Progressive Era and World War I
• Lincoln’s Views on Ending the Civil War
• War Creates Opportunities for Women: “A Story of Mercy Otis Warren”
• The Second World War Choices Made in 1940
• A Change in Art Style After World War II
• Russo-Japanese War and American-Japanese Conflicts in the Pacific
• Significant Impact Field Artillery Had in the 2003 War in Baghdad
• The Cold War and Engagement
• US Strategy From the Cold War to the Post-Global War on Terrorism
• Aspects of the Second Gulf War
• War in Ukraine: A Humanitarian Disaster
• What Role Did India Play in the Second World War?
• Mearsheimer’s Standpoint on the War Reasons
• The Spanish-American War: Reasons, Sequence, and Results
• World War Two and Its Ramifications
• South Africa During World War II Years
• Contribution to World War II of Chinese and Native Americans
• The American Civil War’s Causes and Inevitability
• Migration Issue: Cultural War
• The Armenian Community’s Recovery After the War
• The World Wars’ Consequences for European Countries
• From Divided to United During American War in Vietnam
• Emory Upton in the Battle of Columbus in the Civil War
• A Civil War with Former Ethiopian Rulers
• Latin-African Philosophical Wars on Racism in US
• The First World War: Military-Industrial Complex
• Factors That Enable Iraq War Veterans to Integrate Into the Civilian Sphere
• The Cold War in Context: Geopolitics
• Ancient Egyptians’ Ethics of War
• Inside the President’s War Room Documentary
• The Desert War: Armed Forces of Saudi Arabia
• Civil War: Causes, Technology, and Justification
• Generals of the American Civil War Ulysses Grant and Robert Lee
• GI Bill as Legislative Notion for Post-War Nation
• The Gallic War and Julius Caesar’s Life
• The Texas Abortion Law: A Signal of War on Women’s Rights and Bodies
• Spirit and Northwest Airlines’ Price War
• The Role of the United States in World War II
• Stepping Stones to the American Civil War
• The Origins of the American Civil War
• Civil War and Supreme Court: The Enforcement of the Slave-Trade Laws
• Manifest Destiny and the Mexican War of 1846
• Kongo’s Fourteen-Year Civil War
• Wars of Independence in Latin America
• The Labor Unions in the Post-Civil War Period
• The Entry of the United States Into World War I
• War on Drugs in “Sicario” (2015) Film
• The War on Drugs Is Lost: In Search of a New Method
• Revolutionary War Digital Timeline
• Civil War and Horton’s Review
• Role the United States of America in the World War I
• The War in Iraq: Perspectives on Participating
• Impact of World War I on the American Army
• Jomini’s Theory on the “Western Way of War”
• American History From Civil War to 20th Century
• Significant Events of the Cold War
• Social Aspect in the Attitude Towards the American Civil War
• Women in War Industries
• The Home Front During War in Japan, Germany, the US
• The Use of Radio in German Propaganda During the World War II
• The US Patriot Missile in the Gulf War
• Online Resources on the American Civil War Topic
• Why the French Revolution Led to War Between France and Prussia & Austria
• Arguments Against the Use of Nuclear Weapons in World War II
• Ken Burns “The Civil War” Review
• A Turning Point During the Civil War
• The United States Priorities Following World War I
• Researching of Civil War Causes
• Biggest Influence on the US Involvement in World War I
• American Wars and American Political Development
• Homer: The Theme of Men at War in “The Iliad”
• The Participation Women in the War
• “How to Tell a True War Story” by O’Brien
• The Significance of the Iron Curtain at World War II and the Cold War
• The Myth of the Lost Cause and the American Civil War
• Great Depression and Cold War: Making of Modern America
• The Early Republic and the American Civil War
• The French and Indian War and Its Aftermath
• War and Diplomacy in the Politics of a Nation
• The American Civil War: Key Points
• American Revolution: Seven Years War in 1763
• Slaves in the Civil War and Free Blacks After It
• Prohibition & War on Drugs and Negative Effects
• War-Related Art: Heroic Themes of Art
• Lincoln’s Speech Against the American-Mexican War
• Remembering the Great War Book by Ian Andrew
• Literature Review: The War on Drugs
• World Wars and National Conflicts: What Were the Reasons?
• The Doctrine Just and Unjust Wars
• Brigadier-General Mosby Monroe Parsons in the Civil War
• “After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy” by Coyne
• Militia Casualties of the War of 1812
• The America’s Unjust Drug War
• Cold War Exchange in the Bridges of Spies Film
• Effects of the Civil War in Western North Carolina Communities in Appalachian Mountains
• Factors Leading to the Termination of World War I
• Cuban Missile Crisis: Why Was There No War?
• The Yemen War: The Latest Developments and Reasons
• Capacity Building for Women War Victims in D.R.Congo
• The Likelihood of Civil Wars: Impact of Collective Action Problem
• Not Set in Stone: Ethnicity and Civil War
• American Civil War and Fiji Coups
• “How the ‘80s Programmed Us for War” by Sirota
• Soviet and American Perspectives on World War II Through Movies
• States’ Rights as the Main Cause of the Civil War
• Valley Forge in the Revolutionary War History
• The Cold War Impact on African States & Societies
• Pre-World War II South Africa: Centuries-Old Exploitation
• How Did Cold War and Post-Cold War U.S. Imperialism Affect African Societies?
• The Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive
• The Ramadan War of 1973 and Its Outcomes
• Abolition vs. Equality in the American Civil War
• Wikipedia: Posts About World War II
• The War by the Ruling Republicans Against Great Britain
• Submarines: The Significance of Submarines in the First World War
• The Korean War: Interview with Grandfather
• War on Terrorism: Budget and Policy Discussion
• War on Terror: Propaganda and Freedom of the Press in the US
• War on Drugs and Prison Overcrowding Analysis
• Would Be War in the Future
• Students’ Drinking and Partying: Ethics of the University’s War
• Torture and War Towards Terrorism
• Fabricating the Memory: War Museums and Memorial Sites
• The Western Way of War
• World War I Causes by Ethnic Problems in Austro-Hungary
• Winston Churchill, a Leader During the World War II
• Japanese War Bride: Yamaguchi Yoshiko
• Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory in World War II
• American Efforts in Mexican-American War
• The American Civil War: Key Issues
• The Three Gulf Wars: Key Issues
• Cold War: Personalities of Individuals and Their Nations
• The Run-up to the Civil War
• Premises of Korean War
• War and Terrorism in the Modern World
• War on Crime Influence on Power Shift Among Various Groups
• Implications of the US-China Trade War on Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia
• John Brown’s Holy War Analysis
• Mississippi’s War and Nat Turner Documentaries
• Generals and Technological Advancements in Civil War
• The Artistic Legacy of Maya Lin: A Cultural Response to the Vietnam War
• War on Terror: The Battle Continues
• Post-Cold War Russia: Global, Strategic, and Diplomatic Importance
• Chris Hondros: War Photographer
• US Actions Abroad During the Cold War
• The History of the Third Punic War: The Final War in the Series of Wars With the Carthaginian Civilization
• Vietnam War: History and Facts of War That Began in 1959
• Poem Concerning the American Revolutionary War
• The Civil War and the Development of American Medicine
• Researching the Russo-Japanese War
• The U.S. Medicine During the Civil War: A Response to the Discussion
• Civil War Effect on Medicine and Public Health
• The War of 1812 as a Critical Historic Moment in the US and the UK
• Horace Greeley’s Significance to the U.S. Civil War Era
• War: How Can I Change the World?
• America and Britain in American Revolutionary War
• The Issues of Modern America and French and Indian War
• Success of Egypt in Yom Kippur War
• Casualty of the War: Hospitalman Burnett
• The Cold War: Gains and Losses
• Patterns of Civil Wars and Peace Duration in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
• The Central Powers in the First World War
• The Cold War and Motivations Behind It
• Spanish American War: Causes and Consequences
• Evaluating the American War
• The Reality and Myth of “The Good War”
• The Vietnam War: Diplomatic Mechanisms Connected With the USA
• US History: Foreign Policy and Spanish–American War
• The Dhofar War: Background and History
• Racial Issues During War Times in the Two Novels
• Satire and the Anti-war Movement
• Gulf War Deterrence. The Most Viable Way of Dealing With Conflicts
• Kurt Vonnegut. Wailing Shall Be in All Streets and Slaughterhouse-Five. Reflections on World War II
• The Key Factors of Success in the Revolutionary War
• Divergences Between North and South as Major Causes of the American Civil War
• Hundred Years’ War: History and Scientific Sources
• “The Green Berets” Film About the Vietnam War
• The Main Cause of the Civil War
• Book Summary: ”The First Way of War” by John Grenier
• War Story: Pressfield’s Tides of War
• Gender Related Questions in the Jewish War Novel by Tova Reich
• Vietnam War: David Halberstam’s “The Making of a Quagmire”
• Could the Central or Axis Powers Have Won either of the World Wars?
• Personal vs. Collective Responsibility in War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
• Rape as a Weapon of War: Democratic Republic of Congo
• The Role of Islamic Rhetoric in the Afghanistan-Soviet War of 1979 – 1989
• Can We Consider the Second Iraq War to Be a Just War?
• “Prelude to the Civil War” by William Freehling: America’s Historic Legacy
• When is War Justifiable? Axiomatic Justification of War
• Visual Rhetoric: The Iraq War and Torture of Abu Ghraib Prisoners
• Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865
• The Emptiness and Futility of War: “No Man’s Land” by Danis Tanovic
• War and Poverty Connection in Developing Countries
• “A Time of War: The United States and Vietnam” by Robert D. Schulzinger
• Register to Vote by War or Convention
• Civil Peace as Absence of War or Physical Conflict
• The Activities That Lead to the Afghanistan War
• How to Win a War: Special Focus on the War in Afghanistan as Seen Through the Eyes of Sun Tzu, Galula, and Mao
• The Reasons That Led to the End of the War
• US Involvement in Southeast Asia and the Cold War
• Violence and War in Japanese Popular Culture
• Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”: An Expressive Portrait of the Face of War
• Andrew Jackson and the “Bank War”
• A Zero-Sum Game or a Win-Win Situation: The Outcome of the Cold War
• Culture War in Australia: Conflict Between the Conservatives and Liberals
• War and Terrorism in Algeria
• Brusilov Offensive: An Unique Tactics in War
• The United States of America: The Post Post-Cold War Scenarios
• War on Terror and Its Effect on Individual Right
• Cold War Space Race Analysis
• “Saving Private Ryan”: Sharing the Nightmare of War
• The First World War and Its Impact on American Society
• War in Poems by Hardy, Jarrell, and Levertov
• US Intelligence Fault in Persian Gulf War I and II
• Aftereffect of the Cold War: “The Crisis” by Alan Greenspan
• Cold War in the US. May’s ”Homeward Bound” Book
• African Americans in the Spanish-American War
• Canadian History Post Confederation: Robert Borden’s and W.L.M. King’s War-Time Leadership
• Techniques in “The Drug War and Class War” by Harrop
• War Time Art Theft and Illegal Appropriation
• E. Kancler’s Paper “The Republican War on Science” Review
• The China Civil War: Key Aspects
• World War I: Medias of Propaganda in the U.S.
• Interview Report: Memories of the Vietnam War
• Go to War or Not Go to War
• War Movie Analysis and Reflection
• Ho Chi Minh’s Influence in the Vietnam War
• “Vietnam War Generation Journal” by Aaron
• The Gulf War: Is It Really Taking Place?
• The History of Ku Klux Klan: A Terrorist Organization Founded in the Southern States After the American Civil War
• The Use of Counter-Terrorism Attacks During the Algerian War of Independence From F.L.N.
• The World War II: Impact and Consequences
• Comparing World War II to September 11th
• Americans and the World: Reasons For War and Peace
• Female Russian Snipers: From Second World War to Present Day
• Lincoln and America – The Civil War and Its Aftermath
• War Mediated Through Journalism
• Cold War: Development of the Events
• World War Two Marked the End of Modern Age
• Walt Whitman and the Theme of War in His Poems
• Reconstructing the Nation: Aftermath of War, 1865-1890
• Civil War and Reconstruction: War Strategy and Economic Policy
• How Was the Economy of New York Transformed by the Civil War?
• The Sino-Russian Military Exercises and the US-Japanese War Game
• How the Vietnam War Influenced the Iraq War?
• Is Terrorism an Act of War?: Different Types of Terrorism
• H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” and British Imperialism
• Women in Canada During World War II
• War in “The Most Beautiful” and “Grave of Fireflies”
• Sieg Heil! War Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs
• “1914/1939 German Reflections of the Two World Wars” by Grimm and Jost
• World War II and Germany’s Invasion Plans
• Media Representation of War
• The Battle of Fort Donelson and Its Role in the Civil War
• The Cause and Effect of the Iraq War
• Understanding the War on Terror in the United States
• Impact of the Vietnam War and Results of the Cold War
• Different Aspects of War: Trigger, Long-Term and Short-Term Effects
• To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
• Foreign Policy Challenges Created by the War on Terror
• Could the American War of Independence Be Called a Revolution?
• Bacon`s Rebellion and King Philip`s War: Background and Value
• America in World War I
• Bacon’s Rebellion and King Philip’s War
• Russo-Japanese Wars: Historical Review
• American Civil War: Brief Retrospective
• The Nature of the Fighting in World War I and World War II
• Herbert Norman and the Cold War
• The Wars of Weak and Strong: Asymmetrical Conflict
• Why Did Israel and Hezbollah Go to War in Lebanon in 2006?
• Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War
• The Influence of the Second World War on the 20th and 21st Centuries’ Cinema
• How TV Showed the Vietnam War
• Vietnam War on Television
• Why Did the German War Effort Continue Until May 1945?
• The Wars Between 1815 and WWI in Europe
• Weapons and the War in Iraq: Is XM-8 the Answer
• Demand, Supply, and Price in P.O.W. Camps
• The Iraq War and Multilateral Diplomacy
• Culture Shock: Civil War in Bosnia
• Politics and Warfare of World War II
• The Two World Wars: Brief History
• Civil War and Reconstruction
• The Spanish Civil War, Franco vs. Hitler, Juan Pujol, Double Agents
• Iraq War and the Effects on the Military Family
• War in Modern World: Effects on the Environment
• United States-Cuba Relations and Wars
• American Civil War as a Historical Topic
• First World War Impact and Treaty of Versailles
• Seven Year War: Rise of Britain as the World’s Dominant
• Impacts of the Pacific War and World War II in Japan
• The French Connection in Revolutionary War
• The Mexican War 1846-1848
• American Civil War Causes Analysis
• Cold War History: McCarthyism and Nuclear Weapons Race
• Intelligence, War and International Relations
• World War I Within the Context of Military Revolution
• Asia and the World in the Age of Empire. Ninh’s The Sorrow of War
• Civil War and Strategy in Lebanon
• Great War & Liberal Capitalism in Russia, Germany, Italy
• Edward the Third and Hundred Years War
• French Involvement in Vietnam War
• American Indian Wars: Battle of Fallen Timbers
• War Time Sacrifices Analysis
• Vietnam War Perceptions of African American Leaders
• Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, And Its Legacy by A.R. Isaacs
• Vietnamese Culture and Traditions: The Role in Vietnam War
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Chigozie Obioma

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I arrived at the terminal that morning feeling groggy. There had been a storm the night before and everything still carried its imprint — wet shacks, puddles, snapped foliated branches lying about everywhere. I hurried through my purchase of tickets from Makurdi to Jos and settled in a car.

As one of the first passengers to arrive, I had carefully chosen my seat next to the window in the back row and placed my backpack to secure it. But climbing in now, I found that my backpack had been moved to the middle and, on my chosen seat, a man sat.

He was an imposing figure, perhaps an inch or two taller than my six feet. There was sleep in his eyes. He wore a stained white T-shirt whose edges were browned with sweat, multiple rubber wristbands and army camouflage trousers. I had meant to protest, but seeing the man’s appearance, I swallowed and dropped myself between him and a middle-aged woman who sat on the other side.

As the wagon pulled on to the highway, a man in the second row that separated where I sat from the driver’s row removed his traditional Tiv black-and-white hat and, as if it’d been agreed upon beforehand, said, “Let us bow our heads in prayer.”

“In the name of Jesus!” he shouted.

“Amen!” everyone, it seemed, replied.

“Balm of Gilead, mighty man in battle . . . ”

Much of this was familiar to me. I had lived in Nigeria for the first 21 years of my life. I left for the first time in 2007 for North Cyprus and began visiting at least once a year when I moved to the US in 2012. Since then, I have often been astonished by aspects of the culture today. How was it that someone could simply demand that strangers in a public place bow their heads in prayer? Among my American circle of writers and academics, this would have seemed absurd.

We were already on the highway by the time the passengers chanted the last “amen”. I straightened my back and turned to find the man beside me mumbling quietly to himself. We were now passing through some village, red huts on the side of the road. Under a tall tree a police pick-up sat, its doors ajar. On the road, two cars in front, more policemen stood collecting bribes from motorists. Our driver, looking in his mirror at the man beside me, called out, “Officer, this na why I wan make you sidon for front . . . I no get money — I swear. Na only fuel money they give me for park.”

“No problem — go,” the man said. “Dem no go disturb you again.”

We neared the pick-up, its front side heavily dented. The man wound down the window, stuck his head out and, gesturing to the policeman inside, cried, “Na army sergeant I be. I am going to Sambisa, so let am go.” And without hesitation, the policemen allowed us passage.

Before I had even become a writer, I wanted to write about the Biafran war. I had read widely about the conflict. I knew that the seeds were sown in 1966, six years after Nigeria gained independence from Britain. A coup by young idealists in the Nigerian army had shocked the country. The officers and soldiers who’d planned this were mostly of the Igbo ethnic group from the east and most of those killed were northerners — mainly Hausa-Fulani.

Although these officers, who were non-tribal intellectuals, made clear that they were not ethnically motivated, the harm was done. All year, retaliatory killings were carried out against Igbo civilians and military personnel. Feeling unwanted and marginalised, the eastern elite began to call for secession. On May 30 1967, the republic of Biafra was declared by Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, the governor of the eastern region. A few weeks later, in a sleepy town in the eastern region, Nigerian forces opened fire, starting off one of the most destructive wars of the modern era.

I should have stopped there, seeing that he seemed lost, frequently looking at an old GSM phone. But I couldn’t

As the years went by, it became clear that no matter how much I might learn of the forces that led to the war, the major battles and the death tolls, there was something about the experience of the conflict, its impact on those on and off the field, that eluded me. That summer of 2018, in Nigeria for the purposes of renewing my passport and with my war novel under way, I felt I needed to seize every opportunity to learn.

From the moment the soldier revealed his identity, questions began rustling around the lightbulb of my mind like wingless insects. This man, about my age, was an active soldier in Nigeria’s current war against the Boko Haram terrorist group. What might the experience be like? Before I was ready, the question flew out of me: “Sa, you are a soldier?”

“Yes,” he said, and nodded. “And, why you ask?”

“Because of when they stop us,” I said in haste.

Again, he nodded many times.

I should have stopped there, seeing that he seemed lost, frequently looking at an old GSM phone with cracked edges. But I couldn’t.

“I want to know . . . emm, do you know anyone who has fought Boko Haram?”

His eyes on me this time, and with the sleep still in them, felt threatening.

“Wetin you say?” he said.

I asked the question a second time. He nodded and his laughter rang through the bus. He bent his head, and almost as if whispering to himself, I heard him repeat “Boko Haram” again and again. I worried that I may have annoyed him.

“I . . . I am sorry, Oga. I jus’ I am writing a book . . . a book about war.” My heavy breathing was showing, evident in the gaps between my words.

“Leave am alone,” the woman on my other side said to me in soft, quiet rebuke. “No be if you see person, you go begin ask am all these questions — eh? Leave am!”

“I don hear, ma,” I said, nodding. I pushed myself back in my seat, inclined my head against the headrest and closed my eyes.

The soldier’s tap on my thigh felt so sudden and violent that I let out an anguished cry.

“Shey you ask me question, abi?” he said, gazing at me, his eyes bloodshot. “I wan answer, so no sleep — no sleep!”

“Yes-sa!” I said, shaken.

“As you see me so, I have been fighting since February 2017. We have been . . . with my boys . . . inside-inside Sambisa killing those animals you call ‘Boko Haram’.”

He grinned — his mouth a crooked twist.

“Boko Haram doesn’t exist, my brother. Nothing-nothing like that. In that forest, we have drug addicts, bandits, thieves, hooligans and crazy religious fanatics — you get me? No Boko Haram!”

We had stopped at a fresh checkpoint, and the driver was negotiating with a highway policeman.

“Who dey delay us like this, eh?” the soldier cried, banging the seat in front of him. “Open the seat make I pass!”

The soldier stepped out of the car and charged at the policeman, shouting. He kicked at one of them in the belly. They let our driver back in the wagon.

“Look, driver, no stop again, else I go fuck you up!”

“Roger sa!” the driver said.

“I must reach Maiduguri this night — my boys are there . . . Dem dey wait for me!”

When he returned to his seat, it was clear that the combination of my question and the actions of the policeman who’d opted to check the driver’s documents had angered him. I’d become afraid of this man who’d meted out quick violence against the policeman. I took a book out of my backpack and began feigning concentration. The man stretched out his hand, looking at me. Without a word, I handed him the book.

“So, you be student, abi?”

“No, sir. I’m a professor.”

“What?” he said, his voice earnestly curious.

“Assistant professor, sir . . . one university in America.”

“Wetin be your age?”

“Thirty-two, sir.”

He looked at me, shook his head — “And you be don?”

“So, the book you dey write na for work, eh?”

“Yes. Na . . . em, novel.”

It is PTSD. What they are seeing there — in that place — is really hell. You just have to be careful with such people

Despite this shift in tone and mood, I was still unsettled. The wagon was moving slowly now, climbing over several speed bumps.

“You see,” he began, his voice low. “Two weeks ago we were inside Tac HQ — tactical headquarters inside Sambisa. Around 2am, some of our boys were on alert, but most of us were sleeping. Our mumu sergeant major was smoking, listening to sermon. And, next thing, we hear gbom !”

The sound the soldiers had heard was that of a fragmentation bomb lobbed into the bunker that was the tactical post. The group had only just arrived there and were still constructing a full trench defensive position. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the moon, the room suddenly awash in its glow. Next, a dozen flashes of bullets crashing against the walls.

One of his comrades had died, his head nearly shot out of his neck and hanging by a chain of bone and sinew against the wall. Luckily for the soldier, he’d been sleeping directly behind a stack of sandbags not yet fully added to the trench’s parapets. They fought for nearly three hours before the remaining terrorists fled, the sound of their motorcycles trailing into the night. It was only then, after the rumbles could no longer be heard, that the officer discovered he’d been wounded. One of the bullets had hit him in the chest just below his neck.

He pulled down his shirt and I saw the healed wound — a scar still bearing faint marks of its stitching. The bullet had pierced cleanly through the “bulletproof” vest he wore — the new one the Nigerian army had issued them.

“It was fake!” he cried, his fist in the air, his eyes reddening. “We are out there fighting — out there dying like fowl! But our government supply us fake bulletproof!” Under his breath, the officer was cursing the politicians, Nigeria. “E no go better for all of them!”

He pulled me again towards him as if unaware of the force of his arm around my neck.

I sat wondering what I had provoked in him, wanting only that the man forget that I had asked any questions. But then he said in a quieter voice, “Don?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Write your book . . . write it.” He put his face between his palms. He was sobbing.

I wanted to say something, but I was stunned with fear.

“Don,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Sambisa is hell . . . hellfire. Pray that nothing can bring people like you there. If na me be you, I will remain in that US jeje. I will not even come back here at all. I will not —”

His phone was ringing — a Nokia sound familiar to me from when I had a similar phone. The soldier shifted in his seat, shouting “hello, hello!” A man in the front seat began speaking, but the soldier cried, “Shut up there! You no see say I dey phone?”

He strained to hear what the other person on the phone was saying. “Raise your voice, I no dey hear you . . . I no hear! . . . service what . . . ehn? . . . say dem attack — ah, Janitor, Janitor . . . Janitor die? . . . Jesus!”

He struck the side of the wagon. I moved as close as I could to the woman on my other side, praying that the journey would soon end; that this troubled man would leave. My mind climbed into clouds of my own failures: though I had been disturbed by the rise of Boko Haram and its brazen attack on defenceless school girls, I had not paid much attention to it. Absorbed in my own world and living in the relative comfort of the US, I had not even contemplated the reality of men and women fighting these terrorists, let alone imagined I would meet one of them. I had been researching a brutal war that ended nearly 50 years before and that seemed only possible in the remote past. But here was a man around my age who was heading back into one.

The call ended on some promise to reach the front that same night for something that was to take place just before dawn. The soldier fell quiet. From Jos, he was to take a bus to Maiduguri, then from there into the Sambisa Forest — an expanse of grassy mountains where Boko Haram fighters were believed to be camped.

At the entrance to Jos city, the wagon pulled up on the shoulder and the soldier alighted. I tried not to look back as his bag was unloaded — a jute sack the shape of something long. I could tell at once that in the bag were weapons, perhaps a rifle. The driver put it on the ground, and suddenly there were quick movements. Through the back windscreen, I saw the driver stepping away, his hands poised in pleading posture.

“I fit off you now! I fit shoot you!” the soldier was shouting.

“Sorry sa! Sorry, officer!”

The driver continued pleading in his conciliatory voice until the soldier, hefting his bag on to his back, crossed the road to the other side, where there was another terminal with vehicles awaiting passengers.

The driver returned, blood on his face. What had happened? He had been beaten because he put the soldier’s sack on the ground.

The passengers all commiserated. The man at whom the soldier had shouted to shut up earlier cursed the soldier and called him a drunk.

“It is PTSD,” the man said. “What they are seeing there — in that place — is really hell. You just have to be careful with such people. He could have shot you.”

The driver nodded, accelerating.

“And even you,” the man turned now to me. “You don’t try to interview such people . . . It is dangerous. Anything can happen.”

For days afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have gone badly.

I returned to the US feeling like a new world had opened within me, one fashioned by the collective testimonies of the Biafran war veterans I’d interviewed as well as the soldier. Each time the veterans spoke to me about their experiences, it seemed that I had relieved them of a burden. They often thanked me. Only the young soldier heading into an active war had been different. His face and voice were what I had in my head when I returned to my desk and reworked my main character from the ground up. And sometimes while writing in the middle of the night, I’d find myself drifting into vivid dreams of the soldier as he left the car that afternoon, carrying his rucksack on his back and a heavy black cross on his heart.

Chigozie Obioma’s novel ‘The Road to the Country’ is published on May 30 by Hutchinson Heinemann

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International Edition

How One Crack in the Line Opened a Path for the Russians

When Russian soldiers suddenly showed up in the small town of Ocheretyne in the east, it was clear that something had gone wrong.

Paramedics with the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian army evacuating wounded soldiers from battles raging on the front line of the Donetsk region, this month. Credit...

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By Marc Santora

Photographs by Tyler Hicks

Marc Santora and Tyler Hicks reported from Ukrainian villages west of Avdiivka.

• May 14, 2024

The thunder of ferocious clashes unfolded at the nearby front line as the Ukrainian crew prepared to maneuver its American-made Bradley fighting vehicle out of camouflage and into the fire.

The commander of the team, a sergeant with the call sign Lawyer, nervously scanned the sky. “If we are seen, the KABs will come,” he said, referring to the one-ton bombs Russia has been using to target Ukraine’s most valuable armor and defenses.

What had started as a small Russian thrust into the tiny town of Ocheretyne was growing into a substantial breakthrough, threatening to unhinge the Ukrainian lines across a broad stretch of the eastern front. The crew’s mission was to help contain the breach: protect outmanned and outgunned infantry soldiers, evacuate the wounded and use the Bradley’s powerful 25-millimeter cannon against as many Russians as possible.

But the 28-ton vehicle was soon spotted. Mortars and rockets exploded all around, and the gunner was badly injured, said the commander, identified only by his call sign according to military protocol.

A combat assignment had turned into a mission to rescue his comrade. The gunner survived and is now recovering, Lawyer said a few days later as he recounted the attack. But the Russians gained territory and are continuing to try to press forward.

Ukraine is more vulnerable than at any time since the first harrowing weeks of the 2022 invasion, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders from a range of brigades interviewed in recent weeks said. Russia is trying to exploit this window of opportunity, stepping up its assaults across the east and now threatening to open a new front by attacking Ukrainian positions along the northern border outside the city of Kharkiv.

Months of delays in American assistance , a spiraling number of casualties and severe shortages of ammunition have taken a deep toll, evident in the exhausted expressions and weary voices of soldiers engaged in daily combat.

“Frankly speaking, I have fears,” said Lt. Col. Oleksandr Voloshyn, 57, the veteran tank battalion commander of the 59th Motorized Brigade. “Because if I will not have shells, if I will not have men, if I will not have equipment that my men can fight with…,” he said, trailing off. “That’s it.”

The sudden Russian advance through Ocheretyne , about nine miles northwest of Avdiivka, in late April, illustrates how even a small crack in the line can have cascading effects, as already-stretched platoons risk being flanked and encircled and other units race in to plug the breach.

Kostiantynivka

“It’s like if you have an engine knock in your car, and you keep driving it,” Lt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 29, the deputy battalion commander for the 47th Mechanized Brigade, said. “The car works, but at some point, it will just stop. Then you’ll end up spending even more resources to restore it.”

“Similarly here, there are mistakes that do not seem critical,” he said. “But they’ve led to the need to stabilize the situation now. And it’s uncertain where that stabilization will occur.”

“Every event you did not predict can turn your situation completely upside down,” Lieutenant Shyrshyn said. “And this is what happened in Ocheretyne.”

The Ripple Effect

After the fall of Avdiivka to Russian forces in February, the small town of Ochertyne served as a Ukrainian military strong point along a highway. Most of the 3,000 residents had fled. Abandoned high-rise apartment blocks and other urban infrastructure provided good defensive positions and for two months, the situation remained relatively stable.

But then something went wrong.

The Russians appeared so suddenly on the battered streets around Ivan Vivsianyk’s home in late April that, at first glance, he mistook them for Ukrainian soldiers. When they asked him for his passport, the 88-year old knew the defense of Ocheretyne had collapsed.

“I thought that our soldiers would come and knock them out,” he said in an interview after making what he called a harrowing walk across the front line to escape. “But it didn’t happen.”

Three weeks later, what started as a small Russian advance has grown into a roughly 15-square-mile bulge that is complicating the defense of the Donetsk region.

Extending the bulge farther north could allow the Russians a chance to bypass some of the strongest Ukrainian fortifications in the east that have held for years. Russia can now also take a new line of attack aimed at Konstiantynivka, a town that is a logistical linchpin for Ukrainian forces.

The Kremlin’s bid to advance from one ruined village to the next has been captured in hours of combat footage shared by Ukrainian brigades at the front.

Russian infantry storm across mine-strewn fields on foot and use dirt bikes and dune buggies to try and outrace Ukrainian exploding drones. They attack in armored columns of varying sizes, with large assaults often led by tanks covered with massive metal sheds and equipped with sophisticated electronic warfare equipment to protect against drones. Western observers have dubbed them “turtle tanks.” The Ukrainians call them “wundervaflia,” which combines the German word for wonder with the Ukrainian word for waffle.

“We allow their infantry closer to us, which creates closer contact and direct firefights ,” Lieutenant Shyrshyn said. “Therefore, our losses are increasing.”

The Russians are also paying a staggering price for every step forward. Some 899 Russian soldiers per day were killed or wounded in April, Britain’s military intelligence agency reported recently.

Despite throwing so many soldiers into the fight, the Russians took an area covering only about 30 square miles in April, according to military analysts . And capturing Ukraine’s last fortress cities in the Donbas — urban centers like Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk — would almost certainly involve long and bloody battles.

Still, the Russian advances in recent weeks in the east and northeast are starting to alter the geometry of the front in dangerous ways.

The Fraying Line

“Look at the map, where we are and where Ocheretyne is,” said Colonel Voloshyn, the tank battalion commander. He studied the terrain as he prepared to head out on a mission to target a house where 20 Russians were thought to be hiding. “I can now assume that they can simply bypass us on the left, on the right. They have tactical success, they have equipment, men, shells. So we can expect everything.”

The lack of dramatic shifts in the front for more than a year obscured the exhausting positional fighting needed to maintain that precarious balance. In a war where a battle over a single tree line can rage for weeks, the sudden Russian thrust into the area around Ocherytne was the most dangerous kind of problem — fast, deep and surprising.

There is a bitter debate over who was responsible for the failure to hold the line there.

The Deep State Telegram channel, which has close links to the Ukrainian army, accused the 115th Mechanized Brigade of leaving critical positions without orders, allowing the Russians to infiltrate and storm the settlement.

The brigade issued a furious denial, saying its soldiers were outnumbered by as much as 15 to one and held on as long as possible under withering bombardment.

“We want to emphasize that no regular unit of the 115th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine left or fled positions,” the brigade said. A special military commission has been established to determine what precisely what happened.

Soldiers familiar with the fight were hesitant to publicly criticize a neighboring brigade and said a host of issues — from poor communication to being vastly outgunned — all likely played a role.

Lieutenant Shyrshyn of the 47th, which held positions next to the 115th, would not speculate on what went wrong, but said the consequences were immediate: It was soon clear that the 47th would have to fall back or risk encirclement and catastrophic losses.

“The Russians sensed the weakness in that direction as they used the gaps to get in behind the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. “Then we lost Ocheretyne, then Novobakhmutivka, then Soloviove.”

The Ukrainian high command does not like to surrender any territory, the lieutenant said, adding that “it is very complicated to argue with them and explain why it is not good to hold this position.”

Lieutenant Shyrshyn hoped the situation would improve with the arrival of Western weapons but until then, he said, “we will continue to die, we will continue to lose territories”

“The question is whether it will be at a slow pace and defensible,” he said. “Or at a fast one and senseless.”

Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from eastern Ukraine. Anastasia Kuznietsova and Nataliia Novosolova contributed research.

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora

Tyler Hicks is a senior photographer for The Times. In 2014, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for his coverage of the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi, Kenya. More about Tyler Hicks

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

As Russia’s war effort in Ukraine intensifies, it is increasingly clear that efforts by the West to squeeze Moscow’s oil revenues are faltering .

The United States and Europe are coalescing around a plan to use interest earned on frozen Russian central bank assets to provide Ukraine with a loan to be used for military and economic assistance .

The Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia were a show of solidarity  between two autocrats battling Western pressure.

Europe’s Defense Industry: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted Europe out of complacency about military spending. But the challenges are about more than just money .

Putin’s Victory Narrative: The Russian leader’s message to his country appears to be taking hold : that Russia is fighting against the whole Western world — and winning.

A Boxing Win Offers Hope: The Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk became the world’s undisputed heavyweight champion, a victory that has lifted morale  in a country struggling to contain Russian advances.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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May 20, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

By Chris Lau, Ivana Kottasová, Tara John, Sana Noor Haq and Amir Vera, Elise Hammond and Kathleen Magramo, CNN

Our live coverage of Israel's war in Gaza has moved here .

Nearly 570 tons of aid delivered across temporary pier to Gaza, US Central Command says

Nearly 570 metric tons of humanitarian aid has been delivered across the temporary pier to Gaza so far, according to the US Central Command.

The aid will be distributed by humanitarian partners,  CENTCOM said in a statement.  

“The United States, United Kingdom, UAE, European Union, and many other partners have donated this humanitarian assistance,” the statemeant said.

The pier was anchored to a beach in Gaza last week to funnel aid from various countries into the enclave, with most border crossings closed and a catastrophic humanitarian disaster unfolding inside.

France supports ICC decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister and Hamas leaders

From CNN’s Xiaofei Xu

France broke away from its Western allies and expressed support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the court announced its decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar.

“Regarding Israel, it will be up to the court's Pre-Trial Chamber to decide whether to issue these warrants, after examining the evidence put forward by the Prosecutor to support his accusations,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement issued late Monday. It added: “France supports the International Criminal Court, its independence, and the fight against impunity in all situations.”

Paris also said it has been warning “for many months” the need for strict compliance with international humanitarian laws and “in particular of the unacceptable level of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip and the lack of humanitarian access,” the statement said.

The statement marks a major split between France's position and that of its Western allies, notably the United States, where President Joe Biden called the decision “ outrageous .”

France has been one of the few Western countries willing to take a tougher stance on Israel, including criticizing America’s decision to veto ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council early on and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

US blasts request by international court for arrest warrants for top Israeli officials. Here's the latest

From CNN staff

US President Joe Biden on Monday rejected the  International Criminal Court's arrest warrant requests  for Israeli leaders amid the ongoing war against Hamas.  

The ICC's request targets top Israeli officials and Hamas leaders.

“There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said. “It's clear Israel wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection. Let me be clear, what’s happening is not genocide.” 

The ICC's prosecutor Karim Khan rejected accusations by Israel and some of its allies questioning its independence, saying the request "is not a witch hunt, this is not some kind of emotional reaction to noise. It's a forensic process."

Here are some reactions to the arrest request:

• Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "The prosecutor’s absurd charges against me and Israel’s defense minister are merely an attempt to deny Israel the basic right of self-defense. And I assure you of one thing: This attempt will utterly fail."
• Hamas also denounced the request , saying it “strongly condemns the attempts of the ICC Prosecutor to equate victims with aggressors by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders without legal basis.”
• The United Kingdom and Italy criticized the ICC's decision, while the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and a group of international legal experts supported the request.
• In the United States, US House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed  House Republican leaders are looking at sanctions in response to the ICC's decision and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the court "succeeded only in discrediting itself."

Here are more headlines from the region:

• Iran elections: Iran's presidential elections will take place June 28 following the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister in a helicopter crash.
• Palestinian displacement: More than 900,000 people, or about 40% of Gaza's population, have been displaced in the past two weeks as Israeli bombardment continues across much of the enclave, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
• Top US official wraps up trip to Mideast: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday wrapped up his visit to the Middle East during which he met with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and members of the war cabinet, including Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz.
• Israeli bombardment leaves 12 dead: At least 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli military bombardment of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, according to local health officials. Residents and rescue workers said about 10 other people were trapped under the rubble of buildings that were flattened in the attack.

Biden rejects ICC arrest warrant request for Israeli leaders

From CNN's Sam Fossum

US President Joe Biden offered a full-throated rejection of the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant requests for Israeli leaders amid the ongoing war against Hamas.  

“Let me be clear, we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants,” Biden said at an event in the Rose Garden celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month.   “There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said. “It's clear Israel wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection. Let me be clear, what’s happening is not genocide.” 

Biden also acknowledged “the trauma” of October 7 and reiterated his “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s safety and security. And he promised not to rest until the hostages being held by Hamas are released.

The president also pledged his commitment to a two-state solution.

Biden and his top officials have said the creation of a Palestinian state with guarantees for Israel’s security is the only way to bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

Italian foreign minister calls court's move to seek arrest warrants for Israeli officials unacceptable

From CNN's AnneClaire Stapleton

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said it's "unacceptable" that the International Criminal Court moved to seek arrest warrants for Israeli officials , including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and senior Hamas officials on the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza.

"It seems unacceptable to me that a government legitimately elected by the people in a democratic way is equated with a terrorist organization which is the cause of everything that is happening," Tajani said in an interview with Italian broadcaster Rete 4.

At least 12 dead in Israeli bombardment of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, health officials say 

From CNN’s Abdel Qadder Al-Sabbah, Sarah El Sirgany and Sana Noor Haq 

At least 12 Palestinians were killed Monday in an Israeli military bombardment of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, according to local health officials.

The strikes also injured 10 people, a spokesperson at the local Kamal Adwan Hospital told CNN. Residents and rescue workers say about 10 other people were trapped under the rubble of buildings that were flattened in the attack.

CNN video of the aftermath shows the concrete skeleton of destroyed buildings, with entire walls ripped through on several floors. Stone slabs and metal rods spill from the roof of the building as Palestinian men, women and children crowd near the site. Some hold their heads in their hands, while others search the debris for survivors. 

Ambulances from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) could be seen slowly moving along demolished roads, in footage filmed for CNN. Rescue workers and citizens dug through smashed pieces of broken concrete. In one scene, emergency crews resorted to using a rope to pull up the body of a woman wrapped in a blanket. 

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks has drained critical supplies and destroyed main highways. Fares Afana, the ambulance and emergency director for northern Gaza told CNN that emergency operations are “very difficult due to dwindling equipment.” 

One man who spoke to CNN from the scene said there were children trapped under the destroyed home of the Kahlout family. 

In recent days, the Israeli military has intensified attacks on several locations saying its soldiers "eliminated more than 200 terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and destroyed underground tunnels both from the ground and from the air" in northern Gaza.  

Author Salman Rushdie warns of Hamas-run "Taliban-like" Palestinian state

From CNN's Mia Alberti

Author Salman Rushdie believes that Hamas would take charge of a Palestinian state if one was to be formed now.

"I've been in favor of a separate Palestinian state most of my life. Since the 1980s. But if there was a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran," he told public German broadcaster RBB24 this month.

"Is that what the progressive movements of the Western left want to create?" Rushdie said in an interview regarding the recent students protests in the US.

Rushdie said that "any normal person" would be shocked by the number of "innocent deaths" in Gaza, but he argued that pro-Palestinian demonstrators are failing to call out Hamas' actions.

"I think the demonstrators could also mention Hamas. Because it all started with them. And Hamas is a terrorist organization. And it's strange that a young progressive student organization supports a fascist terrorist group, because they do that in a way," he said.

The author, who has been targeted for his writing multiple times, also says that calls for a free Palestine become "problematic... when it descends into anti-Semitism and sometimes even support for Hamas."

McConnell: "The ICC has succeeded only in discrediting itself"

From CNN's Kristin Wilson and Morgan Rimmer

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says “the ICC has succeeded only in discrediting itself” by seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Since the immediate aftermath of October 7, Israel and allies and Jewish people around the world have faced pernicious efforts to equate a sovereign nation's self-defense with barbaric acts of terrorism,” he said in Monday’s floor remarks.

“But today, the most noxious attempt at moral equivalence comes from unelected international bureaucrats brandishing a contrived and perverted authority.”

“In the same breath, the self-aggrandizing prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for arrest warrants for both Hamas chief terrorists and Israel’s duly elected prime minister. It’s a damning development, but not for the supposed subjects of the applications.

McConnell also addressed the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash over the weekend.

“The untimely death of the president of Iran does not change the underlying threats this regime poses to its own citizens the region and to the free world,” he said.

“I'd also like to extend my condolences to Iran's neighbors who still live under the constant threat of a regime that practices what it preaches. Death to Israel, death to America, war on international commerce, and chaos across the Middle East.

Meanwhile, other senior GOP senators running for leader also condemned the ICC's move regarding an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, who is running to replace McConnell as GOP leader next Congress,  tweeted  that the move was “as unjustifiable as it is shameful."

Sen. John Cornyn, who is also running, condemned the ICC’s decision in his own  post  on X, calling it "illegitimate and unsubstantiated."

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