- With the post-World War II international order fading away and hostilities on the rise, the prospects for conflict prevention look dim. But the picture is not wholly dark. It is possible to identify tools that, if used properly, can reduce bloodshed
What’s new? The international order rooted in the UN Charter has eroded to the point of near collapse. As faith in multilateral cooperation and institutions fades, many states are scrambling to ensure their own security by building up hard power. Wars are proliferating. Restraints on the use of force are breaking down.
Why does it matter? Conflict prevention remains possible, but it requires new approaches that recognise the limits of the old order’s rules and norms without writing them off. Forming these strategies requires an unsentimental appraisal of which actors are positioned for peacemaking and what tools they have at their disposal.
What should be done? In this new environment, efforts to prevent conflict should focus on balancing the drive toward militarisation with a commensurate emphasis on diplomacy between rivals. Middle powers around the world can drive mediation efforts, but there are still opportunities to reinforce and reform international institutions, strained as they may be.
I. Overview
With the international order eroding and hostilities on the rise, the space for conflict prevention is narrowing. The main powers charged with enforcing international rules about the use of force are increasingly brazen in flouting them. Open disregard for the old order’s organising principles is evident in the U.S. interventions in Venezuela and Iran, as well as in Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. China is pursuing expansive claims in its near seas using coercive measures short of war. From Myanmar to Sudan, an increasing number of countries are suffering bloody civil strife, often fuelled by outside meddling. Atrocities are going undeterred and unpunished. Hard power is fast becoming the currency of international relations, as governments scramble to boost military spending. But the picture is not wholly dark. Amid the causes of war, it is possible to identify tools and trends that, if nurtured, can reduce deadly conflict. Cultivating “causes of peace” is the challenge and the opportunity confronting peacemakers.
Talk of the end of the old order – the treaties, institutions and understandings created after World War II and augmented after the Cold War – reached a crescendo in early 2026. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney captured the mood with a speech at the World Economic Forum on a “rupture in the world order”. Many non-Western leaders had long flagged the old order’s injustices in similar terms. Few now questioned its downward trajectory. The Trump administration’s decision to join Israel in going to war with Iran in February appeared to bear out the gloomy diagnoses. Despite an expert consensus that the war was an act of aggression, most U.S. allies and even many others said little or nothing negative about it. The only UN resolution to take up the subject criticised Iran for its attacks on Gulf states, which was legitimate, but omitted that the U.S. and Israel had started the war. There is a risk that norms will remain legally valid in the eyes of much of the world but so unobserved by powerful states that they no longer shape state behaviour.
While international courts and tribunals are seized with cases including Ukraine and Gaza, little suggests that either perpetrators or their supporters are being deterred.
Nor are the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran or Russia’s similarly jarring all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 isolated examples. The two pillars of the post-World War II global peace and security architecture – restrictions on the use of military force and expanded protections for civilians – have rarely seemed so wobbly. Analysis by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program concluded that the world saw more active conflicts involving states in 2025 than in any year since 1946. Global military spending has leapt by over 40 per cent since the mid-2010s. In the meantime, the operational tools for mitigating the effects of conflict – including international peace operations and humanitarian aid – are in retrenchment. While international courts and tribunals are seized with cases including Ukraine and Gaza, little suggests that either perpetrators or their supporters are being deterred. If the post-1945 order is in retreat, it seems all too likely that war and military force will be defining characteristics of the period of disorder ahead.
Yet rupture is not the whole story, and an uncontrolled proliferation of war is not inevitable. The Russian and U.S. misadventures in Ukraine and the Gulf show military power’s limits and offer those pressing for the peaceful resolution of disputes strong arguments to work with. Facing up to the old order’s decline is vital, but so, too, is the sometimes harder work of identifying the actors and factors that can still help preserve peace and resolve conflict. Historian Paul W. Schroeder once argued, looking back on the nineteenth century and the road to World War I, that “wars sometimes just happen; peace is always caused”. Schroeder was primarily thinking of classic diplomatic causes of peace. But other factors have at one time or another placed restraints on war. At the end of the Cold War, leaders sought to give a boost to post-World War II arrangements and reduce the danger of interstate conflict through free trade, democratisation and multilateral institutions. Now that many of those strategies either lack the global backing they need to succeed or have proven ineffective, the question is what comes next.
While answering that question may not lead to a new system as comprehensive as the lapsing order, it can nevertheless light up pathways that states and civil society can take to nurture peace – or at least limit war – in a period of global disorder. Some are a feature of the emerging hard-power world. As states steel themselves to deter rivals or look for asymmetric strategies they can use to fend off powerful predators, the peacemaker’s task is often to press for effective communication between rapidly arming adversaries. Other tools are political and legal in nature, ranging from attempting dialogue with non-state armed groups to building coalitions to defend principles of international law, including by bringing matters before international tribunals. Middle and regional powers acting alone and in concert are proving that they can guide events in a peaceful direction, even when big powers are involved; the Gulf Arab states did just that when they joined with Egypt, Türkiye and Pakistan to facilitate the memorandum of understanding signed between the U.S. and Iran on 17 June.
Nor is it quite time to say a requiem for the old order’s multilateral institutions. UN peacekeeping operations and mediation efforts are certainly under strain, but ad hoc alternatives fare little better. International aid agencies are struggling with fierce budget cuts, but they continue to offer a safety net for tens of millions of vulnerable civilians. States continue to turn to the UN and international courts to defend the UN Charter and address crises, even if the results are mixed. Even the Trump administration has gone to the UN for endorsement of its preferred courses of action in Haiti and Gaza.
All these factors can create buffers against the spread of violence. The challenge for governments, international institutions and civil society is to harness them effectively. Influential states and skilled mediators can still help defuse crises. Diplomacy can still help tame regional rivalries. Global norms, political engagement and interstate agreements can still reduce the risk that states building up armaments will come to blows. But who will do this work, and how, remains an open question. This briefing is an effort to begin providing an answer.
II. An Old Order Retreats
The legal and political order constructed by victorious allies at the end of World War II, and expanded at the end of the Cold War, has seen better days. As war is normalised as a tool of statecraft, more national leaders are looking to the use of force, whether lawful or not, as an answer to their problems. 1 But even the most powerful countries are finding that this strategy has costs and limits.
A. The Peace Scaffolding in Its Heyday
The UN Charter was the culmination of a movement to outlaw war as an instrument of statecraft that dated to the period between World Wars I and II, taking off in the unique moment of war fatigue and reinvention that followed the Allied victory in 1945. 2 Charter principles enshrining the sovereign equality of states and prohibiting non-defensive force (unless authorised by the Security Council) were often honoured in the breach during the Cold War as waning colonial powers fought independence movements and the superpowers fuelled proxy wars. Nevertheless, they offered a powerful scheme for ordering international relations, not least because (at least on paper) they had universal adherence. They became the scaffolding for mutual defence commitments, arms control and non-proliferation regimes that collectively helped avert another global conflict. In parallel, the Geneva Conventions and a series of human rights treaties offered civilians new protection from state predation and the fallout of wars.
If that system had its beginnings after World War II, it expanded greatly with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which seemed to open the door for a new era of international cooperation, rule of law and peacemaking. A “peace industry” evolved as diplomats, UN officials, scholars and civil society experts learned the lessons of both successful and failed post-Cold War peace initiatives.
This industry was linked to a burgeoning network of international institutions. The Security Council assigned mandates to ad hoc tribunals that, it was hoped, would punish and deter atrocities. There were notable successes, including the trial of Liberian President Charles Taylor, and the ad hoc tribunals paved the way for creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Reflecting the overall trend in favour of democratisation and liberal institution-making, the UN and parallel organisations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began to promote the importance of long-term peacebuilding and good governance. 3 In Africa, organisations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and, later, the African Union (AU) – launched in 2002 – took a newly interventionist approach to managing civil wars and crises such as the slaughter in Darfur. 4
There were other efforts as well. The World Bank and development institutions focused on the economics of sustainable peace. Proponents of the Women, Peace and Security agenda – formalised at the UN in 2000 – and other progressive initiatives advanced normative frameworks for addressing the causes and consequences of mass violence. An expanding network of civil society organisations played a crucial role in advancing these agendas, both through international frameworks and in countries affected by conflict. 5
The ICC helped focus global attention on the pursuit of accountability, but the most powerful states refused to submit to its jurisdiction.
The cumulative result was an expansive if always loosely constructed international peacemaking architecture embedded in a global order favouring cooperation. But it had frailties. While peacemaking efforts were genuinely fruitful in countries like Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste and Côte d’Ivoire, many had more ambiguous results and some – as in Somalia, Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda – went disastrously wrong. 6 The ICC helped focus global attention on the pursuit of accountability, but the most powerful states refused to submit to its jurisdiction, creating a lopsided and (to some eyes) delegitimising focus on weaker states, mainly in the Global South. In 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted the “responsibility to protect” doctrine (R2P). 7 While R2P did not authorise states to use force at will for humanitarian purposes, it did signal that the Security Council should use its coercive tools to stop atrocities, setting the stage for bitter disputes after NATO’s Council-endorsed intervention in Libya in 2011 culminated in the death of Muammar al-Qadhafi and the state’s later collapse into disorder.
Often, too, the problem was that peacemakers struggled to understand the underlying dynamics of the wars they aimed to end or trusted in technocratic mechanisms such as constitution drafting, post-war elections and judicial proceedings to resolve the underlying tensions. These mechanisms frequently failed, both in addressing the causes of mass violence and in holding the perpetrators to account. In some instances, it was possible only to temporarily “freeze” fighting or put in place processes to limit and mitigate hostilities. By 2008, Crisis Group experts were complaining that “the world seems more willing to offer money to humanitarian efforts than to tackle the causes of conflicts”, a phenomenon that has become more evident still. 8
B. The Persistence of Geopolitics
The greatest challenge to the international peacemaking system has always been geopolitics. The Soviet Union’s demise theoretically freed up the international system to work cooperatively, but the order that arose to replace Cold War-era gridlock was nevertheless undercut by jockeying among states.
As the ascendant power in the 1990s and for a time afterward, the U.S. threw its weight around in the multilateral system for both good and ill. Sometimes, it worked through international institutions in ways that strengthened them (as when President George H. W. Bush turned to the Security Council to authorise the liberation of Kuwait in 1991). In other cases, such as the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq – both widely considered unlawful – Western powers took liberties with the rules of the order they claimed to champion. The U.S. and its friends also elbowed their way into privileged roles managing certain peace processes, despite complaints of bias by others. The U.S. asserted its leadership in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, generally blocking international pressure on Israel, and France retained its droit de regard in Francophone Africa.
Some states saw [the] post-Cold War settlement as partly or entirely inimical to their interests.
Some states saw this post-Cold War settlement as partly or entirely inimical to their interests. Russia and China, in particular, benefited from an open international trading system but increasingly came to believe that the U.S. intended the so-called rules-based order to contain them in military and political terms. Others, including many African states, concluded that the system preserved colonial power structures and accused the West of double standards in its response to conflicts. 9 Even where Western donors offered support to institutions such as the AU, the relationship remained unequal. 10 Rising powers such as India chafed at the impossibility of reforming international institutions to accommodate their growing heft. Particularly frustrating was the seeming immutability of the Security Council’s permanent membership, which invested veto power exclusively in the countries that had emerged strongest from World War II and took no account of the massive changes in geopolitics that occurred after then. 11
But while these grievances undermined support for the system, and sometimes ground it to a halt, by and large international organisations and alliances were front and centre in managing major peace and security issues for a roughly twenty-year period, which started coming to an end with the increase of big-power competition in the 2010s. Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency in 2012 saw Moscow take a more assertive approach to international relations and become less inclined to cooperate with Washington. With the Kremlin, angry about the Libyan intervention, no longer willing to pay lip service to the U.S. version of a “rules-based order”, and much of the Council turning away from interventionism, the scope for Council-authorised responses to peace and security crises shrank. 12 Thus, the UN was largely paralysed over the Syrian civil war, as well as the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, when international organisations were relegated to walk-on parts. 13
Significant moments of major-power cooperation, including the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and the Trump administration’s coordination with China to contain the 2017-2018 North Korean nuclear crisis, were still possible when the interests were viewed as sufficiently shared and the stakes sufficiently high. But as tensions have worsened, even such sporadic attempts at crisis management have stagnated or failed. The Security Council and other multilateral bodies have been sidelined – or reduced to arenas for states to trade barbs while others wring their hands – during major conflicts including those in Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan and (for the most part) Gaza, as well as, most recently, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. 14
The malaise is not confined to the UN system. Regional institutions face similar pathologies. In Latin America, regional integration efforts in the immediate post-Cold War decades has given way to political polarisation and economic decoupling, complicating inter-governmental cooperation. 15 In Africa, regional and sub-regional bodies such as the AU and ECOWAS are struggling due to political frictions and stuttering institutional reforms. 16 In the case of ECOWAS – one of the boldest proponents of preventive diplomacy in the post-Cold War era – states have defected altogether, leaving policymakers with the delicate task of stitching up relations. 17 In South East Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has demonstrated greater organisational stability and attempted to handle the civil war in Myanmar and the 2025 Thai-Cambodian clashes, but its members still prefer a cautious approach to building crisis management mechanisms. 18 Many civil society organisations that drove agendas around different aspects of conflict prevention and resolution are also on the wane, facing political pushback and funding gaps. 19
C. Major-Power Revisionism and the Renormalisation of War
Even at the height of the post-Cold War moment, the U.S., Russia and China felt empowered to bend international legal rules. Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, the U.S. “war on terror”, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Gaza and the South China Sea have all presented conflict or crisis situations where big powers took steps that were widely seen as incompatible with the international rule of law because they trespassed constraints on the use of force, the principle of sovereign equality or safeguards meant to protect the civilian population. For observers in the Global South, Washington’s drone strikes and growing use of sanctions in the first decades of the 21st century only confirmed that, whatever its rhetoric, it was comfortable with unilateral coercion. From this perspective, the latest U.S. interventions are simply part of a pattern stretching back to the Cold War. Nonetheless, recent years have seen a discernible increase in the audacity of big-power transgressions – moving from situational breaches to a more pervasive revisionism.
While Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine was widely seen as a stunningly bald-faced violation of the UN Charter, Washington’s breaches of international law in Venezuela and the Middle East appear to mark a more decisive tipping point, largely because of the role that the U.S. has played as a flawed but essential standard bearer for the old order. 20 However much post-Cold War administrations oscillated between promoting and undercutting international law and cooperation, Washington always evinced a recognition that the system served a useful purpose. When the U.S. found itself at loggerheads with its allies over issues like torture and the scope of the war on terror, senior U.S. diplomats and lawyers sought to smooth over differences and present a law-abiding face to the world. 21 They appreciated that there would be a cost – in uncertainty and instability – to jettisoning the old order.
Not so the Trump administration, which has made clear that it sees international law as superfluous. As senior official Stephen Miller told a reporter, “[W]e live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time”. 22 Russian President Putin showed similar contempt when he labelled the all-out invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation” rather than acknowledge that it was a war constrained by Moscow’s international commitments.
China’s role in the order’s decline is more complicated. It frequently restates its commitment to the principles of the UN Charter, and in general its actions are less corrosive to the old order than Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine (which it has nonetheless helped enable economically and politically, though it has repeatedly called for peace) or the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. It has also arguably contributed to the order’s decline, including by seeking to unilaterally redraw the maritime boundaries of the South China Sea and East China Sea. 23 Asian officials argue that’s Beijing coercive behaviour – whether on the high seas or in its Himalayan hinterlands – is a deliberate effort to reshape the regional order, involving contraventions of international law that fall short of formal acts of aggression but are felt acutely among its neighbours. 24
Post-Cold War peacemaking was not successful in stamping out mass violence, but it did generally cast conflict as an aberration.
Tensions among major powers have made regional and local conflicts harder to address collectively, with the effect of easing war’s return as a normal feature of state policy. Post-Cold War peacemaking was not successful in stamping out mass violence, but it did generally cast conflict as an aberration. There was an expectation that some combination of major and regional powers and international organisations would step in to insist on compromise and that their leverage would prevail. A notable feature of the post-1989 era was an associated decline in the number of conflicts ending in decisive victory for one side, with more culminating in ceasefires or negotiated settlements. 25
Those days are all but gone, and not just because of major-power frictions. Assertive middle powers in the Middle East have played out their rivalries by backing different factions in Horn of Africa conflicts. Private military companies act as outriders to major and middle powers alike. Today, states accustomed to relying on the U.S. to impose order find it either missing in action or struggling to grab the attention of a transactional and often distracted president.
Meanwhile, a number of governments and armed groups have eschewed pursuit of political settlements, instead pressing to score resounding wins. Hardened by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, Israel has shown little interest in diplomacy with its enemies in the wars it launched in response, which have entailed seizing parts of neighbouring countries. Yet, beyond bringing legal actions that will take years to resolve, neither states nor international institutions can do – or are willing to do – much to respond. 26 Other grim examples include Ethiopia’s war with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and the Sudanese civil war. In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda has supported a prolonged campaign by the M23 rebel group, which has repeatedly renewed attacks despite mediation efforts. 27
Tactics also seem to be increasingly brutal. Atrocities that twenty years ago would have catalysed fierce condemnation and coordinated efforts to end them sometimes still attract criticism, but rarely effective diplomacy. Means and methods of warfare that for a time seemed on their way to being universally shunned because of their impact on civilians appear to be making a comeback. Israel has levelled much of Gaza, where the human toll of its military campaign has been catastrophic, as well as swathes of southern Lebanon. Anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions have featured prominently in Ukraine, leading a growing number of European countries to reconsider their commitment not to use these weapons. 28 The battlefield implications of artificial intelligence are only starting to be understood, but already its use – eg, by Israel to select targets in Gaza and by the U.S. in Iran (where it has been linked to civilian deaths) – is raising legal and moral issues. 29
Even as it is normalised, war’s limits are being exposed.
But even as it is normalised, war’s limits are being exposed. Having imposed a lopsided peace in Tigray, Ethiopia now risks being drawn back into war there – maybe involving Eritrea as well. While outside support has allowed both sides in the Sudanese civil war to stay in the fight, it has not allowed either belligerent to emerge a winner. Five years on, Russia is failing to achieve its war aims in Ukraine. Hamas continues to be the dominant armed actor in the parts of Gaza that Israel does not control. Even with the help of Russian mercenaries, Mali and other Sahel governments that have attempted to quash insurgent groups by force have found it no easier than the French did before being asked to leave. 30 The junta that took over Myanmar in 2021 has likewise failed to crush its opponents by military means. 31 Most prominently, the U.S. wound down the conflict that (together with Israel) it launched with Iran with a peace deal that, while welcome, was on terms that appeared far more favourable to Tehran than President Trump or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu envisaged when they took their countries to war. 32
That said, it remains unclear whether the actors involved will take away lessons about giving more weight to moral, legal and prudential considerations in making the decision to go to war. Instead, they may continue to be susceptible to arguments that battlefield prospects outweigh the risks or that, unlike their domestic political rivals, they will prosecute war competently. If only their own judgment holds them back – and external constraints continue to wither – there is a significant danger that they and other armed actors will make similar wagers in the future. But there may be ways to shape that judgment for the better.
III. The Scramble for Security
As geopolitical tensions and doubts about the viability of the international system have mounted, states have shifted from investing in cooperation to more straightforward and competitive forms of security. The most basic indicator of this trend has been increasing global defence spending. As the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted, total global arms spending hit $2.887 trillion in 2025 after over a decade of year-on-year increases. 33 This run is likely to continue or accelerate for the foreseeable future. The panoply of arms control arrangements that states hammered out in the wake of the Cold War are now threadbare – with New START, the last active U.S.-Russia nuclear agreement, perishing in February – and multilateral security institutions look feeble. Bodies such as the UN Security Council have not retreated into the levels of division of the Cold War (the Council still oversees some 50,000 peacekeepers and over a dozen sanctions regimes) but, as noted, they rarely reach accord on major crises.
A. The Quest for Deterrence
Losing faith in the post-Cold War framework for cooperation and conflict resolution, governments worldwide are scrambling to shore up their security, and often putting military strength first as they do so, though other sources of leverage – such as economic and technological power – still carry weight. This quest for hard power takes different forms in different places. For many powers, the goal is to maximise deterrence. In recent years, deterrence has returned as the basic ordering device between states in regions including Europe, South Asia and the Asia Pacific, as governments have ploughed funding into armaments and look to build up domestic defence industries. In the run-up to U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, the Gulf Arab countries had ramped up arms purchases as they looked to deter Iran, and they will now surely spend yet more, even if they also try to mend ties with Tehran in parallel. 34
These investments have had an impact even their limits have yet to be tested. As during the Cold War, powers have engaged in direct and indirect confrontations while avoiding each other’s thresholds for what could become catastrophic escalations. Russia has held back from open attacks on NATO countries supplying arms to Ukraine to avoid risking war with the alliance, though it has used non-military means of threatening Kyiv’s supporters. 35 NATO members have similarly calibrated their support for Ukraine to avoid a blow-up. 36 Indian and Pakistani officials insist that they kept each other’s red lines in mind during their 2025 clash. 37 At least to date, advocates of such calculated risk taking can claim that “deterrence has held up”. 38
But such situations are inherently uncertain, and many states’ assumptions about how to maximise deterrence are in flux. In Europe, Asia and the Gulf, U.S. allies and partners, accustomed to organising their defences under the U.S. security umbrella, are now making a concerted effort to satisfy Washington’s growing demands for them to invest more in conventional defence. 39 Many are nervous about U.S. retrenchment, but their level of integration with the U.S. military makes it infeasible to responsibly break free from Washington’s embrace in the near or medium term, even with emergency spending. This challenge is particularly steep for allies who are already seeing changes to the U.S. force posture. While European governments are understandably alarmed about such changes, they may have more apparent pathways to self-sufficiency than their Asian and Gulf counterparts.
U.S. support also comes at a cost. Governments in the Gulf have had to deal with the repercussions of U.S. policy, first questioning the wisdom of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, then suffering Tehran’s retaliation and then worrying about whether the peace deal (though most saw it as urgently needed) would sufficiently protect their security and economic interests. 40 When some of Washington’s European allies hesitated to let the U.S. use bases on their territory to attack Iran, and others played down cooperation, implying that they did not want to be seen as complicit in what they regarded as a war of aggression, senior U.S. officials vocally questioned the value of the transatlantic alliance. 41
Military officers and defence officials often say their day-to-day interactions with U.S. interlocutors remain solid, even in parts of the world like Europe that seem disfavoured in White House messaging. But there are also signs that these allies are hedging against the risk that Washington may distance itself from them further. These include incremental decisions to turn to non-U.S. arms suppliers and formation of various coalitions of the willing to work on security problems without direct U.S. participation (though generally not in opposition to the U.S.). 42
The process of militarisation is not confined to countries where the U.S. has provided and now seems to be revisiting security commitments.
The process of militarisation is not confined to countries where the U.S. has provided and now seems to be revisiting security commitments. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa have been on a weapons-buying spree, adding tools like drones to their armouries. 43 Suppliers including China, Iran, Israel, Russia and Türkiye have benefited from this trend. 44 As noted, a number of African governments have also turned to private contractors, such as the former Wagner Group, now reconfigured as the Africa Corps, hoping to find the military might to defeat insurgencies. 45 This decision is not solely a matter of security policy, but also a deliberate move to build ties with Russia rather than France and other Western powers, though to date the results have been poor, with jihadist groups becoming bolder still. 46
For those states with the necessary scientific capacities, the felt need to maximise deterrence in such an uncertain environment could create incentives for more states to acquire nuclear weapons, though there are still significant restraints on doing so. Discussion of nuclearising has increased in South Korea, though President Lee Jae-Myung has eschewed it, instead emphasising conventional armaments, maintenance of U.S. ties and (so far fruitless) diplomatic overtures to Pyongyang. 47 Japan’s history makes the issue highly sensitive, but even there the possibility of nuclearising seems less far-fetched than it might have in the past. 48 Other states may be having similar quiet conversations. There is also talk in Europe of France (or even the UK) extending and enhancing its nuclear deterrence. 49 If the international security situation worsens further, it is likely that the nuclearisation option will grow in prominence.
B. In Search of Asymmetric Advantage and Technological Edge
While states invest in conventional deterrence and, in rarer cases, ponder nuclear options, some governments and armed groups have found alternative methods to counter bigger powers.
The capacity to create economic disruption is a potent threat. The Houthi movement in Yemen has used its capacity to block traffic through the Red Sea as a source of leverage, just as Iran has exploited its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to project its power. 50 The number of states able to control such trade chokepoints is small (though an Indonesian minister responded to the Hormuz crisis by briefly floating a toll for ships passing through the Malacca Strait), but others have alternative economic cards to play. 51 A Chinese attack on or blockade of Taiwan would, for example, cause global economic chaos – and hurt China’s own economy – by disrupting both exports of Taiwanese semi-conductors and trade through the Taiwan Strait. 52 The EU used the threat of economic penalties to get President Trump to back away from talk of seizing Greenland from Denmark in January, though reporting suggests that he has not given up his quest. 53
States are also looking for tools that can give them asymmetric advantages on the battlefield. Ukraine has used a nimble approach to new drone technology to compensate for its troop strength disadvantages in defending itself from and taking the battle to Russia. Analysts in major and minor powers alike are watching the Russian-Ukrainian and Middle Eastern conflicts to discern how to use both drones and other technologies – including cyberweapons and lethal autonomous weapons systems – to offset adversaries’ conventional advantages. 54 This facet of today’s arms races may in itself be destabilising, as rival powers may have very different estimates of their capacities to inflict and absorb pain by different means. There is also a danger that – absent reliable communication channels – states will adopt different interpretations of what sort of actions (such as cyberattacks) are the day-to-day business of rivalry and what are triggers for serious escalation.
Further complicating the picture, many governments must rely on commercial providers to gain a technological edge. Hence questions may arise about who decides how the technologies are deployed, especially when only weak regulatory frameworks and international agreements are in place to guide their use. The Ukrainian military has made good use of the Starlink satellite system, but its owner Elon Musk temporarily cut off access for Kyiv in 2022 based on his personal reading of the risks of Russian escalation. 55 The Trump administration has clashed with AI firm Anthropic over its efforts to limits its products’ use in lethal autonomous weapons systems and domestic surveillance. 56 The fact that well-heeled companies are driving AI and other cutting-edge technologies – and the fact that some of their leaders, including Musk, have strong views about international politics – may feed further disputes over how future innovations are deployed militarily and how to contain the risks they create.
IV. Changing Patterns of Peacemaking
A. The Moment’s Mediators
As powers of all sizes scramble for peace and security, there have been marked shifts in who is leading conflict prevention and peacemaking efforts, how they pursue these initiatives, and what sort of goals they aim to achieve.
Shifts in international order have often been associated with these sorts of changes. During the post-Cold War moment of international cooperation, the UN and regional organisations took on a far greater role in shaping peace processes. But as cooperation has faded, individual states and ad hoc groups of countries have returned to the fore as brokers, sometimes working in tandem with private mediation organisations. These new mediators, often middle powers, have been central to seeking resolution of many of the most acute contemporary crises, with Qatar mediating between Hamas and Israel and Pakistan, Egypt, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia leading efforts to end hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. 57
This new wave of peacemakers is often acting out of necessity. In some situations, governments have little choice but to address conflicts on their doorsteps, especially when other players are absent. Such was the case when Malaysia intervened to end border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand in 2025, and the coalition that helped bring about the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding was similarly motivated. 58 Governments can also choose to mediate in conflicts as a way to protect relationships with warring parties. Pakistan’s role as a go-between in U.S.-Iran talks has allowed it to maintain ties with Washington, Tehran and Gulf capitals. For Egypt, too, mediation is a matter of “strategic balance”. 59 Arab governments and Türkiye have carried out a similar juggling act during the Russian-Ukrainian war, keeping channels open and hosting talks despite (at times) condemning Moscow and, in Ankara’s case, selling arms to Kyiv.
Some governments have … made peacemaking a part of their diplomatic strategies.
Some governments have, however, made peacemaking a part of their diplomatic strategies. 60 In recent years, Türkiye, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman have gained particular prominence in this realm, though most had prior pertinent experience. These four countries have acted as brokers in the Middle East, Africa and farther afield. Qatar, for example, has engaged in Colombia and Venezuela, and Türkiye in the Philippines, among other places. These mediators have significant leverage, hydrocarbon riches in the Gulf states’ case and close ties in big-power capitals, not least Washington, in the case of all four; the Trump administration has partnered with them on several occasions, for example with Qatar in the Democratic Republic of Congo. European officials admit that their Gulf counterparts often have better access to White House deliberations than NATO members.
In some cases, these actors’ deal-making activities have been paired with the use of military force (as with Türkiye in Syria and Libya) as a form of power projection. In others, they have become directly enmeshed in conflicts to the point where they struggle to disengage. In Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are actively backing one side or the other in the civil war, while the U.S. has tried with limited success to get them behind a single peace plan. 61
The weight that these powers will give to mediation – as opposed to other forms of engagement – in future conflicts will likely vary, but they have a degree of momentum that has eluded others for some time. Other globally significant powers, such as Indonesia and India, also maintain webs of connections with the major powers that give them potential to act as go-betweens. Jakarta, as president of the G20, played this role during the first year of Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine, and it has looked to take up the mantle again in the Middle East. 62
The place of the U.S. is also a constant conundrum. The Trump administration has not abandoned peacemaking – indeed, it has trumpeted its prowess in sealing a series of peace deals (with others sometimes contesting the claim) – but it is playing a very different role than in the past, introducing a host of unpredictable factors in the pursuit of accords from Ukraine to South Asia. In many ways, the Trump administration’s approach to deal-making is an open challenge to the practices of post-Cold War peacemakers. The president has embraced a transactional, highly personalistic approach involving a small circle of envoys, including members of his own family, to lead diplomacy with little or no expert support. Members of Trump’s entourage draw linkages between peace initiatives and business opportunities in a way that traditional U.S. administrations would avoid. The president’s disdain for detail and emphasis on achieving quick results compounds the challenges. Nor has Trump, who has styled himself as both peacemaker and a war leader, made any seeming effort to resolve the contradiction between these postures.
U.S. officials have justified the administration’s iconoclasm by pointing out … that efforts by organisations such as the UN had not resolved long-running conflicts.
U.S. officials have justified the administration’s iconoclasm by pointing out, often correctly, that efforts by organisations such as the UN had not resolved long-running conflicts. Moreover, in a handful of cases what Trump has done has yielded better results than a more conventional diplomatic team might produce. Trump’s willingness to take a chance on Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa after his rebel faction deposed Bashar al-Assad in 2024, including by backing the rapid rollback of sanctions that would have crippled Syria’s economic recovery, may be the best example. 63 But in other cases where substantive knowledge and negotiating skill are called for – Ukraine and Iran being at the top of the list – the administration’s playbook has proven a liability. Nor have most other governments rushed to help the administration with its idiosyncratic approach. U.S. efforts to turn the Trump-chaired Board of Peace – which was mandated by the Security Council to oversee the troubled transition from war to peace in Gaza – into a body with a broader writ (possibly competing with the UN) have foundered. 64
Finally, there is China. In contrast to the U.S., Beijing has continued to take an incremental approach to building up its profile as a peacemaker. Beijing has stepped up its diplomatic engagement in troubled states on its borders, embarking on direct mediation with armed groups in Myanmar, taking the lead on the Afghanistan file in the UN Security Council and hosting talks between Pakistan and the Taliban government in Kabul. 65 It has also sporadically dipped its toes in longer-range initiatives, such as helping enable a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, and reportedly leaning on Russia to refrain from nuclear use in Ukraine at the request of the U.S. in 2022. But while Beijing launched a new mediation organisation in Hong Kong in 2025, it has not become involved in much high-stakes conflict mediation to date. It deliberately held back from playing that role during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. 66
B. Shifting Goals
If the cast of peacemakers is changing, the sort of deals that peacemakers – of all backgrounds – are chasing is also shifting. During the post-Cold War, the gold rings for which the industry grasped were comprehensive peace agreements – such as the one forged between the Colombian government and FARC rebels in 2016 – addressing all dimensions of a conflict and creating a framework for work on human rights, governance and related issues. Since the Colombia deal, there has been no settlement on a comparable scale, and the current generation of mediators generally focuses on deals of more limited scope and duration. These may include ceasefires, confidence-building measures (such as Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchanges brokered by Arab states) or bargains to attenuate the spillover of active conflicts, such as the Black Sea Grain Initiative worked out by Türkiye and the UN between Kyiv and Moscow in 2022. 67 These have often proven short-lived, either by design or due to conflict dynamics.
Today’s would-be peacemakers do not altogether lack aspirations for longer-term achievements. Qatar, for example, has tried to forge a lasting agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda to end militia activity in the eastern Congo, with support from the U.S. and AU. 68 The U.S. has helped nudge Armenia and Azerbaijan toward a settlement after decades of conflict. 69 But the hallmark of most contemporary peacemaking is its short-term nature, in contrast to the focus on sustainable peace that permeated post-Cold War efforts, even if that was often more an aspiration than a real prospect. Countries emerging from crisis, such as Syria, are increasingly finding their own way, with little or no international stewardship. National authorities sometimes accelerate reforms and at others let them drift, with social and factional frictions left unresolved. 70 In some cases, such organic processes may lead to better political outcomes than externally imposed plans for stability and democratisation. In others, they will derail. 71
C. The Lingering Value of International Institutions
This short-term focus of present-day peacemaking is in part tied to the downgrading of the international institutions, such as the UN, that often took on the slow work of stabilisation in the past. But it may be premature to write their obituaries. For all their faults, bodies like the UN and the OSCE developed the protocols to manage long-running multidimensional missions, often in the wake of peace deals. States have tried to switch to ad hoc alternatives of late – such as the Kenyan-led mission to Haiti in 2024 to rein in gang violence – but they have often been found wanting. 72
The upshot may be that while multilateral bodies are far from the height of their powers, they have residual relevance in performing tasks that others find they simply cannot handle. For example, the U.S. has – after much lobbying and pragmatic engagement – begun to restore funding to UN humanitarian operations, albeit with caveats on where and how it can be used that many aid officials find oppressive; Washington has begun to see that nobody else can deliver assistance on the same scale (while its efforts to launch a non-UN managed humanitarian operation in wartime Gaza degenerated into disaster). 73 Other multilateral institutions could also find new purposes in supporting future peace agreements – the OSCE might, for example, offer a space for confidence-building talks between NATO and Russia after a ceasefire in Ukraine. 74
Even as the spirit of multilateralism fades, many governments still instinctively look to multilateral bodies to make normative pronouncements and to offer political and sometimes legal blessings for crisis management efforts. The UN General Assembly, which has stepped up on conflicts when the Security Council is stuck, has been active on Myanmar, Ukraine and Gaza, as has the Human Rights Council, as states explore alternative arenas for making their voices heard. 75 Even the Security Council was pressed into service by Washington to approve the Gaza ceasefire deal in part because possible troop contributing states saw it as a necessity. 76
There has … been an uptick of activity among international tribunals.
There has also been an uptick of activity among international tribunals, in part because states are looking for spaces that are less clogged by geopolitics where they can raise the cost of conflict-related transgressions. The ICC is involved in both the Ukraine and Gaza wars – issuing arrest warrants for Putin and Netanyahu – and states have called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to address alleged breaches in the civil war in Myanmar and by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. 77 There are limits to what these courts can do, as both are reliant on others for enforcement (member states and the Security Council), and in some cases it is hard to imagine anyone being willing to absorb the repercussions of acting on their directions. Few states, if given the chance, would likely want to risk Russia’s ire by arresting Putin, for example, the ICC warrant notwithstanding. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on ICC judges and prosecutors. 78 But these bodies can nevertheless help maintain global norms and offer statements on the legality of conflict-related conduct.
Another potential remaining area for multilateral cooperation is in ad hoc efforts to manage the larger consequences of regional conflicts. As noted at the outset, many governments have seemed more perturbed by the economic effects of conflicts than the fighting itself. The UN managed to reduce the global impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war by negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative in tandem with Türkiye in 2022, and it tabled ideas for a similar mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz – in line with proposals backed by Crisis Group – though without success in that case. 79 If further conflicts disrupt the global economy, there may be more openings for such initiatives.
V. Causes of Peace
Even before the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran in late February, the global outlook for conflict prevention and resolution seemed bleak, with states rushing to bolster their hard power and peacemakers mostly playing catch-up. Through trial and error, analysts and policymakers who gained experience in the post-Cold War years built up a systematic approach to conflict management over a period of years. Now it is necessary to recognise that conflict prevention, mitigation and resolution will need to be reimagined for a world characterised by 1) the ascent of hard power and 2) the retreat of multilateral diplomacy. Some observers hope to reverse this trend. In late 2025, the UN released a report arguing that rising military expenditures have undercut global development spending and calling upon governments to reallocate funds. 80 They are unlikely to do so. In practical terms, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that states will respond to today’s disorder by investing in their militaries.
Yet the moment is still right to highlight the downsides of military action and the advantages of averting it war. Russia has encountered the limits of military power in Ukraine. The U.S. and Israel have run into similar lessons in the Gulf. Major and middle powers alike may still resort to force in the future, but current events do create an opening to make the case for pragmatic efforts to preserve peace. 81 Influential figures such as Pope Leo XIV have taken up the cause. Against this backdrop, some broad lines of action offer ways to prevent, mitigate and resolve conflicts. 82 Not all will appeal (or be available) to all decision-makers, and they fall far short of a program for creation or restoration of a global order that offers systematic solutions for emerging conflicts. Nonetheless, they offer strategies and tools that can limit short-term risks while taking measures to preserve salvageable elements of the lapsing architecture and laying groundwork for an eventual return to a more orderly world, if and when circumstances allow:
- Combining deterrence with diplomacy: As more states arm themselves, they hope to deter their regional rivals from using force against them, and (awkward though it is for peacemaking organisations to embrace this logic) an element of deterrence will be an essential component of preserving peace and stability in some cases. 83 But militarisation can also spur arms races and set the stage for misunderstandings and both accidental and intentional escalations. There is accordingly a growing need to focus on reducing these risks. In particular, it is essential to ensure that states that are building up their militaries also develop mechanisms that can help them avoid clashes. 84 These can include low-profile, military-to-military channels to address accidents that could get out of hand and (in time) more worked-through confidence-building measures. The establishment of higher-level political contacts for use in moments of acute crisis and to share crucial messages can also be useful.
- Exploring political or negotiated solutions to states’ domestic problems: While diplomatic channels may reduce risks of war between states, it is also necessary to lower the dangers of governments and armed groups resorting to force within states. In recent years, as noted above, many governments have opted to take hardline approaches to internal opponents, often with external support, and frequently with horrifying results. Yet many governments still see negotiating with insurgents as a taboo. While success is not guaranteed, where states are willing to balance military action with efforts at dialogue – whether through formal mediation or, more commonly, informal contacts – it may be possible to at least mitigate conflicts. In the Sahel, for example, efforts to eliminate jihadist groups have failed, but local truces have underlined that some sort of political engagement is feasible.
- Strengthening diverse networks of peacemakers: Fragmentation is likely to continue, creating opportunities for new coalitions to address present and future conflicts. European powers and international organisations that retain significant peacemaking expertise can develop partnerships with other middle-power mediators to compare notes. Qatar has partnered with Norway and Switzerland in mediation, and other European officials are reportedly signing memorandums of understanding with countries in the Middle East. 85 Independent mediation organisations can feed into these collaborations. 86 Innovative ad hoc coalitions also show promise. Not so long ago, the important role played by Pakistan and Türkiye in negotiations between the U.S. and Iran would have been difficult to imagine, but geopolitics have changed the diplomatic equation. Different conflicts will require different constellations of actors to guide peace talks.
- Improving resilience to regional shocks: As the fallout from the Russian-Ukrainian war and Middle Eastern crisis have underlined, future crisis management efforts will often involve coordination on managing the global implications of a crisis. Here, crisis management starts with early warning. Public and private actors will need to develop increasing sophistication about the risks presented by their reliance on global supply chains and trade flows. They will also need to do more practical planning to ensure, where possible, that they are not overly reliant on the flow of essential materials through vulnerable chokepoints. But where these measures fail, diplomacy will have a role to play. Successful efforts to mitigate the global effects of conflicts, like the Black Sea Grain Initiative, have involved complicated negotiations and tradeoffs – and, indeed, a similar compromise proved impossible in March over the Strait of Hormuz, as Gulf Arab countries feared it would benefit Iran. 87
- Coordinating influential voices around the dangers of hard power: In addition to addressing potential supply issues, private-sector actors – including insurers, and major agricultural, energy and maritime firms – have a broad shared interest in addressing the dangers of future conflicts to their business models. These players can coordinate with states and non-state members of the “peace industry” to raise awareness of the economic risks of war, using cases including the Middle East conflict to highlight how crisis can surge. These voices can also urge political leaders to take steps that seek to reinforce core elements of the peace and security architecture – for example, by speaking out in defence of international peace and security norms and encouraging reforms (such as war powers legislation in the U.S.) that may help align domestic policy with those global standards. Efforts by governments and private firms to understand and then work together to manage the risks of new technologies in warfare are also essential.
- Recognising and maximising the value drawn from international and regional institutions: While multilateral conflict management is in abeyance, a number of recent experiences offer reminders that entities such as the UN can still play an essential role in legitimising international crisis response or delivering aid in conflict settings. Multilateral institutions, which are under great political and economic pressure, are likely to shrink. But the governments that pay into their budgets should be careful not to weaken them irredeemably. While it must be hoped that the U.S. will continue to restore funding to UN activities – following its decision to reinvest in UN humanitarian operations – other governments should coordinate to insert extra funding for those parts of the multilateral system that can preserve these entities’ knowledge and networks. These include mediation units, strategic planning offices and centres of expertise on conflict management that can prepare for engaging in future conflicts. 88 Many governments would also like to see bolder reforms to bodies like the UN Security Council, but while these remain worth debating, the practical and legal barriers are often vast. 89 Meantime, there is a pragmatic case for defending key existing multilateral tools even in the absence of broader reforms. In the meantime, regional leaders should invest in improving the functioning of bodies such as the AU – where previous such proposals have languished – and carefully expand the conflict prevention role of organisations such as ASEAN, which are likely to have to step up more often when other institutions and outside powers are absent. 90
- Acting deliberately to reinforce international law and norms relating to the use of force: In addition to propping up the operational capacities of international institutions, it is necessary to consider how to defend the pillars of the post-World War II architecture relating to peace and security. While states diverge widely when it comes to elements of post-Cold War innovations, the core commitments to non-intervention and civilian protection still have great normative power and widespread support. While big-power revisionism makes sustaining these norms more difficult, it is not impossible. States that seek to carry these elements of the old order into the future can work together to make clear their support in both word and deed – speaking out against breaches, taking collective action where appropriate and bringing matters to the attention of international tribunals that can help weave the norms more tightly into the fabric of international law.
VI. Conclusion
At a moment where appeals for a general return to the UN Charter seem unavailing, and hopes for the emergence of a new global system equally liable to flag, it is necessary to identify approaches that can alleviate the consequences of disorder. Many will find it a dispiriting project, especially when compared to the end of the Cold War, when advocates of peacemaking and diplomacy had an opportunity to assist in constructing international and regional organisations that made these things institutional priorities. Now, even if some of those institutions cling to life, the challenge is to find ways to shore up peace and mitigate deadly violence in an environment defined by competition and mistrust. They will have to take risks, and doubtless they will make mistakes. Even the good results may often rest on shaky ground. Nonetheless, in a period in which new conflicts and escalation cycles seem likely – and wars are exacting a grim toll – steps to shore up conflict prevention, conflict management and peacemaking are essential if the world is to avoid even more costly chaos.
International Crisis Group (ICG), New York/Brussels, 8 July 2026
