While shorter, less intense and often linked to and co-located with the type two conflicts, non-state conflicts started to systematically outnumber state-based conflicts in the 2010s. In a 30-year period since 1989, conflicts of the third type fought between non-state actors comprised almost half of all armed conflicts.

The same conflict areas also account for the bulk of terrorist attacks and fatalities. These conflicts produce a lion’s share of battle-related deaths worldwide. In contrast, the second type is comprised of very few larger, more intense, heavily transnationalized civil wars, mostly in weak, failed, dysfunctional or proxy states, with major external interventions (such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, or Yemen). 3/4 of such conflicts are not internationalized most respective states are strong enough to contain escalation of violence, but often not enough to afford a decisive crackdown, which leaves such peripheral violence hovering at a low level. The first, widespread type is comprised by localized state-based conflicts of limited intensity, mostly on the periphery of functional states that keep overall control of the national territory. To a varying extent, these trends affect and permeate all three main types of conflict of the early 21st century. On the basis of analysis of lead academic datasets on conflicts and other types of violence linked to and widespread in conflict areas, a typology of contemporary conflicts is formulated and several main trends are indentified. While the article briefly reviews long-term decline in old challenges (share of major wars, number and share of inter-state conflicts, battle-related deaths), its main focus is on new types and patterns of armed conflict that either did not clearly manifest themselves, or had no parallels or analogues in the 20th century.

In the early 21st century, the main patterns of armed conflicts evolved significantly, to the point that it is fair to claim: the war of the industrial age – large-scale, direct confrontation between conventional armies of two or more states – all but faded away. The fact that, in 2015–2018, the world faced roughly the same peak number of state-based conflicts as 30 years earlier, during the collapse of the bipolar system, does not mean it faced the same conflict patterns.

Ucdp armed conflict database