Loading AI tools
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to war:
War – organised and often prolonged armed conflict that is carried out by states or non-state actors – is characterised by extreme violence, social disruption, and economic destruction.[1][2] War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention.[1][3] Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general.[4]
Types of warfare
Warfare by objective
Warfare by strategic doctrine
Warfare by terrain
Warfare by equipment or weapon type
Warfare by era
Warfare by stages
Other
Locations of ongoing conflicts worldwide, Update: December 2024
Major wars, 10,000+ deaths in current or past year
Wars, 1,000–9,999 deaths in current or past year
Minor conflicts, 100–999 deaths in current or past year
Skirmishes and clashes, fewer than 100 deaths.
Warfare by era
See: Warfare by era
Wars
Wars by death toll
Wars by date
Wars by region
- List of conflicts in North America
- List of conflicts in Central America
- List of conflicts in South America
- List of conflicts in Europe
- List of conflicts in Asia
- Conflicts in the Middle East
- List of conflicts in the Near East (until 1918)
- List of modern conflicts in the Middle East (after 1918)
- List of conflicts in Africa
- Conflicts in the Horn of Africa (East Africa)
- List of modern conflicts in North Africa (Maghreb)
- Military history of Africa
Wars by type of conflict
- List of border wars
- List of civil wars
- List of frozen conflicts
- List of guerrilla wars
- List of interstate wars since 1945
- List of invasions
- List of military conflicts spanning multiple wars
- List of proxy wars
- List of religious wars
- List of wars of succession
- List of wars between democracies
- List of wars of independence
- List of wars of national liberation
- List of wars extended by diplomatic irregularity
- List of world wars
Battles
Military organization
Operational level of war
Military operations
Types of military operations
Types of military operations, by scope:
- Theater – operation over a large, often continental area of operation and represents a strategic national commitment to the conflict such as Operation Barbarossa, with general goals that encompass areas of consideration outside of the military such as the economic and political impacts.
- Campaign – subset of the theatre operation, or a more limited geographic and operational strategic commitment such as Battle of Britain, and need not represent total national commitment to a conflict, or have broader goals outside of the military impacts.
- Battle – subset of a campaign that will have specific military goals and geographic objectives, as well as clearly defined use of forces such as the Battle of Gallipoli, which operationally was a combined arms operation originally known as the "Dardanelles landings" as part of the Dardanelles Campaign, where about 480,000 Allied troops took part.
- Engagement – tactical combat event of contest for specific area or objective by actions of distinct units. For example, the Battle of Kursk, also known from its German designation as Operation Citadel, included many separate engagements, several of which were combined into the Battle of Prokhorovka. The "Battle of Kursk" in addition to describing the initial German offensive operation (or simply an offensive), also included two Soviet counter-offensive operations Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev.
- Strike – single attack, upon a specified target. This often forms part of a broader engagement. Strikes have an explicit goal, such as, rendering facilities inoperable (e.g. airports), to assassinating enemy leaders, or to limit supply to enemy troops.
Military strategy
- Attrition warfare
- Battlespace
- Military deception
- Naval strategy
- Offensive (military)
- Strategic defence
- Strategic goal (military)
Grand strategy
Military tactics
- Casus belli – Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. In theory, present international law allows only three situations as legal cause to go to war: out of self-defense, defense of an ally under a mutual defense pact, or sanctioned by the UN.
- Declaration of war
- Surrender
- Capitulation an agreement in time of war for the surrender to a hostile armed force of a particular body of troops, a town or a territory.
- Strategic surrender – surrender to avoid a last, chaotic round of fighting that would have the characteristics of a rout, allowing the victor to obtain his objective without paying the costs of a last battle.
- Unconditional surrender – surrender without conditions, except for those provided by international law.
- Victory
- Debellatio – when a war ends because of the complete destruction of a belligerent state.
- No quarter – when a victor shows no clemency or mercy and refuses to spare the life of the vanquished when they surrender at discretion. Under the laws of war "... it is especially forbidden ... to declare that no quarter will be given".
- Pyrrhic victory – victory with such a devastating cost that it carries the implication that another such victory will ultimately lead to defeat.
- War effort
- War economy
Philosophy of war
Philosophy of war – examines war beyond the typical questions of weaponry and strategy, inquiring into such things as the meaning and etiology of war, the relationship between war and human nature, and the ethics of war.
- Militarism – belief that war is not inherently bad but can be a beneficial aspect of society.
- Realism – its core proposition is a skepticism as to whether moral concepts such as justice can be applied to the conduct of international affairs. Proponents of realism believe that moral concepts should never prescribe, nor circumscribe, a state's behaviour. Instead, a state should place an emphasis on state security and self-interest. One form of realism – descriptive realism – proposes that states cannot act morally, while another form – prescriptive realism – argues that the motivating factor for a state is self-interest. Just wars that violate Just Wars principles effectively constitute a branch of realism.
- Revolution and Civil War – Just War Theory states that a just war must have just authority. To the extent that this is interpreted as a legitimate government, this leaves little room for revolutionary war or civil war, in which an illegitimate entity may declare war for reasons that fit the remaining criteria of Just War Theory. This is less of a problem if the "just authority" is widely interpreted as "the will of the people" or similar. Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions side-steps this issue by stating that if one of the parties to a civil war is a High Contracting Party (in practice, the state recognised by the international community,) both Parties to the conflict are bound "as a minimum, the following [humanitarian] provisions." Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention also makes clear that the treatment of prisoners of war is binding on both parties even when captured soldiers have an "allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power."
- Consequentialism – moral theory most frequently summarized in the words "the end justifies the means," which tends to support the just war theory (unless the just war causes less beneficial means to become necessary, which further requires worst actions for self-defense with bad consequences).
- Pacifism – belief that war of any kind is morally unacceptable or pragmatically not worth the cost. Pacifists extend humanitarian concern not just to enemy civilians but also to combatants, especially conscripts. For example, Ben Salmon believed all war to be unjust. He was sentenced to death during World War I (later commuted to 25 years hard labor) for desertion and spreading propaganda.[5]
- Right of self-defence – maintains (based on rational self-interest) that the use of retaliatory force is justified against repressive nations that break the zero aggression principle. In addition, if a free country is itself subject to foreign aggression, it is morally imperative for that nation to defend itself and its citizens by whatever means necessary. Thus, any means to achieve a swift and complete victory over the enemy is imperative. This view is prominently held by Objectivists.[6]
Laws of war
Prisoners of war
Effects of war
- Casualties
- Casualty
- Casualty classifications
- Assassination
- List of genocides by death toll
War publications
War films
- List of war films and TV specials – lists movies and shows by the war depicted in them, the sections arranged chronologically
Inventors of Military Technology
During the Classical Period
Listed by date of approximate lifetime
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Near East
Ancient Greece
Ancient India
Ancient China and its enemies
Ancient Rome and its enemies
Late Antiquity
During the Post-classical Period
Early Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
Islamic Golden Age
Medieval India
Medieval China
Medieval Southeast Asia
Mongol Conquests
Hundred Years War
During the Early Modern Period
Japanese Wars
Islamic Empires
European Colonization of the Americas
Early Modern Europe
Chinese Qing dynasty
American Revolutionary War
Napoleonic Wars
Modern Period
American Civil War
During World War I
During World War II
This is divided between political Leaders, field commanders and other influential people
Political Leaders
Commanders
- Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis
- Omar Bradley
- Zhu De
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Charles de Gaulle
- Hermann Göring
- Heinrich Himmler
- Douglas MacArthur
- Ioannis Metaxas
- Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
- George S. Patton
- Erwin Rommel
- Hajime Sugiyama
- Josip Broz Tito
- Isoroku Yamamoto
- Mao Zedong
- Georgy Zhukov
Others
- Richard Sorge, Russian spy
- Sofia Vembo
War
- Outline of military science and technology
- Campaign history of the Roman military
- Operations research
- Articles of War
- Civilian Internee
- Defence minister
- Disarmed Enemy Forces
- Fog of war
- Geneva Convention
- Illegal combatant
- Italian military internees
- List of war deities
- Military Chaplain
- Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC)
- The United States Military Code of Conduct
- War among the people
- War and environmental law
- War artist
- War as metaphor
- War bond
- War bonnet
- War bride
- War cabinet
- War canoe
- War chest
- War chief
- War children
- War comics
- War commissar
- War communism
- War correspondent
- War council
- War crime
- War crimes trials
- War cry
- War dance
- War Department
- War dialing
- War diary
- War discography
- War dove
- War economy
- War effort
- War elephant
- War emergency power
- War film
- War finance
- War flag
- War college
- War grave
- War hammer
- War hawk
- War language
- War locomotive
- War memorial
- War memorial locomotive
- War Ministry
- War museum
- War novel
- War paint
- War photography
- War pig
- War pigeon
- War poet
- War profiteering
- War rape
- War referendum
- War reparations
- War reserve stock
- War resister
- War risk insurance
- War rugs
- War sand
- War scythe
- War song
- War studies
- War tax stamp
- War termination
- War tourism
- War trophy
- War wagon
- War zone
Wars
- Lists of wars in World (by date, region, type of conflict)
- Africa :
- Americas :
- Asia :
- Europe :
- Others :
- Ongoing conflicts in World (Commons Maps) :
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
