Reflecting on War to Better Reinvent Peace

It is inevitable today to confront the question of war.

War has never disappeared. But where the ambition of the 1945 project, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, was to make war the exception and to protect future generations from its devastations, our perspective has profoundly changed. The Geneva Academy currently lists 102 active armed conflicts across the world. Global military spending reached a record USD 2,900 billion in 2025, continuing a trend of uninterrupted growth for more than two decades. By contrast, that same year, the entire annual budget of the United Nations system amounted to USD 3.72 billion.

Beyond the figures, what deserves particular attention is the transformation of our collective imagination. The spirit of the times is characterised by rearmament, the reassertion of borders in various forms, and the return of a conception of international relations grounded in power politics. We are also seeing, in the public sphere as well as in certain political and cultural circles, a growing glorification of assertive forms of masculinity, competition and confrontation, embraced in an increasingly unapologetic and sometimes extreme manner. The spirit of the times is characterised by rearmament, the reassertion of borders in various forms, and the return of a conception of international relations grounded in power politics. The 1945 promise of emancipation through interdependence, openness and cooperation is losing ground to narratives centred on the “return to greatness” of particular nations or identities, thriving far beyond simple rhetorical slogans and spreading to many parts of the world.

But What, Then, Is War?

The conflicts that are undermining entire regions of our planet and leaving a lasting mark on the fate of many populations — sometimes spanning several generations — now seem to be converging towards forms of violence and conflict that defy the categories through which we have learnt to think about war. War is no longer, far from it, a simple and direct armed confrontation between states vying for territory, resources or positions of power.

Indeed, can we still clearly distinguish war from peace? When attacks unfold in cyberspace, when civilian infrastructure becomes a strategic target, when information itself is turned into a weapon, or when private actors acquire capabilities once reserved for states, the conceptual boundaries that shaped our understanding of war become increasingly blurred. Conflict now permeates spaces, timeframes and spheres of activity that blur the traditional distinctions between the military and the civilian, the internal and the external, the local and the global, the real and the virtual, and times of war and times of peace.

As these boundaries become increasingly blurred, war ceases to appear as an exceptional rupture that suspends an otherwise stable order. It now permeates digital spaces, supply chains, migration flows, critical infrastructure and information systems. It also permeates those liminal spaces situated on the fringes of state sovereignty, which belong fully to no one yet are coveted by all: the polar regions, outer space and the deep seas. Contemporary wars also involve the control of narratives, identities (including gender identities), collective perceptions and, at times, imagined futures.

None of this is entirely new. As early as 1921, Marc Bloch emphasised, in his Réflexions d’un historien sur les fausses nouvelles de la guerre, the importance of perceptions, beliefs and mechanisms of persuasion in the conduct of conflicts. But the contemporary technological environment gives these dynamics an unprecedented scale. The widespread adoption of digital networks, the capacity to process and disseminate information on a massive scale, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence now give “narrative wars” an unprecedented scope. They no longer aim merely to influence opinions; they seek to shape perceptions of reality and redefine the boundaries of what is possible, in an increasingly explicit attempt to colonise our futures.

Understanding War to Find the Path Back to Peace

In late summer 1939, the professors at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva – HEI, the predecessor of the Geneva Graduate Institute – embarked on what they themselves described as an “exceptional scientific endeavour”: analysing the causes of the failure of the international order established in 1919 in order to reflect, in the very midst of the war, on the conditions for a more stable international order and for future peace. In late summer 1939, the professors at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva – HEI, the predecessor of the Geneva Graduate Institute – embarked on what they themselves described as an “exceptional scientific endeavour”: analysing the causes of the failure of the international order established in 1919 in order to reflect, in the very midst of the war, on the conditions for a more stable international order and for future peace. Their approach was based on a simple yet demanding conviction: an institution dedicated to the study of international relations cannot remain a mere spectator when the future of the international system it studies is at stake. Without claiming to provide definitive answers, they sought to harness the knowledge accumulated by the social sciences to understand the present and help prepare for the future.

This issue of Global Challenges stems from a similar intuition and ambition. The context is profoundly different, yet the questions we face about the future of our international order are no less fundamental. With changing forms of conflict, the erosion of certain categories through which we used to conceptualise war, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the evolution of the international order, the aim is not to predict the future or to provide ready-made answers and solutions. It is rather to provide analytical tools, to contextualise and put events in perspective, thus enabling a better understanding of the transformations underway.

More than ever, this type of approach appears necessary. For behind the conflicts that dominate today’s headlines lies a more fundamental question: what kind of international order is taking shape and what place will it leave for the rule of law, open international cooperation and peaceful coexistence? Like their predecessors in 1939, professors at the Geneva Graduate Institute today believe that research cannot remain detached from the major upheavals of the times. The aim should be to reconcile intellectual engagement with scientific rigour, public responsibility with academic independence, in order to shed light on the collective choices facing our societies and to help redraw the contours of the complex, fragile, yet essential path that should lead us back to a desire for peace.