Political theorist Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed that the end of the Cold War marked “the end of history,” a triumph of capitalist, liberal Western democracy over competing ideologies. It was believed that 21st-century humanity would be a globalized postconflict society moving in deterministic concert toward collective peace and prosperity. While Fukuyama’s thesis was profoundly challenged by the September 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent U.S. “war on terrorism,” open warfare between the armies of nation-states did, in fact, become increasingly rare in the post-Cold War environment. Instead, terrorism, ethnic conflict, civil wars, and hybrid and special operations warfare (techniques used by developed nations to harass or destabilize opponents through nontraditional means) accounted for the bulk of nonstate, intrastate, and interstate violence. Although the 21st century saw a greatly reduced battle death rate when compared with similar time spans in the previous century, these numbers nevertheless represented tens of thousands of lives lost each year.
