War is Still Hell

As 2025 rolls on, the world's major conflicts appear to be winding down.

In Ukraine, America and Russia are actively discussing peace talks. In Gaza, the final hostages are being returned home amid Trump’s controversial Palestinian evacuation proposals. The Syrian Civil War ended with the rebel victory. Even the less-publicized battlefields of Congo and Sudan show signs of exhaustion.

As these wars are ending, they've revealed a hard truth: despite our technological and cultural evolution, warfare remains as brutal and inhuman as ever, perhaps even more so. As General Sherman said 150 years ago, war is cruelty.

He knew all about it. The Civil War was pretty grim, countrymen fighting countrymen with new modern weapons, and the deaths start racking up. It was a time of technological change, the Civil War represented a tragic transition point in warfare history.

When the Civil War began, military leaders on both sides were trained in Napoleonic tactics that emphasized massed formations of soldiers firing in coordinated volleys. These tactics were developed for smoothbore muskets with limited range and accuracy. However, by the 1860s, rifled muskets had become standard issue. These weapons had:

• Much greater range (effective at 300+ yards vs. 100 yards for smoothbores)

• Significantly improved accuracy Higher muzzle velocity for more lethal wounds

Despite this technological leap, commanders continued ordering dense formations of soldiers to march across open ground toward entrenched positions. The result was predictably catastrophic. Defensive firepower simply overwhelmed offensive tactics, leading to massive casualties at battles like Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg, and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. The military doctrine failed to evolve quickly enough to account for these technological advancements, creating a deadly gap between weapons capabilities and battlefield strategy that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Medical knowledge hadn't caught up either. More soldiers died from disease and infection than from combat wounds. Amputation was the primary treatment for limb wounds, and germ theory wasn't yet widely accepted in practice.

We just watched war happen at another transition point today. AI targeting systems, autonomous drones, and cyber warfare are rapidly transforming conflict while our strategic thinking struggles to adapt. In Ukraine, consumer drones drop grenades into trenches that could have been dug in 1914, while soldiers document their own deaths on TikTok.

In Gaza, smartphone metadata helps target strikes, while families receive evacuation warnings via text messages.

Technology changes, but men do not.

Consider what we've witnessed the last few years. War is becoming worse.

10 Reasons War Is Getting Worse

1) Entire Cities Reduced to Rubble

From Mariupol to Gaza City. Cities have been completely wiped out. Just like Dresden or Hiroshima.

Here’s Gaza

@businessinsiderssa

Drone footage captures the stark contrast of Gaza before and after Israel's recent military operation in the Palestinian enclave. Once bu... See more

Here’s Mariupol

@skynews

Mariupol has faced weeks of heavy shelling by Russian forces and is now unrecognisable compared to before the invasion #ukraine #russia #s... See more

What's particularly disturbing is how this contradicts historical military logic. Throughout much of history, invaders typically preserved cities they conquered, after all, why destroy valuable infrastructure, buildings, and populations that could be taxed and exploited? The Romans, Ottomans, and most pre-modern empires understood that intact cities were valuable prizes, not targets for wholesale destruction. Even the notorious exceptions like the Mongols used destruction selectively as psychological warfare, not as standard practice.

Today's warfare inverts this ancient wisdom. Modern military doctrine routinely sacrifices urban centers in the name of tactical advantage or political messaging.

2) We Don’t Know How Many People Died

There is a disturbing paradox of our information age, we have more data than ever (satellite imagery, social media, real-time reporting), yet can't answer the most fundamental question such as how many people died in war. Do you know how many people died?

Does anyone know?

In January, Trump said that "almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed," adding that "about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. He’s the President, does he know something we do not? Has he been briefed on the real number? Is he just exaggerating?

I tweeted about it and many people mocked me. But how do they know?

In Gaza, even basic civilian casualty counts are disputed, with figures varying by tens of thousands depending on the source. This uncertainty isn't accidental. Israel dismisses Gaza’s Health Ministry figures as “Hamas propaganda.” Russia makes reporting military deaths illegal.

Governments deliberately obscure their losses. And they have an army of online experts or organizations meant to muddle the water with disputing numbers.

Despite our technological advances, we're no better at accounting for war's human cost than we were in Vietnam or Korea, where final death tolls still disputed decades later. The fog of war hasn't lifted, it's just been digitized.

3) Massive Refugee Crisis

The scale of modern displacement is staggering. Over 6 million Ukrainians have fled into Europe, the largest refugee movement since World War II, fundamentally reshaping European demographics.

@theirishindependent

Olya Don, a soft-spoken 20-year-old woman from the Poltava region of Ukraine has been living in Citywest for the past 16 months. Her mothe... See more

Poland alone absorbed over a million people. The Syrian civil war drove over 5 million people into neighboring countries and Europe, transforming societies from Turkey to Germany.

@yusramardini

Replying to @🇸🇾Mayaمايا🇸🇾

Now, Trump's controversial proposal to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza could potentially displace another 2 million people.

Most disturbing is how this displacement becomes permanent. Many Syrian refugees will never return home. Millions of Ukrainians are putting down roots in new countries.

Historically, most refugees eventually returned home, Post-WWII had 11 million displaced persons repatriated by 1950. Vietnam War had 3 million refugees, but many resettled or returned after 1975. The Rwandan Genocide had 2 million fled, but 1.5 million returned within a year.

I don’t think people will be returning home this time.

4) Mercenaries, Foreign Soldiers and More

Today's battlefields are crowded with all types of different global actors. Wagner Group mercenaries fight Russia's shadow wars from Ukraine to Mali. North Korean troops quietly bolster Russian frontlines. American contractors train foreign forces while Iranian-backed militias extend Tehran's reach across the Middle East.

Modern conflicts have evolved into transnational ecosystems of violence, where state militaries are no longer the sole actors.

or U.S. companies supplying Israel 

Latin Americans fighting for Ukraine

Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis backing Hamas.

This isn’t new. The Italian city-states relied heavily on mercenary "condottieri" companies during the Renaissance. The British Empire extensively used local forces and mercenaries to maintain control. The Cold War was defined by proxy conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

But the fundamental difference today is the unprecedented scale and reach of non-state actor involvement. While mercenaries have existed throughout history, today's landscape features global recruitment pools and technological self-sufficiency: Modern proxy groups can develop sophisticated capabilities independently. Hezbollah has created its own drone program, Hamas builds rockets locally, and various groups have developed cyber warfare capabilities.

5) Technological Advancements vs. Reality

Military technology has advanced dramatically, everyone knows about drones,

and precision-guided munitions and AI targeting systems. With each innovation comes the same promise, warfare will become "surgical," sparing civilians while efficiently eliminating threats.

Optimists argued that “smart” weapons would make war more surgical and spare civilians. In practice, that has not happened. Advanced weaponry hasn't delivered the "clean" war its proponents promised. Instead, it has simply made killing more efficient.

While tech evangelists declare that "the future of war will be dictated and waged by drones," today's battlefields remain human affairs. The vision of autonomous systems replacing human combatants, robots fighting robots, remains science fiction. Instead, we see a hybrid reality: drones and AI augment human violence rather than replace it. Soldiers still die in trenches, civilians still flee their homes, and cities still burn. Technology has changed warfare's methods but not its nature.

6) Following Modern Wars Means Drowning in a Sea of Social Media Manipulation

Paid trolls, bot networks, and state-sponsored operations flood social media with competing narratives. Russia's propaganda factories spin Ukraine stories while pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups fight digital wars over Gaza incidents. Distinguishing reality becomes nearly impossible.

The old adage that "truth is the first casualty of war" has evolved. In the social media age, truth isn't just killed, it's drowned in a sea of competing "truths," each with its own ecosystem of influencers and experts.

We have unprecedented access to war information, yet somehow know less about what's actually happening.

Perhaps the only reliable indicator of war's reality remains the oldest one: who physically controls the land.

7) International Institutions May Not Exist For Much Longer

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