The Evolution of Warfare: Nationalism and Technology

War has been a constant feature of human history, but the way it is fought and the reasons people fight have never stayed still. A useful starting point comes from the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who argued that the fundamental nature of war is immutable: it is the use or threat of violence as an extension of politics, meant to compel an opponent to one’s will. What changes is the character of war, its form and expression, which shifts in response to geopolitical, social, demographic, economic, and technological developments. Two forces have done more than almost anything else to reshape that character in the modern era: the rise of nationalism and the relentless advance of technology. Understanding how these two forces interact helps explain why contemporary conflicts look so different from the wars of earlier centuries.

From kings’ wars to nations’ wars 🔗

Before the late eighteenth century, European wars were largely the business of monarchs. Armies were small, professional, and often made up of mercenaries fighting for pay rather than principle. The French Revolution shattered this model. In 1793, the revolutionary government introduced the levée en masse, which placed the entire citizenry at the disposal of the state and gave France the large-scale citizen-army it needed to repel invading forces.

This was not just a change in numbers. It was a change in spirit. Clausewitz observed that the French Revolution unleashed political passions that allowed France to use means previously unavailable, dramatically increasing its military strength beyond that of its rivals. As one analysis of his thinking puts it, war had transformed from a game of kings into a struggle of nations, a contest in which the ruler, the army, and the people fought as one. Napoleon’s enthused armies could now aim to annihilate their enemies rather than simply maneuver them into weak positions.

Nationalism made this possible. The emergence of mass nationalism gave states a new capacity to inculcate mass loyalties and mobilize mass armies. Scholars who have tested Clausewitz’s theory using centuries of data argue that this profoundly altered the nature of the units making up the interstate system, which in turn changed how wars were fought and how deadly they became. The link reached a grim peak in the twentieth century, when industrial firepower combined with the perseverance fuelled by nationalism produced the unprecedented carnage of the World Wars.

Ethnic nationalism and the right to self-determination 🔗

Nationalism is not a single idea. Scholars often distinguish between civic nationalism, which binds people through shared citizenship and institutions, and ethnic nationalism, which defines the nation by shared ancestry, language, or culture. The central political claim of ethnic nationalism is that ethnic groups are entitled to self-determination. The outcome of that claim can range from demands for limited autonomy to the creation of a fully independent sovereign state.

This is where war and nationalism become tightly bound. When one group’s demand for self-determination collides with another state’s claim to territorial integrity, the result is often violence. Both principles are recognized in international law, and the tension between them sits at the heart of many modern conflicts.

The post-Soviet explosion of conflict 🔗

No episode illustrates this better than the collapse of the Soviet Union. For decades, nationalist and ethnic tensions across the USSR were kept dormant through suppression and control. Yet Soviet policy itself planted the seeds of future conflict. The state created ethnically defined territorial units, codified nationality in internal passports, and mapped identity onto administrative borders. These autonomous units developed their own political institutions, national elites, and intelligentsias, which later became the basis for nationalist movements demanding independence.

When central authority weakened under Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, these suppressed tensions erupted. The Stanford project on ethnic conflict notes that the dissolution of the USSR along the lines of its fifteen republics called into question other borders and arrangements, bringing to the fore the fundamental tension between self-determination and the territorial integrity of existing states. The Caucasus saw the bitter Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, while the breakup of Yugoslavia descended into some of the most brutal ethnic warfare Europe had seen since 1945.

What these conflicts reveal about war today 🔗

These post-Soviet and post-Cold War conflicts share features that mark a clear departure from the interstate wars of the past. First, they are often irregular, involving guerrilla tactics, terrorism, and asymmetric methods rather than uniformed armies meeting on a battlefield. Second, they frequently involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, with ethnic cleansing used as a strategy rather than a byproduct. Third, they are internationally complex, drawing in neighbouring states, diaspora communities, and international organizations, which makes them far harder to resolve. The clean lines between soldier and civilian, and between war and peace, have blurred considerably.

How technology rewrote the rulebook 🔗

Running parallel to the politics of identity is the second great transformer: technology. Each major shift in military technology has reshaped how wars are planned and fought. The nuclear age, beginning in 1945, is a striking example. The principle of mutually assured destruction made all-out industrial warfare between great powers practically suicidal, pushing major conflict away from direct confrontation and toward other forms. Interestingly, one influential argument holds that high-precision and nuclear weaponry made huge conscription armies obsolete, which in turn reduced the need for nationalism as a tool to mobilize entire populations for war.

The drone revolution and the new battlefield 🔗

The most visible transformation in recent years has been the explosion of unmanned systems. The war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for this shift. The number of companies manufacturing drones reportedly jumped from six in 2022 to more than 200 by 2024, and Ukraine alone planned to produce around 2.5 million drones in 2025. By early 2025, drones were reportedly responsible for the majority of the damage inflicted on Russian equipment, according to one British think tank cited in coverage of the conflict.

This points to a defining feature of modern military technology: miniaturization and accessibility. Cheap, small, and increasingly capable systems mean that smaller states and even non-state actors can acquire significant offensive power, narrowing the gap that once separated great powers from everyone else. The use of relatively simple devices to devastating effect, as seen in operations against Hezbollah, shows that low-cost technology can be just as disruptive as expensive hardware.

Cyber, surveillance, and artificial intelligence 🔗

Technology has also expanded the battlefield far beyond physical geography. Cyber warfare allows adversaries to disrupt, disable, or deceive one another without a single soldier crossing a border. Surveillance and intelligence capabilities, drawing on satellites and electronic monitoring, have made it increasingly difficult for forces to operate in secret, changing the calculus of strategy and tactics.

Perhaps the most consequential development is artificial intelligence. Modern battlefields generate enormous volumes of data, and AI is becoming central to processing it faster than any human could. Analysts describe AI-enabled decision-support systems being used for targeting, dramatically accelerating the processing and analysis of battlefield information. The next generation of drones is expected to be AI-enhanced, capable of autonomous navigation, swarm coordination, and precision targeting. This raises a profound concern that runs through nearly all discussion of military AI: as machines make decisions faster, where does meaningful human control over the use of force remain?

When nationalism and technology meet 🔗

The most distinctive feature of contemporary conflict is not nationalism or technology alone, but the way the two reinforce each other. Digital platforms and social media have become powerful instruments for nationalist movements, allowing them to organize, recruit, and spread their message across borders with remarkable speed.

This has given rise to information warfare as a central front. The ability to rapidly disseminate propaganda, build echo chambers, and manipulate public opinion has become as strategically important as conventional military force. A nationalist narrative that once spread slowly through pamphlets and newspapers can now travel globally in minutes, shaping how populations understand a conflict and who they blame for it. Recent escalations, including the India-Pakistan tensions of May 2025, have been accompanied by intense online information battles alongside the physical exchanges, showing how missiles, drones, and cyber attacks now operate together as the dominant tools of modern conflict.

The result is a form of warfare that is harder to define, harder to contain, and harder to end. When grievances rooted in identity are amplified by technology that lowers the cost of both fighting and propaganda, conflicts can ignite quickly, spread widely, and resist neat resolution.

Why the distinction still matters 🔗

It is worth returning to the Clausewitzian distinction with which we began. Drones, algorithms, and viral propaganda have transformed the character of war beyond recognition, but they have not changed its essential nature. War remains, at its core, a political act: the application of force, or the threat of it, to bend an adversary to one’s will. Artificial intelligence may let combat systems decide and act faster, but, as one analysis observes, it does not change the underlying essence of war any more than a new clock changes the nature of time.

For students of peace and conflict, this is the key insight. Nationalism supplies the motive and the manpower; technology supplies the means and the reach. Together they explain why modern war is more complex, more dispersed, and often more difficult to resolve than the set-piece battles of earlier eras. Recognizing what has changed, and what has stayed the same, is the first step toward understanding how conflicts might be prevented or contained.

What do you think? If technology keeps lowering the cost of waging war while social media keeps amplifying nationalist grievances, will future conflicts become easier to start but harder to stop? And as autonomous systems take on more battlefield decisions, how should societies preserve meaningful human responsibility for the use of force?

References

1. https://www.defstrat.com/magazine_articles/changing-nature-of-war/
2. https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/wars-changing-character-and-varying-nature-a-closer-look-at-clausewitzs-trinity/
3. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/testing-clausewitz-nationalism-mass-mobilization-and-the-severity-of-war/B96C01CC6227E589FAE7145FDE510D3A
4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_nationalism
5. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/7972/
6. https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/research/ethnic_conflict_in_the_former_soviet_union
7. https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/opinion/warfare-strategy-21st-century-paradigm-shift/
8. https://stateofnationalism.eu/article/nationalism-and-war/
9. https://www.visionofhumanity.org/technology-and-modern-warfare-how-drones-and-ai-are-transforming-conflict/
10. https://www.csis.org/analysis/chapter-9-technological-evolution-battlefield
11. https://www.natstrat.org/articledetail/publications/the-evolution-of-modern-warfare-how-technology-is-transforming-the-rules-of-war-212.html