Eli5:Why do countries not formally declare war anymore?
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The world is a lot more interconnected these days through global trade, meaning it’s incredibly expensive (not just in terms of fighting but also from lost trade and economic output) to be at war.
We also have the United Nations as something of a global arbiter of what can or can’t happen and diplomatically “war” can’t really be talked about. When Iraq was invaded in the early 2000s it was after the approval of a UN resolution with the language “by all means necessary” – which is diplomat-speak for war.
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