Eli5:Why do countries not formally declare war anymore?
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The formation of the UN created a new mechanism for collective military action to be sanctioned by the Security Council, and placed strict limits on when countries are allowed to go to war without such approval, with the main scenario where it is allowed being self-defence. Most countries have not felt the need to declare war when participating in UN actions, and in other cases they have tried to portray their wars as emergency defensive actions, which would be undermined by a formal declaration of war. In both cases, they have also tended to want to play down the scale of what they are doing, portraying it as a small, limited military operation rather than a full-blown war.
Though there have been a few formal declarations of war in recent decades, such as the Iran–Iraq War, and there were plenty of undeclared wars prior to the modern era.
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