Interstate wars are risky to the aggressor, because they require massive production capacity and supply chains to carry out in a way that avoids and immediate a

Interstate wars are risky to the aggressor, because they require massive production capacity and supply chains to carry out in a way that avoids and immediate and crushing loss in a counterattack. Although the significance of frontline logistics has vastly declined since the role of aerial strikes, the role of countrywide resilience has risen. Technological advances now allow retaliatory strikes to be aimed in places other than the opponent's advancing forces: you can strike their capital, or airfields, or ports instead, and the stricken state must not immediately devolve into unrest. It's much safer, then, to wage an indirect war, where you first destabilize the target from within. Various adversaries around the globe can play this long game of instigating civil wars in the target state, or proxy wars in a third state, while they keep their homelands relatively conflict-free. The destructive potential of long-range weaponry can be credited with this "innovation". Desperation and delusion are still big factors. It's easy to imagine some very populous countries that are resource-poor first devolve into a civil war in a struggle for resources, then be united under a strong leader who redirects their aggression towards an unfortunate neighbor. Lots of historical wars have fit this category. Then there's countries who fight repeated skirmishes over underutilized parcels of land whose realized value is largely theoretical. These countries may not wish to descend into full mobilization against each other, but they're a reliable source of combat deaths year after year. Today, global trade works fairly well for many states, and the elites who capture most of this value have a vested interest in this arrangement to continue. But if there are no bread and no circuses, the discontent and despondent population will struggle among themselves along make-believe ideological lines, or conveniently preexisting tribal lines, that just mask the underlying economic causes, until some rise to the top. All the while, they'll make tempting beneficiaries of aid from states that want to peddle their influence without putting their own people at direct risk.