In conventional wars, the aim of the conflict parties was to win the physical control over territory by killing or chasing away all enemy troops.
Nowadays, conflict actors are trying to exert or gain political control mostly through undermining the physical control of the enemy.
Violent conflicts used to break out between different ideologies, such as, again thinking of World War II, between authoritarian dictatorships, and other systems, such as democratic societies or communism.
In our time, the groups that make up conflict actors are rather put together by their shared identity, such as ethnicity or ideology. (Example: Rwandan genocide). The result is what the United States are calling “low-intensity conflicts”, which are characterized by highly armed actors who are increasingly interested in maintaining a situation of war, as it allows them in many cases to keep profiting from their mode of income generation and by a high level of disrespect for the protection of unarmed civilians.
