Mike Baker

Welcome back to the BDB Afternoon Bulletin.

If you've been reading the headlines lately, it may feel like war is breaking out in more corners of the world than ever before.

And as it turns out, researchers say, yeah, that's what's happening.

A new study found that 2025 recorded the highest number of conflicts between countries since World War II.

And 2025 takes the award as the deadliest year of warfare since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Congratulations, 2025.

You're a winner.

Sweden's Uppsala, which is just fun to say, Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on organized violence, identified 65 active conflicts around the world last year.

Now, on its own, that number is certainly jarring.

But what's really caught researchers' attention isn't simply the number of wars taking place, it's who's fighting them.

For much of the post-Cold War era, the world's bloodiest conflicts tended to be civil wars, insurgencies, terrorist campaigns, or battles between governments and rebel groups.

In other words, violence was often contained within a country's borders.

But that's exactly why the next statistic stands out.

The researchers found that eight conflicts in 2025 involved countries fighting one another directly.

Now, that may not sound like a huge number at first, but it represents the highest level of interstate conflict recorded since World War II and double the number recorded in 2024.

The list includes what you see and hear in the headlines.

Russia's war against Ukraine, the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, fighting between India and Pakistan, clashes between Thailand and Cambodia, Israeli military operations in Syria and Yemen,

border fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the campaign involving American and British forces against Yemen's Houthi rebels.

They're evidence of a broader trend that many national security analysts have been warning about for years.

Major powers and regional actors are becoming increasingly willing to use military force against one another.