Was it the Falkland War? IIt seems most wars since WW2 have been one nation vs insurgents/communists/terrorists/ scary idea of the day which just happened to be in another country.
2012 Heglig Crisis between South Sudan and Sudan. Both recognised UN member states.
The Iraq War?
Russia/Georgia?
Gulf War
The forceful annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014 I think counts as an act of war against Ukraine. Both Russian and Ukrainian troops were involved, and two Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Russian troops have surreptitiously been involved in the conflict in southwest Ukraine as well.
The Iraqi military basically surrendered to US troops at the border. That was a war against insurgents, mainly.
The last major war that wasn’t a one-sided beat-down, or basically a state versus an insurgency, or a sneaky attempt of a state to hide behind an insurgency, or any other form of “asymmetric conflict” - I dunno.
A good contender may be the Iran-Iraq War (ended in 1988).
Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a major war against each other from '98 to 2000.
We’ll need to define “war” and we’ll need to define “between actual nations”. On the first part, do we count border skirmishes and other limited belligerent actions? There are plenty of those to go around.
As for “between actual nations”, I think you’ll find that many of the “civil wars” one finds these days are not particularly internal at all, but rather enormously complicated proxy wars.
If you want to go for the most straightforward definition, the Heglig Crisis is probably the last one, followed by the Libyan Civil War.
The Russian military action in eastern Ukraine is not exactly surreptitious, and has killed thousands of people.
The whole war was about one state toppling another. It is literally the textbook definition of “state on state war.”
Russia has made every effort to keep the direct involvement of its troops secret, which is what I was referring to. Of course, it’s a very poorly kept secret.
Hopefully it will be a very long time until the last war. I have a feeling there won’t be many people left after that one to talk about it.
North Korea an South Korea are still at war.
I think the Russians are capable of much greater secrecy than that, where necessary. In Ukraine they’ve just baldly lied about it, even as photographs were taken of their personnel and equipment going into action. (They made similarly shameless statements about the Crimean occupation, until it was achieved and over.) It is a contemptuous fig-leaf.
The actual point, however, is that however surreptitious it is or isn’t, it is a real war, and far more lethal than your passing mention suggests.
No.
The question isn’t how lethal it is, but whether it fits the criterion in the OP of being a war between nation-states, rather than a nation-state against insurgents (even if the insurgents have outside help). The most numerous forces confronting Ukrainian troops have been local insurgents rather than Russians.
Officially no Russian troops were involved. “Militias” put the the pro-Russian Aksyonov government in place then Crimea declared independence and held a referendum where they voted to join Russia.
Of course no one believes thats what really happened, but it makes it murky as far as if it meets the OP’s definition or not.
True.
Turkey has passed Declarations of War against Syria and Iraq, as of July. Thinking there were probably a few other likely candidates lurking in the Middle East, not to mention, well, everywhere else, I turned to Google.
In fact, there are enough countries at war on the globe right now that Wikipedia maintains this handy list of conflicts organized by scope, beginning with “major war”.
The Information Age is depressing at times.
One reason is that its impossible for the war to end, who can South Korea make a peace treaty with, as to them, North Korea is not a country with which to make a peace treaty…
Another is that if they accidentally kill a civilian , then they can say “war was declared, it was thought the civilians would be aware … their mistake”