by Barbara Conry

About the author: Barbara Conry is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

The threat of tensions’ escalating into superpower confrontations helped stifle regional conflicts for many years, but age-old disputes across the globe have exploded since the end of the Cold War, and regional conflicts are on the rise. The “World Military and Social Expenditures” report counted an unprecedented 29 “major” wars in 1992. (“Major” meant a war that involved one or more governments and killed at least 1,000 people in the year.) An informal Time magazine study a number of years ago revealed that approximately 20 wars were likely to be under way at any given time, but a [February 7] 1993 New York Times study identified 48 wars in progress (defined as two organized...