Why don't Countries Formally Declare War Anymore? (Short Animated Documentary)

Countries still fight and yet you never see any of them make formal declarations of war on the other (except for you Sudan). But why not? When did nations go from declaring wars to just sort of letting them happen and not making them official? We'll look at the Cold War, specifically Vietnam and the Falklands conflict to see why this is no longer the case.

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[HistoryMatters]

Hi everyone, just to clear up a mistake. On some of the maps, Hainan is a part of North Vietnam. It wasn't a part of Vietnam, it was simply a mistake with me either misclicking when colouring the map in or not deleting all of Red Communist China from the map I got the image from. My bad.

[breadbutcooler]

instead of declaring war, they declare special military operations

[BigBeakEntertainment]

UN: *creates restrictions on war to try to bring world peace*
Everyone: *Just stops declaring wars*
UN: *shocked pikachu face*

[spud]

I'm not sure why everyone is saying this aged proved the point of this video. They never declared war on Ukraine. It's just a "Special Military Operation." Every quote from Putin has called it a "military operation." Russia has avoided the "war" word the entire time. No formal declaration.

[Matth_M]

United Nations : War is now illegal
Countries : Still make war but call it a "special military operation"
United Nations : This world is so peaceful, cheer to us

[__mindflayer__]

*Country invades a smaller country*

UN: “Hey you can’t invade another country!”

Country: “I’m not invading I’m just giving them a surprise visit.”

UN: “Oh in that case, carry on.”

Edit: My fucking god, this many likes on this dumb comment?

[theAEDan]

UN: if you declare war, you can’t do X Y and Z

Powers: fine, we’ll not “declare” war

[halhalmc]

Apparently the word "formally" is lost on half the people in the comments section who think this video aged poorly 🤣.

[AlexanderRM]

I feel like this needs a companion video, "why did countries formally declare war?" to explain why things changed.

[lilacdoe]

Why don’t countries declare war?

...because war has a bunch of rules

[Jicko]

In short : The rules of a proper war are too annoying so let's just ignore them

[douglasaranda]

Fun fact about the Falklands' war: Brazil was openly neutral, but when a British bomber was forced to land in Brazil for lack of fuel, Brazil apprehended the bomber and only after some very heated discussions with Britain we turned it back, without their missiles and after a very careful inspection, lol. Years later we'd end up buying the same British frigate ships that participated there and some are still active today and we have had a fairly good relationship with UK since then, even buying the HMS Ocean recently

[cyzcyt]

These days they declare "special military operations"

[ToxicBastard]

The UN: *makes laws to prevent war*
Everyone: "okay we just won't tell them"

[corporalzeph]

The world tension isn't high enough for democracies to justify war goals.

[Vinemaple]

As to why wars these days are smaller (considering the scale that's possible now) and so often conducted by underhanded means, I have this crazy speculative theory: while nuclear deterrence is definitely a part of it, I think it has a lot to do with the scale and lucrative nature of modern trade. Wars are not only riskier and more difficult to prosecute legally, but also bad for the stability of trade. The profit that's possible nowadays might greatly exceed the potential profits possible in wartime, especially since supplying one side or both with weapons and other supplies has to be plausibly deniable and unofficial, generally through illegal arms traders.

It's just a wild guess, but I like it.

[SniffyPoo]

this was actually suprisingly informative, as I hadnt thought about all the 'formal' ramifications of declaring war as specified by intl conventions

[justinianmakesbyzantiumgre]

Can’t declare war on someone who doesn’t exist.

[ufhb]

Formal war declarations became obsolete when Japan proved to the entire world that you could just politely decline them and thus avoid conflict.

For those who didn’t understand : after Japan bombed pearl harbor, Poland’s government in exile sent a formal war declaration to them. Since the Japanese government knew that Poland couldn’t actually fight them, they just sent a message back to decline their war declaration.

[jpkaramanolis]

20th century: war
21st century: SpEcIaL oPeRaTiOn