War is Smaller

War has changed. We no longer fight massive wars against other nations, it is unadvantageous to do so. We now fight against guerrilla fighters in the Afghan mountains or join sides on civil wars in the Guatemalan rain forest. Even in Ukraine right now Russia will not acknowledge it is fighting against Ukraine, they are backing the eastern rebels in a fight to take back Kiev and according to Putin, they have the right to do so. To fight massive wars means nuclear weapons come back into play. It is now easier to simply back terrorist groups, look at the Afghan war in the 1980's where the United States would back the Taliban to fight against the Soviet Union. Of course that came back against us when we fought against them in 2003. Up until recently it has been easy to use terrorist attacks as a nations proxy against other nations. But terrorism has changed war in other ways. It makes war smaller. No longer do wars consist of large tank divisions going against each other but they are small five to eight men cell units that go door to door in search of individual people. Territory is no longer the name of the game it is inflicting the most damage possible. This is because these small groups could not compete against full size armies the weight of the US, Russian or Chinese armies would crush them in conventional warfare. These groups can only rely on the element of surprise. So are military mind has had to change to the small cell military structure.