One hundred years of international crises, 1918-2018

Chapter 4 begins with the presentation of three key features of the contemporary international system: (1) while the yearly rate of interstate conflicts and crises has held relatively steady, intrastate conflicts have shown a steady increase in frequency since the end of World War II; (2) gray zone crises are on the rise, conceptualized as a space between war and peace where major powers spar with each other indirectly or through the actions of their proxies; and (3) an increase in a class of crises arising from transnational threats to human security - climate change, refugee flows, cybersecurity threats, pandemic, and massive inequality within and between nations. The concept of international crisis is discussed in terms of its four stages: onset, escalation, de-escalation, and impact. The chapter concludes with the presentation of summary statistics on key features of crises as identified by the International Crisis Behavior project: polarity, geography, ethnicity, protracted conflict setting, third parties, and outcomes.