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The number of armed conflicts has increased in recent years, and researchers have warned that many wars are lasting longer and have become more difficult to end. We asked five experts if the 21st-century trend of more intractable wars is continuing, and if so, why.Read more below.Dafna H. Rand Senior Fellow at Brookings Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wars are not ending definitively in the 21st century, and the United States is likely to see the same pattern in Iran. Whereas peace settlements or victory by one side was once the culmination of war, today the more likely scenarios are on-again, off-again pauses in fighting or frozen conflicts. This is true across multiple types of wars — U.S. allies’ wars (such as Israel’s war in Gaza), wars the United States starts (such as the current war with Iran), and civil conflicts where the United States is not supporting either side militarily (such as Sudan).Over time, America’s leverage with conflict actors tends to decrease. Even when Washington supplies the money and weapons that sustain a partner’s fighting, the United States is finding it difficult to shape how those wars end. Often, Washington and its partner struggle to agree on political goals or what victory means. American public support fades over time, especially when the partner’s conduct raises concern. And the two countries’ interests and strategies are likely to diverge as the war drags on.Gideon Rose Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Senior Lecturer in Discipline at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University In recent generations, wars have tended to last longer and become harder to end decisively. There are five main reasons: greater regional and global economic and political interdependence, which increases the number of outside players helping losing belligerents stay in the game;