How the Seven Years’ War Can Help Us Understand Today’s Conflicts

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The “world war” of the 18th century, with its shifting coalitions and proxy fronts, is more akin to the 21st century’s wars than the 20th century’s.

At the close of the classic 1990 episode of The Simpsons, “Bart the General,” Bart Simpson solemnly intones that there are no “good” wars, except for the American Revolution, World War II, and the original Star Wars trilogy. In a case of life imitating art, many US politicians and pundits tend to default to World War II as the template for how the United States should understand conflict in the international system. It is certainly reflected in the well-established tradition of identifying every US foe and antagonist since 1945 as “the next Adolf Hitler.” It also manifests itself in the preference to cast every group of challengers to the United States as some sort of “axis”—an “Axis of Evil,” an “Axis of Authoritarianism,” and an “Axis of Upheaval,” and so on.

At a recent Center for the National Interest discussion, University of Chicago Professor Paul Poast presented his assessment that, over the past several years, the world has moved from a “world at war” to the opening stages of a “world war”—where formerly separate and disparate conflicts are beginning to merge into a larger whole. The problem, as I see it, is not with his analysis, but how it is likely to be interpreted. If we are in the first stages of a new world war, we are prone to misinterpret and misdiagnose if our template for world war is World War II.

The “World War II” template, in particular, posits the emergence of two well-defined camps—the Axis on one side, the Allies (or, more accurately, the “United Nations”) on the other. By 1942, most individual countries in the Axis and the Allies had declared war on each other, reinforcing the view that the war was a single, apocalyptic struggle. (Of course, in reality, Japan, as a member of the Axis, did not declare war against the USSR in 1941 when the Germans attacked and honored its non-aggression pact. Similarly, the USSR did not enter the war against Japan on the side of its putative US and UK allies until August 1945. Applied to today’s situation, the World War II template shoehorns countries into camps they do not fully endorse and assumes that setbacks or defeats in one conflict against one participant are somehow viewed as setbacks or defeats by others. 

For instance, in postulating that there is somehow some sort of “axis” of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (with Venezuela having been a “former member”), the assumption is that if Nicolas Maduro is overthrown in Venezuela, or Russia receives a strategic setback in Ukraine, China will view this as a defeat for Beijing and reacts accordingly. It also overplays a supposed commonality of interest among the “allies”—so that a Ukraine fighting against Russian drone strikes and helping the Gulf states and Israel cope with Iranian attacks means that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or Israel fully support Kyiv. In reality, these countries have not joined the sanctions regime on Russia nor have they interrupted trade and financial relations with Moscow.

Instead, I think it is more appropriate to return to the 18th century and its series of “world wars,” culminating in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763)—that the emerging “world war” (lower case) we see today is more akin to that global struggle than trying to shoehorn contemporary developments into a World War II straightjacket.

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For many Americans, any mention of the Seven Years’ War draws a blank. However, its North American theater (“the French and Indian War”) might elicit a glimmer of recognition, since it involved George Washington. Yet the American tendency to refer to the world wars of the 18th century by localized names blinds us to the reality that wars fought in North America were also part of a larger global struggle between two principal opponents—Great Britain and France. (In that light, our own Revolutionary War was also a continuation of that global struggle). Moreover, these wars were fought on a global scale, not confined to Europe, but with battles taking place all around the world.

Yet while there were two core rivalries in play—France versus Great Britain and Austria versus Prussia—with the Franco-Austrian alliance poised against the Anglo-Prussian collaboration, the war as a whole was defined by fragile and shifting coalitions and uneasy ententes among the “core” participants and their associates. At various points, other states, such as Spain, Portugal, and Russia, as well as polities in West Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Far East, took part in the war, but in more variable or limited ways. Most notably, Russia even switched sides in 1762—initially fighting against Prussia but ultimately concluding a peace with Frederick the Great and providing him with Russian forces in his continuing struggles with Austria.

Every combatant in the Seven Years’ War had reasonably clear objectives and a sense of their national interests; there was no sense that these were two alliances defined by a sense of solidarity and that an attack on one anywhere was an assault against all. The Native American Wabanaki Confederacy joined the French to fight the British and British colonists in North America, but this did not make them allies of Austria, nor did they view the Austro-Russian defeat of the Prussians at the Battle of Kunersdorf as in any way related to their own efforts. The Wabanaki were simply caught up in a localized conflict generated by but not necessarily tied to the main war in Europe. The fact that the Spanish held off the British in the Philippines did not impact the British ability to defeat the Nawab of Bengal—and Prussia was completely uninvolved in any aspect of the “world war” outside of Central Europe—even as serious defeats were experienced by its partners in North and South America and South and East Asia.

Significantly, the Seven Years’ War did not end as a result of a single, overarching peace conference but a series of often bilateral arrangements that ended specific conflicts and created regional settlements unconnected from any global framework. Significantly, putative allies who had achieved victory in one theater did not seek to translate that into favorable conditions for their partners elsewhere in the world. There was no single VE or VJ Day, and the final balance sheet of the Seven Years’ War was that, other than Great Britain, every major combatant had “mixed results” from their participation.

If the 21st century is going to look more like the 18th in terms of our understanding of “world war.” It is time for us to revive and put back into general usage the term “entente” and retire the term “axis.” What we have right now is a series of entente relationships—agreements among states for some degree of cooperation and coordination, but falling well short of a consolidated alliance. This can facilitate what Theresa Fallon has called “strategic intimacy” but does not presuppose a consolidated, integrated structure and commonality of purpose.

Great Britain learned during the Seven Years’ War how to use flexible arrangements to manage global power dynamics, and particularly how to cope with the threat of simultaneity in multiple theaters of operation. These lessons served the British in good stead for another two centuries—and are ones that the United States ought to consider as we move into a more multipolar and unstable global environment.

About the Author: Nikolas Gvosdev

Dr. Nikolas Gvosdev is a 2024 Templeton fellow and the director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also a senior fellow in the Eurasia Program and editor of Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs. Gvosdev is a professor of National Security Affairs, holding the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair in Economic Geography and National Security at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He was formerly the editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow at The Nixon Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Gvosdev received his doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship.

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