Years since each country last went to war

Iceland

Iceland has never gone to war. Not once. The country has no standing army, no air force, no navy beyond a coast guard, and no constitutional mechanism for declaring war. It is the only NATO member without armed forces.

The closest Iceland has come to combat is the Cod Wars: three confrontations with the United Kingdom between 1958 and 1976 over fishing rights in the North Atlantic. Icelandic coast guard vessels rammed British trawlers and cut their nets. The British sent the Royal Navy. There were collisions, ramming, and one death, a British engineer hit by a piece of cable. But not a single shot was fired in anger, and the Cod Wars were diplomatic disputes that ended at the negotiating table.

When Iceland joined NATO in 1949, the country's negotiators insisted on a clause that would never require Iceland to maintain a military. The United States operated a base at Keflavík until 2006. When the Americans left, Iceland was undefended, and remained so. Today, when NATO needs Iceland's airspace patrolled, member states take turns sending fighter jets.

A child born in Reykjavík in 2026 will live in a country that has never sent its citizens to die in war. Their grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents could say the same.

There is no war memorial in Iceland with names of Icelandic war dead, because there are none.

Mongolia

Mongolia became independent from China in 1921. In the 105 years since, the Mongolian armed forces have not gone to war.

This is surprising for several reasons. Mongolia was the source of the largest land empire in human history. Genghis Khan's descendants conquered an area stretching from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. For most of the medieval period, Mongolia was synonymous with war.

But the modern Mongolian state, founded in the wake of the Russian Revolution and protected first by the Soviet Union and now by careful diplomacy with both China and Russia, has not fought one. Mongolian troops served in the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts of the late 1930s, most famously at Khalkhin Gol in 1939, but as Soviet auxiliaries, before Mongolia was internationally recognized as an independent state. After 1945, Mongolia stayed out of every war that came near it.

The descendants of the world's most famous conquerors have spent the last century being one of the most peaceful nations on the planet.

Mongolia today has approximately 10,000 active soldiers. Mongolian troops have been deployed on UN peacekeeping missions in places like Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Afghanistan. They have served as guards and trainers, not as combatants. No Mongolian soldier has been killed in combat as a representative of the modern Mongolian state.

Sweden

On August 14, 1814, Swedish and Norwegian negotiators signed the Convention of Moss, ending a two-week war that had cost both sides about 400 soldiers. It was the last war Sweden ever fought.

For 212 years, Sweden's military did not enter another conflict. Swedish soldiers watched Napoleon fall, watched two world wars consume the continent around them, watched the Cold War freeze Europe in place, and stayed home. The country built a doctrine of armed neutrality so complete it became a national identity. Sweden made jet fighters, submarines, and tanks not to attack anyone, but to convince anyone who might attack Sweden that it wasn't worth the trouble.

The 212-year peace has one footnote. Between 1960 and 1964, Swedish troops served in the United Nations operation in the Congo. Some of them fought. Some of them died. Twenty Swedish UN soldiers were killed in that operation. Whether this counts as Sweden going to war depends on your definition of war.

A Swedish 80-year-old today was born in 1946. Their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents grew up in a country that had never been at war in their lifetime.

In 2024, Sweden joined NATO. The country gave up its neutrality, but not its peace. As of April 2026, no Swedish soldier has fired a shot in anger as a NATO member. The 212-year streak technically continues.

Switzerland

The Sonderbund War lasted 25 days and killed 86 people. It was a Swiss civil war fought between Catholic conservative cantons and a Protestant liberal majority. The last shots were fired on November 23, 1847, near the village of Gisikon. The federal forces won. Switzerland was reorganized as a federal state. And then the Swiss never went to war again.

What followed is the world's longest sustained military neutrality. Through the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and every conflict since, Switzerland has maintained its borders without firing on another country. During World War II, the country was completely encircled by Axis powers. The Swiss army mobilized 850,000 men, mined every Alpine pass, and made plans to retreat into a mountain fortress if invaded. They were never invaded.

The country's pacifism is not passive. Every Swiss man is required to do military service. The army has a famous reserve system where soldiers keep their rifles at home. There are bunkers carved into mountains all over the country, designed to be sealed and held for months. The Swiss are ready for a war they never fight.

In 179 years since Gisikon, generations of Swiss soldiers have trained for conflict and died of old age. The Swiss army has the lowest combat experience of any major military on the continent.

Liechtenstein

In 1866, the Principality of Liechtenstein had an army of 80 men. They were sent to fight in the Austro-Prussian War as part of the German Confederation's defense. They were assigned to guard a mountain pass in the Alps. They saw no combat. The war ended quickly with Austria's defeat.

When the Liechtensteiners marched home, there were 81 of them. They had picked up an Italian liaison officer along the way and brought him with them.

This is the favorite story Liechtensteiners tell about their military. It is funny because it is true. In 1868, two years after the war that produced the extra soldier, Liechtenstein disbanded its army. The Diet decided that maintaining a military was too expensive for a country of fewer than 10,000 people. The army was dissolved. The weapons were sold. Liechtenstein has had no armed forces for 158 years.

The principality was small enough, irrelevant enough, and absurd enough that no one bothered to invade.

Liechtenstein has 40,000 people today and is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita. It has no military. It has no enemies. It has not fought a war in 160 years.

Japan

On September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the instrument of surrender. World War II was over. Japan had lost approximately 2.5 million soldiers and at least 800,000 civilians. The country was occupied, devastated, and forbidden by its new constitution from ever waging war again.

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, drafted under American occupation in 1947, reads: "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." It also forbids Japan from maintaining "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential."

Japan got around the second clause by creating the Japan Self-Defense Forces in 1954: armed forces in everything but name, organized for territorial defense only. The SDF is one of the largest and best-equipped militaries in Asia. Japan has tanks, fighter jets, destroyers, submarines, and helicopter carriers.

In 81 years since 1945, the Japan Self-Defense Forces have never fired a weapon in combat. Not once.

Japan deployed troops to Iraq from 2004 to 2006, but their rules of engagement permitted firing only in self-defense, and they never had to. Japanese soldiers have died in deployments, from accidents, from suicide, from illness, but none in combat. A Japanese person born in 1946 has lived their entire life in a country whose military has never killed anyone. They are 80 years old now.

Costa Rica

The Costa Rican civil war lasted 44 days. It killed 2,000 people, the bloodiest event in the country's modern history. The fighting ended on April 24, 1948, with a victory for the rebels under José Figueres Ferrer.

Eight months later, on December 1, 1948, Figueres did something no government had ever done. Standing in the courtyard of the Cuartel Bellavista military fortress in San José, he took a sledgehammer to the wall. The military was being abolished. The army was disbanded. The fortress would become a museum. Costa Rica would not have armed forces.

The decision was written into the constitution in 1949. Article 12 explicitly forbids a permanent military. The country has police forces and a coast guard, but no army, no air force, no tanks, no fighter jets. The money that would have gone to the military was redirected to education and healthcare. Costa Rica today has near-universal literacy and one of the highest life expectancies in Latin America.

For 78 years, Costa Rica has had no war and no military. The hole in the wall Figueres broke is still on display at the Museo Nacional.

When neighboring countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala descended into civil wars and insurgencies in the 1980s, Costa Rica stayed out. It had no army to commit to anyone's cause.

Luxembourg

Most people do not know Luxembourg fought in the Korean War.

In 1950, when the United Nations called for member states to send forces to defend South Korea, Luxembourg, a country of 290,000 people with a tiny army, agreed to contribute. Because the Luxembourgish military was too small to deploy independently, the country's volunteers were attached to a Belgian battalion, forming the Belgian-Luxembourg United Nations Command.

The unit arrived in Korea in January 1951. For two years, Luxembourgish soldiers fought alongside Belgians in some of the war's hardest battles. The most famous was the Battle of the Imjin River in April 1951, where the BUNC held ground against Chinese forces in a stand that became legend in both countries' military histories.

89 Luxembourgish soldiers served in Korea over the course of the war. Two were killed. Seventeen were wounded. The last Luxembourgish combat troops withdrew in January 1953.

Since then, Luxembourg has not fought another war. The country deployed troops to Afghanistan as part of NATO's ISAF mission, but no Luxembourgish soldier was killed in combat there. There is a small monument in Luxembourg City to the soldiers who served in Korea. Most Luxembourgers walk past it without knowing what it commemorates.

Bhutan

For most of the world, the answer to "when did Bhutan last go to war" is 1865, the Duar War with British India, which Bhutan lost, costing it 20 percent of its territory. This is the answer in textbooks, on Wikipedia, and in the standard reference works.

It is wrong.

In December 2003, the Royal Bhutan Army did something it had not done in modern history: it went to war. For years, separatist insurgents from the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had been using Bhutan's southern jungle as a sanctuary, launching attacks across the border into India. Diplomatic pressure from India had failed. Bhutan's king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, ordered the army to clear the camps.

The operation was called Operation All Clear. It began on December 15, 2003, and ended on January 3, 2004. The Royal Bhutan Army, about 6,000 men, lightly equipped, trained mostly for ceremonial duties and border patrol, attacked thirty militant camps in the dense jungle. The fighting was brutal and short. The Bhutanese suffered casualties. The militants were pushed out.

It was the only combat operation in the modern history of the Royal Bhutan Army. Bhutan does not advertise it. The country prefers its image as a peaceful Buddhist kingdom famous for measuring Gross National Happiness.

When the king ordered Operation All Clear, he reportedly told his soldiers it would be the last war Bhutan would fight. So far, he has been right.

India

On April 22, 2025, gunmen killed 26 civilians at a tourist resort in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan-based militant groups. Within two weeks, India did something it had not done in over five years: it crossed the border with missiles.

Operation Sindoor began on May 7, 2025. Indian Air Force jets and standoff missiles struck nine targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting infrastructure linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian officials said the strikes were "non-escalatory" and aimed only at terrorist sites. Pakistan said the strikes hit civilian areas and killed 40 civilians along with 13 soldiers.

Pakistan retaliated three days later with Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, Arabic for "wall of lead." Pakistani forces struck Indian military installations across the border. India lost 8 military personnel and 21 civilians. The two nuclear-armed neighbors were, for 72 hours, in open military conflict for the first time since 1971.

For 1.4 billion Indians, this is what war looks like. Not soldiers in a trench, but missiles arcing across the sky for 96 hours, then silence.

A ceasefire was reached on May 10, 2025. It held. As of April 2026, no major combat between the two countries has been reported in nearly a year. But the line of control is still hot. Patrols still take fire. Diplomats on both sides describe the relationship as "the worst in a generation."

Pakistan

Pakistan's last war is happening right now. It is not the war you might expect.

In May 2025, Pakistan exchanged missile strikes with India in a brief, terrifying confrontation between two nuclear powers. That war ended in a ceasefire after four days. But Pakistan's combat did not end.

In October 2025, Pakistan launched airstrikes across the border into Afghanistan, targeting alleged Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hideouts in Kabul and the eastern provinces. Pakistan said the strikes were in response to TTP attacks on Pakistani soldiers along the Durand Line. The Taliban government in Kabul condemned the strikes and retaliated with its own attacks on Pakistani border posts.

In February 2026, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif called the situation "open war." Pakistani fighter jets and drones have struck targets across Afghanistan repeatedly. Afghan border forces have struck back. As of early April 2026, the United Nations has documented at least 289 Afghan civilian casualties since the February escalation.

The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is 2,640 kilometers long. As of April 2026, almost none of it is at peace.

For Pakistan, 2026 is the answer. The war is not against India, the historic enemy. It is against the Taliban government in Kabul, which Pakistan helped bring to power in 2021 and which Pakistan now finds itself fighting.

Iran

On the night of February 28, 2026, the war began. United States and Israeli aircraft launched simultaneous airstrikes across Iran, hitting nuclear sites, military command centers, and the residence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei was killed. The strikes came without warning. The Iranian government had hours, not days, to respond.

By the next morning, Iran had launched its first wave of ballistic missiles at Israel and at U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman. A drone struck the United Kingdom's RAF base at Akrotiri on Cyprus. By March, Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. The Houthis in Yemen reentered the conflict at the end of March, firing on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

As of April 6, 2026, the war is ongoing. Iranian missiles continue to fall on Israeli cities. American aircraft continue to strike Iranian targets. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. The price of oil has doubled. Refugees are streaming out of Iranian border provinces. Estimates of the death toll vary by the day.

Iran has not been in a war this large since the eight-year war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988, which killed approximately one million people. The current war is younger than this article. By the time you read this, the situation may be different. It will probably be worse.

This is what it looks like, on a map of the world's peace, when a country glows red.