Analytical Paper Five: The Threads of the Conflict — Sudan’s War in the Context of a Changing International Order

By Hisham Yousif Abdelrahman
Having examined transformations such as warfare, analysed the logic of proxy wars, explored the war economy, and discussed the role of the state and its institutional resilience, it is now possible to consider Sudan as a point where all these trajectories converge. From this perspective, Sudan is neither an exceptional case operating outside the rules of the international system nor merely a repetition of other experiences. Rather, it strikingly embodies the interaction of several phenomena that have become defining features of contemporary conflict.
The war in Sudan is more than an internal struggle for power or influence. It is also an arena in which regional security considerations, geopolitical calculations, war-economy networks, and the roles of non-state actors intersect with deeper transformations in the structure of the international system, where power is no longer concentrated to a degree that allows decisive outcomes to be imposed as it once was during earlier historical periods.
From this perspective, Sudan is not simply a party to a domestic crisis. It is part of a regional environment in which the interests of the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and the Arab and African hinterlands intersect. The greater this entanglement becomes, the more difficult it is to interpret the course of the conflict or anticipate its outcome by looking at domestic factors alone. At the same time, it would be equally mistaken to explain it entirely as the product of external will. The truth most often lies in the space where the two meet.
Here, the contributions of the theorists discussed throughout this series clearly converge. War, as Clausewitz described it, remains connected to politics, but it is no longer solely the politics of the state. As Martin van Creveld and Mary Kaldor show, warfare is no longer the exclusive domain of regular armies; it has become an arena in which multiple actors operate, with overlapping roles and blurred lines of responsibility.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, meanwhile, explain how major powers act according to interests and perceptions of threat rather than their declared slogans, while Andrew Mumford demonstrates that managing conflict through proxies has become one of the principal instruments of contemporary international politics.
At the same time, Paul Collier and David Keen explain why wars persist when they develop into economic systems that generate interests of their own. Ibn Khaldun and Malik Bennabi show that the strength of the state begins from within. That vulnerability to penetration arises not solely from external pressure but also from internal structural weakness and the decline of a unifying national project.
Antonio Gramsci adds that the struggle over consciousness is no less important than the struggle over territory, while Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Charles Tilly, and Gunnar Myrdal remind us that restoring the state cannot be achieved merely by regaining military control. It also requires the rebuilding of institutions, legitimacy, and public trust.
In light of the foregoing, it becomes clear that any attempt to understand the Sudanese war through a single factor will remain inadequate. Explaining it solely in terms of domestic dynamics overlooks the regional and international environment, while attributing it entirely to foreign intervention ignores the role of internal structures in creating vulnerability to penetration.
The war is, in reality, the product of continuous interaction between these two levels. External calculations shape internal developments, while outside actors in turn adjust their tools in response to realities on the ground.
For this reason, regional repositioning should not be understood as synonymous with retreat or withdrawal. In international relations, repositioning often entails redistributing roles, adjusting instruments of influence, or transferring certain functions to different levels of actors to preserve influence while reducing political or military costs.
When conditions on the ground change, states revise their calculations, not because they have abandoned their interests, but because they are seeking the most suitable means of protecting them.
An increase in the cost of direct intervention may therefore not reduce involvement, but merely reshape it. Conflict management may shift towards more complex levels in which financial networks, logistical support, technical and intelligence assistance, and diplomatic manoeuvring become intertwined.
Roles may be distributed among several actors while the overarching strategic objective remains unchanged. In this sense, a change in methods does not necessarily mean a change in purpose.
History, however, offers an equally important lesson. No matter how great the influence of external powers, that influence remains limited when confronted by a state possessing effective institutions, a cohesive society, and a unifying national project.
Comparative experiences from Asia, Africa, and Latin America reveal that the decisive factor was ultimately not the scale of foreign intervention alone, but the ability of the state and society to regain the initiative, rebuild their institutions, and eliminate the conditions that allow a war economy to persist.
The real challenge facing Sudan, therefore, is not confined to ending military operations. It lies in moving from the management of war towards the reconstruction of the state.
This transition cannot be achieved by a ceasefire alone, nor solely through political settlements. It requires a national project that restores the importance of institutions, rebuilds trust between state and society, turns diversity into a source of strength, reintegrates the economy into the formal system, and closes the channels through which the war economy might be reproduced, or the country once again transformed into an arena for the intersecting struggles of others.
Here again, the contributions of the thinkers discussed throughout this series clearly converge. War, proxy conflict, the war economy, and state-building are not separate subjects, but links in a single chain. None can be fully understood in isolation from the others.
Reading Sudan through the mirror of the international system is therefore not an attempt to impose abstract theories upon a complex reality. Rather, it is an effort to use those theories to understand a reality that compels us to reconsider the meanings of power, sovereignty, the state, and decisive victory in the twenty-first century.
A Horizon for Interpretation
This analytical perspective reveals that the Sudanese war cannot be understood through a single explanation, nor can it be reduced to an exclusively military, political, or economic dimension.
At its core, it represents a convergence of profound transformations within the international system. The nature of warfare has changed, the instruments of power have shifted, spheres of influence have widened, and the state itself now faces challenges fundamentally different from those it confronted in previous decades.
For this reason, the question that has dominated much public debate — “Who will win?” — appears less important than another, deeper question: “What model of warfare are we experiencing today?”
The answer to that question determines the nature of the possible answers to all the others.
This series has shown that war is no longer simply a confrontation between two military forces. It has become an integrated system in which strategy, economics, media, resources, legitimacy, identity, and geopolitics intersect.
It is therefore no longer possible to understand the outcome of a conflict solely through the military balance of power, because victory itself is no longer measured only by what occurs on the battlefield. Developments in the economy, state institutions, and the surrounding regional and international environment also determine it.
This analytical perspective also demonstrates that proxy wars are not a passing phenomenon. They have become a structural feature of the contemporary international system.
Whenever the cost of direct involvement rises, major powers tend to redistribute the instruments of their influence through more flexible networks while retaining the ability to shape the course of events.
Yet this does not mean that the fate of states is determined entirely beyond their borders. History confirms that the decisive factor remains the state’s capacity to build internal resilience, restore legitimacy, renew its institutions, and produce a unifying national project.
In this context, Ibn Khaldun converges with Malik Bennabi, Gramsci with Huntington, and Fukuyama with Tilly and Myrdal around one central truth: the strength of the state is not measured solely by the instruments of force at its disposal, but by its ability to turn society into a partner in its protection and institutions into a common framework for the national interest.
When the state is cohesive from within, the ability of external actors to direct its course diminishes, regardless of the resources available to them.
The war economy, by contrast, reveals how conflict may gradually outgrow its original objectives and become a system that generates its own interests and reproduces the conditions necessary for its survival.
At that stage, ending the war no longer depends merely upon securing a ceasefire. It requires dismantling the economic and political structures that have made the continuation of war more profitable than its conclusion.
The road to peace, therefore, does not begin at the front lines. It begins with the state itself: rebuilding its institutions, consolidating the rule of law, renewing the social contract, restoring the economy to its legitimate framework, and eliminating the environment that allows war to become a permanent system.
This analysis does not seek to minimise the influence of external factors, nor does it hold domestic actors solely responsible for the course of the conflict.
Rather, it proceeds from the premise that serious analysis requires examining the relationship between both levels. External intervention becomes more effective when it encounters a fragile internal environment, while the strength of the state increases whenever it succeeds in narrowing the spaces through which others can turn its crises into instruments within their own struggles.
Perhaps the most important feature of Sudan’s experience is that it raises the question of the state in the twenty-first century in a new form.
The state is no longer required merely to protect its borders. It must also protect its institutions, economy, information environment, and social cohesion, because all of these have become arenas of conflict no less important than the military battlefield.
At a deeper level, events in Sudan do not appear to represent merely a failure to manage a crisis, but rather an intensified expression of broader transformations in the structure of the international system itself.
As Joseph Nye argues, power is no longer concentrated in a way that enables rapid, decisive outcomes. It is instead distributed across multiple instruments, actors, and levels.
Within this relative vacuum, the war economy, as explained by Paul Collier, finds the conditions that allow it to reproduce itself, while David Keen shows that chaos may, for certain actors, become a system that generates continuing benefits.
At the state level, Ibn Khaldun and Malik Bennabi remind us that internal cohesion is the first condition for national resilience. Gramsci explains that domination begins with control over the public sphere before extending into the political realm, while Huntington, Fukuyama, Tilly, and Myrdal affirm that the survival of the state depends upon the strength of its institutions, not merely the size of its arsenal.
When these contributions are considered in the light of the Sudanese case, one central truth becomes clear: Sudan’s future will not be determined solely by the outcome of battles or the scale of foreign intervention, but by its ability to restore the state as the unifying framework of society and to transform peace from a political agreement into a national project of reconstruction.
In concluding this analysis, decisive victory has not been delayed; rather, its meaning has changed.
Sudan is no longer simply a crisis in search of a solution. It has become a reality that imposes its own logic, in which developments on the ground write what international resolutions cannot, and expose the limits of an international system that is no longer capable of imposing decisive endings, but has become increasingly capable of managing prolonged conflicts.
What the world has witnessed in recent years — from the Russia–Ukraine war and the widening international alignments it has produced, including extensive Western support for Ukraine, the deepening strategic partnership between Russia and China, and North Korea’s military support for Russia, to the Iranian–Israeli–American war, as well as the crises affecting navigation in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz — suggests that the world has entered a phase in which the ability of major powers to impose traditional military or political outcomes is declining, while their capacity to contain and manage crises over extended periods is increasing.
Sudan today does not stand outside this transformation. It lies at its heart, as one of the arenas in which the meanings of power, sovereignty, the state, and decisive victory itself are being redefined.

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