We’re not even halfway through 2026, and global conflicts are already surging.

Last year marked a grim turning point with nearly 60 active conflicts worldwide, war-related deaths at a 30-year high and more than 120 million people displaced.

I’m Ali Rae, a journalist with Al Jazeera English and presenter of All Hail, a series exploring the systems of power that shape everyday life.

In its fifth season, we move beyond defining militarism to ask the harder question: Why does it persist?

All Hail the Military is not a rallying cry but a warning.

This isn’t front-line reporting. It’s not live updates from the battlefield. This is the story behind the relentless militarism that drives our world - the systems that feed it, the complicity it thrives on and the silences that protect it.

To unpack things, I’ve traced recurring patterns, the roles that keep resurfacing in conflict. Some are chosen; others are imposed.

Who profits? Who judges? Who fights? Who suffers? And who watches from afar?

Jump to a chapter.

Once dominated by the arms industry, war profiteering is taking on a new face. Silicon Valley tech giants are now cashing in on rising military budgets as they move into defence contracting.

In 2025, global military spending reached a record $2.88 trillion, led by the United States at $954bn - 33 percent of the total and more than the next six countries combined.

And it’s set to climb even higher.

In April, US President Donald Trump's administration proposed $1.5 trillion in US defence spending during the fiscal year that begins on October 1 to build a “dream military”, raising budgets that drive greater profits and accelerate the shift from a traditional military-industrial complex to a military-tech complex.

People often see judges as neutral arbiters in a fractured and volatile world.  But international law isn’t a clean fix for conflict. It’s political too and can sometimes make resolutions harder.

Take the International Court of Justice. It settles disputes between states and interprets international law, including the laws of war. It is currently handling four genocide cases, reflecting a growing reliance on the court for accountability.

But enforcement depends on the United Nations Security Council. It has 15 members and five permanent ones (the US, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia) with veto power that can override the will of every other state.

What are some of the key issues the permanent members have vetoed over the years?

The permanent five sometimes abstain rather than veto resolutions, allowing them to pass or fail without formally blocking them. France and the UK, for example, have often abstained on Middle East and humanitarian resolutions rather than vetoing them.

But abstention isn’t neutrality. It’s often a strategic signal of political positioning. It underscores a persistent reality: The veto system has never been neutral and remains a major obstacle to enforcing international law in armed conflict.

For decades, much of the research on war-related trauma has focused on soldiers, and comparatively less attention has been given to civilians and the long-term impacts of war on local communities.

However, new research suggests a striking insight: War trauma may not be confined to the mind but can also leave traces in the body, even at a genetic level.

Studies suggest that extreme stress, such as surviving bombings, can influence how genes behave through the body’s chemical “switches” that can turn certain genes on or off without altering the DNA sequence itself.

This has led researchers to ask whether the effects of trauma might extend beyond those who directly experience war and whether, in some cases, these biological changes could also be observed in future generations.

Another early finding is that being exposed to war as a child may speed up the ageing process, bringing its effects earlier in life and, in some cases, making them more severe.

The true cost of war extends beyond the battlefield and the headlines. It lingers in the lives of civilians long after the fighting ends.

When most people think of the fighter, the image that comes to mind is usually of a man. But women have always been present on and around the battlefield - in moments of rebellion, defence and offence alike.

In many professional militaries today, including NATO countries, women make up only about 15 percent of personnel. That number is slowly rising, but they’re still a small minority, which shapes how people tend to see women’s role in war.

Armed groups, however, tell a strikingly different story. Here are the percentages of women who have fought or are fighting in rebel forces:

• 20 to 30 percent: Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka
• 30 percent: Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation
• 30 to 40 percent: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
• 30 to 40 percent: Nepalese Maoist fighters
• 30 to 40 percent (estimated): Turkiye's Kurdistan Workers' Party (varies by unit/period)
• 25 to 30 percent: Sandinistas (Sandinista National Liberation Front membership) in Nicaragua
• up to 40 to 50 percent: Shining Path in Peru
• 100 percent: Women's Protection Units, an all-female Kurdish militia in Syria

That points to something deeper: Women’s roles in war are far more diverse and complex than the stereotype suggests.

In reality, people, including women, often join armed groups for practical reasons: escaping poverty, unemployment or personal hardships.

War is no longer just reported. It’s witnessed in real time.

For spectators of war, the front lines are just a tap away. Livestreams from bombed-out streets, raw footage from civilians under fire and unfiltered testimonies flood our feeds.

We’re living through a moment unlike any other: war has never reached us so directly or so instantly.

But this immediacy didn’t appear overnight. It’s the result of a long evolution in how conflict is recorded and shared.

War does not end simply because suffering is visible. It ends through disruption. And that disruption rarely begins on social media. It begins when people put their phones down.

Credits

Presenter/senior producer: Ali Rae | animator: Pierangelo Priak | camera/editing: Ali Rae | production support: Ben Walker | local producers: Sofia Villamil (Colombia), Sonoko Miyazaki (Japan), Chi Thi Nguyen (Vietnam) | commissioning editor: Salah A Khadr | executive producer: Meenakshi Ravi