"[...]In any case the historians date the beginning of the war after the time I joined my first outfit and ship. Everything up to then and still later were 'incidents', 'patrols', or 'police actions.' However, you are just as dead if you buy a farm in an 'incident' as if you buy it in a declared war."
— Johnnie Rico, Starship Troopers
Wars are very often unpopular things. They often divert the course of a nation's politics for years, cost a ton of money, and result in a lot of death and destruction. So naturally, to wriggle their way out of having to sell a fully-fledged war to the public, a government will try to label it as something else entirely. It may be a "police action" or a "special military operation" (especially if the objective is some kind of regime change). It may be called a "border dispute" if there is some kind of Irredentist goal behind the altercation. Or it might be outright obscured with Weasel Words by calling it a "conflict" or an "engagement".
Of course, this gets less and less plausible the longer the "special military police action escalation" carries on, especially if it can start being tallied in years, and at that point, some nations might just end up formally declaring war and ending the charade. Others, though, will go on insisting to the very end that the armed conflict their entire conjoined military is participating in is not, in fact, a war.
This is often a tactic of the Corrupt Politician, President Evil, or more broadly any kind of Villain with Good Publicity with the authority to declare war. Warmongering is (usually) condemned on the international stage, so they will often try to smooth it out with their neighbors by employing this kind of language. It can also help preserve the image of invading nations that don't have a Pretext for War—no one can judge you for wantonly starting a war if you never call it a war, or so the rationale goes.
When a Civil War is involved, ruling bodies often use this rhetoric to maintain the illusion that they have everything under control, and to delegitimize their rival(s) as a challenge to their power in the eyes of the populace. Such conflicts will usually be waved off as mere "uprisings" or "insurrections" staged by "lawless terrorists" getting all uppity... even when they clearly escalate beyond the definition of an uprising or insurrection, and said "lawless terrorists" are in fact a legitimate, cohesive faction equally capable of taking control of the state by force. To acknowledge the civil war for what it is means admitting that the opposition is a threat, and that makes the guys in charge look weak. And looking weak, naturally, is the last thing that The Dictatorship wants.
Subtrope of Distinction Without a Difference. Compare Insistent Terminology and Blatant Lies. Also compare "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word, Deadly Euphemism, and Less Embarrassing Term. Might overlap with Technical Euphemism. See also Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide", as a lot of the same rhetoric can be applied to mass killings and ethnic cleansings (e.g. calling them "counterterrorism measures" or "suppressing insurgents").
No Recent Examples, Please!. Examples from real life must be 30 years old or older to qualify.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: The Gryps Conflict, involving the Titans and the Anti-Earth Union Group, is initially seen as a civil conflict between the two. This is because the Titans use their role to hunt and put down Zeon remnants and sympathizers to declare the AEUG as those type of people. It only becomes a war once the Earth Federation divests itself of the Titans and Axis Zeon gets involved.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Though referred to as the Third Neo Zeon War, the Laplace Incident is not seen as an actual war since The Sleeves, the remnants of Char Aznable's Newborn Neo Zeon, is not seen as an actual army or governing body but as terrorist organization.
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam: The space colonies hold a tournament every four years called the Gundam Fight to determine which colony will have control of the government until the next tournament, where each colony will send a representative in a Gundam down to Earth to battle the other Gundam Fighters until only one remains, with regulations in place to ensure the pilots do not kill each other. While the characters consider the Gundam Fight to be a preferrable alternative to the long-gone practice of warfare, even fearing the prospect of wars returning should the tournament be stopped, the huge amounts of Scenery Gorn and onscreen destruction of the Earth's cities caused by giant robots duking it out, especially since the regulations only account for the lives of the pilots with nothing about the inevitable collateral damage of surrounding people or buildings, make it apparent the Gundam Fight is really no different from warfare. A large part of Master Asia's willingness to help the Devil Gundam wipe out humanity is his belief that the "ideal war" the world carries out is just a destructive game he needs to get rid of the root cause for to let the Earth heal.
Fan Works
- Cycles Upon Cycles: When the Alliance (Terran Dominion, Protoss, and the Zerg) launch a blitz attack into Council Territory, following a botched attempt from the Council to discreetly collect Terran/Protoss technology, and Zerg DNA, the Council had called it "The Koprulu War". The Alliance, meanwhile, just called it "The Backyard Skirmish" due to how one-sided it was in their favor.
Film - Live-Action
- Clear and Present Danger: After a friend of President Bennett's is killed by a Colombian drug cartel, Bennett intends to escalate the situation, even though doing so would violate the Constitution. Nevertheless, in their private correspondence, CIA deputy director of operations Robert Ritter and national security advisor James Cutter both refer to this as a war, as does CIA operative John Clark, who personally oversees the operations in Colombia.
Cutter: Are you suggesting a course of action, sir?Cutter: I'm, uh, not sure where that leaves us.Bennett: These drug cartels represent a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.
Literature
- Discworld
- In Jingo, the brief (and embarrassing) war between superpowers Klatch and Ankh-Morpork is downplayed afterwards as a "misunderstanding". Neither Power wants to admit that they were on the brink of all-out war over ownership of what amounted to a phantom country, and a tacit agreement is reached as to how to draw a line underneath things and carry on as usual.
- Discussed In Thief of Time, where War complains about humans becoming less willing to have full-on wars and that an Ant War in his yard is the best action going these days. He tells fellow Horseman Of the Apocalypse Death that he might as well change his name to "Police Action" or "Negotiated Settlement," which contributes to his overall image of a somewhat henpecked man restless in retirement
- Foundation and Earth: On the world Alpha, the storyteller Monolee is very insistent that what took place between the Spacers and the Settlers thousands of years before was not 'war' but 'conflict'.
- Marc-Uwe Kling: In Qualityland, when a pacifist politician gives a speech criticizing exports of weapons to countries that Qualityland is at war with, the speaker of parliament reminds him that the politically correct term is not war, but "Sicherheitseinsatz zum Schutz der Handelswege und der Rohstoffzufuhr" ("Security operations to protect trade routes and the supply of raw materials").
- Sector General: One of the books rather wryly notes that The Federation's "peacekeeping forces" get involved in a suspiciously large number of "police actions", amidst the Space Navy trying to defend the eponymous hospital from the fleet of an alien government after a first contact ends in violence.
- Starship Troopers: Rico makes a note of how the Terran Federation transitioned from "peace" to "state of emergency" while he was in boot camp, and that the Federation had already been in a number of border skirmishes with the Pseudo-Arachnids before they glassed Buenos Aires and provoked the Federation into full-on war, making the declaration more of a formality to make it official than anything. (And either way, it was pointed out that if you screwed up, even in boot camp, the situation- under any name- allowed full penalties to be applied, pending the mood of the officer dealing with it.)
Live-Action TV
- M*A*S*H: Many jokes are made at the expense of The Korean War technically just being a "police action" against North Korean aggression and the U.S. never formally entering the war, at the risk of incurring retaliation from the Soviets. Even when the Americans have been fighting and dying in the country for three years.
Colonel Potter: Take it from me, folks: this is a war.
- Outlander: When Claire is detained during the British Red Coat capture of an American Continental fort, Jamie and Ian consider whether or not she is a prisoner of war who can be exchanged. It's pointed out that the British refuse to acknowledge America as a sovereign nation capable of declaring war against another nation. Instead, they insist that the conflict is a small-scale rebellion, not a war. As such, anyone captured will be treated as a rebel with none of the protections of enemy soldiers and at risk of being hanged for treason against the Crown.
- Star Trek: In a close variant, from Star Trek: The Next Generation on, the United Federation of Planets insists it doesn't have a military: Starfleet characters invariably insist that Starfleet is a humanitarian and exploratory organization and not a military one. Considering that they use a military-style rank system, operate starships with sufficient firepower to glass planets, and the lack of any other Space Navy or Standard Sci-Fi Army that fights the wars of the United Federation of Planets, the claimed distinction pretty much only exists in Starfleet's collective imagination. Oddly, they still refer to wars themselves as wars, e.g. the Dominion War.
Video Games
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: Subverted. In the ending cinematic, the war is given the name "The Belkan Conflict", due to how the Wardog Squadron discovered that the war was instigated by an organization of Belkan Radicals called the Grey Men, manipulating events behind the scenes to have Osea and Yuktobania go to war with one another in revenge for the fall of their homeland. However, it is also officially known as "The Circum-Pacific War", due to how, for the majority of the time, it was Osea invading Yuktobania, with the ending cinematic explaining that the full details of Wardog’s exploits will be revealed to the public in 2020.
- Bulletstorm: In the game's backstory, the Confederacy had gone to war with several colonies that tried to break off. It is, however, illegal to call it a "war".
- A variation occurs in Dragon Age: Origins: Regent Loghain resfused to call the ongoing war with the Darkspawn a true Blight since it was mostly localized within the Kingdom of Ferelden (the previous Blights spanned the entire continent), and to justify refusing help from rival nation Orlais and the Gray Wardens. Of course, what Loghain didn't realize was what actually makes a Blight a Blight is the presence of an Archdemon, which the Gray Wardens are able to sense...
- Helldivers II: Played for Laughs. For the first four months of the Second Galactic War (i.e. the game's lifespan), Super Earth was not technically at war with its enemies. It was only in May 2024 that the "Galactic War on Tyranny" was formally declared and everything prior to that was labeled as "special military operations", even though they had resulted in millions of casualties for both sides and had active frontlines consisting of entire planets and Space Sectors.
- Mass Effect 1: When the Turians had invaded the human colony of Shanxi, the Systems Alliance had called it "The First Contact War". The Turian Hierarchy, however, called it "The Relay 314 Incident".
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: The human colonists that have settled the new planet have vowed not to repeat the mistakes that turned Earth into a Crapsack World, and as such, they will not declare war on one another. Factions will have prolonged periods of armed conflict when their leaders become displeased with each other, but they do not declare war. No, when Thor hands are forced, they merely "pronounce Vendetta".
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: The base game stories start out with a Space Cold War between the two main factions, fought mostly via Proxy Wars and covert operations. However, as the story progresses, it becomes increasingly less believable the two factions aren't at war with each other, to the point of multiple direct, large-scale military confrontations between the two occurring throughout Act 2. Despite this, there's no formal declaration of war until the start of Act 3.
Real Life
- In general, most conflicts since the end of World War II have been this. Out of all the "wars" that have arose in the more than 80 years since, only about 20 or so were actual declared wars (several of which were one-sided declarations that the opposing side refused to entertain).
- The Korean War — [ahem] the Korean Conflict. This "conflict" involved hundreds of thousands of troops from multiple countries in open combat (and, from the United States, fairly massive amounts of air power) and several million killed and wounded combatants and civilians, but was officially referred to as being merely a "police action" under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council. The Real-Life Trope Maker, and the inspiration for many fictional examples (including the one in the page quote).
- During the Suez Crisis of 1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden infamously insisted that Britain was not at war with Egypt, merely "in an armed conflict". The official story was that Britain and France were intervening as peacekeepers following Israel's invasion of Egypt. However, this was entirely a pretext; the whole thing had been planned ahead by all three countries as a way for Britain and France to retake control of the Suez Canal (which Egypt had seized earlier that year) and Israel to get a territorial buffer zone in the bargain. The premeditated, almost conspiratorial nature of the attack and "intervention" gives the crisis its common Arabic name, the "Tripartite Aggression".
- The Malayan Civil War from 1948 to 1960 was officially called by British colonial authority the "Malayan Emergency" to allow owners of rubber plantations and tin mines to get their claims paid by insurance companies, which then excluded war-related events.
- The Dutch military offensives during the Indonesian National Revolution (1945 -1949) were called "police actions" during the war and for decades after. By the late 20th century, though, Dutch history also refers to this period as a war, and in 2005, the Dutch government officially called it a war.
- The Algerian War was officially named in France until 1999, "law enforcement operations in Algeria."
- The Philippine-American War between Philippine insurgents and the United States was, for American sources at least, referred to as an insurgency rather than a full-blown war. This was mainly due to the American side not recognizing the insurgent Philippine Republic as legitimate.
- According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare war. It has not "declared war", in so many words, since World War II; instead, bills have used terms such as "authorization for use of military force", even though it ultimately boils down to the same thing.