War and State Death

State death has been a recurring phenomenon in the history of international relations, yet its causes and dynamics remain subject to extensive scholarly debate. While instances of state death in the modern era have become less frequent than in earlier historical periods, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has reignited political and academic discussions about the potential for state breakdown as a result of a nation's defeat in war. Despite a plethora of studies examining the causes of war and the factors contributing to state and regime collapse, the link between war participation and state survival remains underexplored. This paper seeks to address this gap by systematically analyzing cases of interstate wars since 1816 to determine whether and how wars contribute to state death. Using data from wars from 1816 to 2007, it employs Kaplan-Meier survival analysis to show survival probabilities for states after war participation and proportional hazards regression to assess how war participation influences state survival. The results contribute to an understanding of the sensitivity of states to war participation and highlight the conditions under which they exacerbate the risk of death beyond baseline hazards. The paper also considers how this understanding might inform policy responses to mitigate the risks of state survival in contemporary conflicts, particularly in cases where war-affected states become the source of significant regional or global security threats.