"savage war" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in a variety of contexts, but typically refers to a war or conflict that is particularly fierce or brutal. Example: The country was torn apart by a savage war that lasted for years, leaving behind a trail of destruction and loss.
In an increasingly savage war — "Burn houses!
Suhair al-Atassi, a leading Syrian human rights campaigner, said: "This is a savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats.
Colonel William Grimsley, an infantry brigade commander, was reading "A Savage War of Peace," Alistair Horne's study of the French-Algerian conflict.
My own hunch is that the north hasn't entirely decided what to do, and that strong international pressure can reduce the risk of another savage war.
Algeria is emerging from a savage war between its military rulers and Islamic guerrilla groups, who singled out journalists and intellectuals and butchered entire villages.
The door slammed shut in 1998, when a territorial dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea erupted in a savage war that lasted for two years.
The painting is from later in Michelangelo's life, made when the savage wars of the Reformation were breaking out.
It was racked with savage wars and campaigns of systematic extermination that prefigure those of modern times.
About 200,000 people are thought to have died in what was one of Africa's most savage wars, with amputations of limbs used to terrorise civilians.
When Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, gets ready to release a new feature on his social network, he might be thinking about the previous lessons he's learned in brutal and savage wars, rather than software updates.
Not that invisible armies had been entirely absent earlier in American history; as Boot, whose previous books include "The Savage Wars of Peace," reminds us, the country owes its independence to a successful insurgency of its own.
