Question: **Plot Details/Summary**

Another one where I have only sketchy memories of the tale, I fear. The setting for this one is the near future (from the writer's perspective, which I think was the 1970s). Man's reached a point where bloodshed and loss of life are no longer necessary to settle conflicts. Instead, all disputes are settled through an annual combat held on the surface of the moon, using the best combat machines each nation can come up with.

The protagonist, as I recall, is an engineer for the Americans. He recollects past conflicts, and the circumstances for this years fracas. Much of the combat is told from his observers' perspective.

The actual conflict is a rather clever affair, with a description of each team's designs and all the tricks and gee-whiz things they built into them. The protagonist's team manages to prevail, when they managed to use an attack as a feint, with the real attack being a swarm of microscopic machines (they did not use the term nanites) that destroyed the opposing machine from the inside.

**Timeframe/Other Details**

I think this one dates from the 1970s. I don't think it more recent, given my recollections of when I read it, and also the technology descriptions they used in it. There is an outside chance that the combat is not between rival nations, but rival corporations. That would change the premise of "man evolving beyond bloodshed", of course. I think it's nations fighting, though. I am almost 100% certain this was in a sci-fi magazine, not an anthology.

Answer: 
["A Short History of World War LXXVIII"](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?50251), a short story by [Roy L. Prosterman](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?12378) in [*Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact*, April 1977](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?57054+c).

**Man's reached a point where bloodshed and loss of life are no longer necessary to settle conflicts. Instead, all disputes are settled through an annual combat held on the surface of the moon, using the best combat machines each nation can come up with.**

> 
> "But, after the indescribable ravages of World War III, it had become clear that human survival demanded a wholly different approach to conflict. Fortunately, perhaps essentially, this realization coincided with the development of machines that were far superior in every way to human operators in carrying out acts of destruction. Even two hundred years ago"—here sections from an ancient communication called "Newsweek" and made, apparently, of cloth or some similar substance, flashed upon the screen—"technicians were talking about the possibility of an 'Automated Battlefield'." Here, computer animation took over, showing a series of still rather primitive machines confronting one another on a field. There were explosions, grindings, and tearings. Drones hummed through the air. Many of the machines disappeared. There were no humans present.  
> 
>   
> [. . . .]  
> 
> 
> 
> 

**The protagonist's team manages to prevail, when they managed to use an attack as a feint, with the real attack being a swarm of microscopic machines (they did not use the term nanites) that destroyed the opposing machine from the inside.**

> 
> What won it for the Usa, as we later discovered, were the "brain eaters."  
> 
> 
> 
> 

**I am almost 100% certain this was in a sci-fi magazine, not an anthology.**

As far as the ISFDB knows, the story has never been reprinted.
I read this one or something a whole lot like it, I think in a 1970s edition of Analog. The version I read was a "war" between "Usa" (that one I remember) and Arabia (although I don't think it was called that).

Two robots fight it out on the moon, Usa wins (of course). The kicker line was that oil prices would remain lower for a while as a result.

I believe the title was something along the lines of "World War 23", although my attempts to track it down in Google for all numbers between 18 and 25 always returned something about WWII.