Armed conflicts have resulted in a wide range of fatalities on the battlefield within countries that have limited government authority. This study examined the relationship between government capabilities (effectiveness) and conflict intensity in twelve countries involved in armed conflict from 2005 to 2023. We used battle fatality data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the World Bank's measure of government capabilities, which produced 212 country-years. Because battle fatalities were highly skewed, we took log10(deaths + 1) as our transformation of the dependent variable. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were run separately for each country, and one bivariate model pooled all country-years. In general, there was no clear or consistent relationship: government effectiveness had an inverse slope in five countries and a direct slope in seven. Before adjustment for multiple comparisons, three countries showed statistically significant inverse associations (Syria, Ukraine, and Colombia), while one showed a statistically significant positive association (Afghanistan). After conducting a Holm test to correct p-values across the twelve-country analyses, only Ukraine remained statistically significant at the 5% significance level. The overall coefficient for the pooled model was small and negative but not statistically significant. Overall, these findings indicate that government effectiveness by itself does not account for the variation in conflict severity. Several other factors (the conflict phase, whether the conflict escalates, how much military capability each party has, who forms coalitions against whom, and reverse causality) can also affect this relationship.