A study issued paints a surprising picture of war and peace in the 21st century: Armed conflicts have declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, and genocide and human rights abuses have plummeted around the world.Who needs wars when we've got Mother Nature?
The only form of political violence that appears to be getting worse is terrorism -- a serious threat but one that kills markedly fewer people than open warfare, it said.
Seriously, does this mean that more people are content with their lives than ten years ago? It seems to me that you have to have a lot of discontented people before you can get a full-blown war. Is a general sense of complacency the reason some people turn to terrorism?
Professor Andrew Mack, who directed the three-year study, said there has been a shift away from the huge wars of the 1950s, '60s and '70s where million-strong armies faced each other with conventional weapons.There's plenty more interesting stuff in that article. I am, of course, interested in the whys. I don't know enough about history to make very good guesses. What might have caused the violence to go down? Better and faster communications? A desire not to repeat history? Improved standard of living?
"The average war today tends to be very small, low intensity conflict, fought with ill-trained troops, small arms and light weapons, often very brutal, with lots of civilians killed -- but the absolute numbers of people being killed are ... much, much smaller than they were before," he said.
Armed conflicts have not only declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, but the deadliest conflicts with over 1,000 battle deaths dropped even more dramatically -- by 80 percent. The number of international crises, often harbingers of war, fell by more than 70 percent between 1981 and 2001, the report said.
Anybody out there care to speculate?
2 comments:
I took a class at UK called Causes of War. It was highly scientific and basically detailed the findings of years of research. Some factors that contributed to wars were limited resources, leaders who had much to profit, the existence of buffer zones, balance of power in the world, etc. An example of the first would be limited water in the Israel/Palestine area. An example of the second would be all the problems in Ireland. Our teacher basically said that sometimes peace arbitration can involve giving leaders of, say, the I.R.A. a payoff for peace, rather than their continued payoffs for war.
Interestingly, Republicanism was a big factor in war. To that end, researchers have spent years studying ideals and beliefs of Republicanism (i.e. you have to wage war to prevent war), and testing them. In the end, the evidence said that Republican attitudes about war were very wrong, yet, for some reason, Republicans remain unconvinced, and perhaps, the information isn't at the fingertips of the general public.
As for terrorism, we had that defined in another UK polysci class. It is essentially the act of someone who is desperate and has no other effective course of action to resolve their problem.
Putting that info together, I would have to conclude that war has gone down because there is only one superpower. And if that superpower was not being run by Republicans, esp the variety of Republicans that have MUCH to profit (oil, Halliburton, Saudi connections, etc.), and was therefore not so intent on waging war but rather on finding real solutions to terrorism and dealing with stubborn ass ideologies rather than contributing to stubborn ass ideologies, there would probably be a whole lot less war.
There, I have probably made enough strong statements that you are guaranteed a satisfying number of comments and dialogue.
I'm glad you opened up the subject; I needed a refresher since I will be studying this stuff soon in grad. school.
Now I will go to my old prof's site and see if he has anything interesting that I could link you to.
I'm not so sure I would label such attitudes on war as strictly "Republicanism." I think it is important to make a distinction between Republican politics and neo-conservative ideology, the latter of which seems to have lost its credibility with the Republican party in the face of a failed foreign policy.
Reviewing notes from a recent lecture, that neo-con ideology is in part, as follows:
--The United States can act unilaterally without having to accommodate the views of its allies because of its great economic and military power.
-- 9/11 overturned historical rules of international behavior.
--As a global hegemon, the U.S. should not be constrained by international agreements which limit its course of action.
--Military action is more effective and therefore preferable to diplomatic activity.
--Democracies do not launch wars, so the U.S. should press actively for democratization of other nations.
--As the devout government of a Christian nation, the US has moral authority.
Regarding the statistics of decline in armed conflict... the end of the Cold War is at least a major factor in this equation, as Cold War conflicts made up approximately 1/3 of all conflicts post-WWII. Another factor is the expansion of NGO's which often have done just as much, if not more, than government-sanctioned organizations in conflict resolution and prevention. There are other factors, of course, including an expansion of diplomacy and peace-keeping from the UN, which complete a larger picture.
However, I would be careful in making an assumption that global security has increased. The third world is often ignored, and African wars still rage. Non-traditional security issues, such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental disasters, could certainly prove to be devastating. The Middle East: Indian-Pakistani relations are a concern, as well as (of course) Israeli-Palestinian. And while North Korea and its nuclear program is also a concern for the U.S., Iran may prove to be its biggest problem, as it is estimated to be nuclear within 5 years, probably closer to 3.
The face of conflict has changed from conventional warfare, and security issues have new formulas since the end of the Cold War. But citing a decline in conflict is not necessarily representative of the whole picture of global peace and security. It's an incomplete analysis of the statistics.
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