Several years ago, prior to the Iraq war, I watched an obscure C-Span program in which the presenter points out, that at that moment, there is no active nation vs. nation conflict on the planet. The United Nations also notices the trend.
More Terror, Fewer Wars: TERRORISM may be rising but armed conflict, genocide, political crises and human rights abuses have fallen sharply since the end of the Cold War, according to a three-year international study by a team of experts led by left-leaning Australian academic Andrew Mack. Released overnight at UN headquarters in New York, the Human Security Report also finds that today's wars are much less deadly than the wars of the 1950s, 60s and 70s and that wars between countries now account for just 5 per cent of all armed conflicts.The United Nations releases a report observing the steep decline in traditional warfare after America forces an end to the militaristic expansion of communism, and concludes the decrease in violence is due to United Nations activities in preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping missions. It amazes me that many otherwise intelligent people believe the level of peace achieved since the Cold War is the result of the United Nations.
Human Security Centre It shows that most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War––and finds that the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War.The report is available from the website as a series of PDF files. The key section is titled Why the Decline in Armed Conflict? It points out the world has emerged from two long eras of conflict. The first being colonial acquisition followed by colonial divestment, and the second being the end of the global Cold War between freedom and communism.
The report reviews data from 1815 to 2002 and finds several factors contributing to the diminishing incidents of armed conflict. First is the rise of democratically elected governments. Second is increasing economic interdependence, which directly relates to the Third reality of the diminishing economic utility of war. Last of all they find a rise in International Institutions and conclude this last point must be the essential source of the greater peace.
The paper notes, the number of democratic governments increased from 20 to 88 since WWII. I doubt they included Iraq but they should. Democracies seldom attack each other, preferring to engage in some level of relatively free trade. When society can purchase their needs, it makes the economic costs of confiscating assets nearly prohibitive. This is the lesson Saddam Hussein never learned. Democracy, free trade, and retribution for aggression are pretty much the hallmarks of American foreign policy since the end of the cold war.
Many around the world will choose to believe International Bureaucracy, like the EU and the UN, ‘caused’ the global reduction in armed conflict. I choose to believe America is the reason war is increasingly rare.
