Yes, the world is more peaceful, and why

ARTICLE: Does Peace Have a Chance?, By John Horgan, Slate, Aug. 4, 2009

Nice version of an argument I've long made: as time progresses, the world gets more and more peaceful.

Or, stated as I did in the original version of the brief that became the PNM-BFA-and-now-GP standard brief: the further you got back into history, the more you find a larger and larger percentage of humans preparing for and engaging in mass violence.

Good stats to keep: first half of 20th century sees wars kills about 190m, and second half sees only 40m.

For example, Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland's School for International and Security Studies has estimated that war and state-sponsored genocide in the first half of the 20th century killed as many as 190 million people, both directly and indirectly. That comes to an average of 3.8 million deaths per year. His analysis found that wars killed fewer than one-quarter of that total in the second half of the 20th century--40 million altogether, or 800,000 per year.

The big difference in the system?

Why, the emergence of the U.S. as partial-world and then full-world Leviathan.

Then again, maybe it was the UN, as some like to claim!

(Thanks: Tom Mull)

Comments

[JFRiley]

a good article and its nice to see views commonly expressed here found elsewhere and starting to take root. My only issue is the authors pacifist slant towards the end. He gives no acknowledgment to the role nukes have played in pacifying the worlds great powers. also, he sites increased defense spending by the U.S. as a threat to the downward trend, rather than as one of the reasons the trend has occurred.

Other than that a good read.