The Human Security Centre reports the decline of warfare world wide.
From the Overview (pdf file)
Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways. Civil wars, genocides and international crises have all declined sharply. International wars, now only a small minority of all conflicts, have been in steady decline for a much longer period, as have military coups and the average number of people killed per conflict per year.1 The number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between 1988 and 2001.The wars that dominated the headlines of the 1990s were real—and brutal—enough. But the global media have The extent of the change in global security following the end of the Cold War has been remarkable:
• The number of armed conflicts around the world has declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s (see Figure 1.1 in Part I).2
• Between 1991 (the high point for the post–World War II period) and 2004, 28 armed struggles for self-determination started or restarted, while 43 were contained or ended. There were just 25 armed secessionist conflicts under way in 2004, the lowest number since 1976.3
• Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere, the number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001 (Figure 1.11).
• International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001 (Figure 1.5).
• The dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003 (Figure 1.10).
• Global military expenditure and troop numbers declined sharply in the 1990s as well.
• The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end (Figure 3.1).4
• Five out of six regions in the developing world saw a net decrease in core human rights abuses between 1994 and 2003 (Figures 2.6 and 2.7).
This is an international report funded by Canada, the UK, Norway, Sweeden and Switzerland.
You could have read this news here in August 2004 In May 2005 I wrote:
This is bad news both for antiwar liberals and pro-military conservatives. They will now have to look for some other way to get their adrenalin highs from being continuously outraged. It is bad news for the major TV and print media which depend on sensationalized reporting to deliver eyeballs to the advertisers
Most of the military will recognize it as good news. Some will begin to rethink the role of the military in future conflicts.
The odds are that this report will get a very small play in the mainstream media.
Comments