Age of peace?

[Trevor]

I've been reading around and Generational Dynamics is about the only website that's predicting another major war. Just about everyone else believes that we can usher in a golden age of peace or at least reduce war deaths to the point that it's all but extinct in human society.

Some of the evidence seems too compelling to ignore. According to sources, war deaths averaged over 200 per 100,000 during World War II, down to 8 during the 1960's and 1970's, and down to less than one in the first decade of the 20th century.

http://www.ourworldindata.org/data/war- ... fter-1945/
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/st ... uite-some/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/08/15/think-again-war/

Here's what I think the difficulty is, however, and what most of these people tend to overlook. The assumption seems to be that this trend will continue until the world is at complete peace. I can understand where they're coming from, since the world today is much less violent than it was a few decades ago. In 1950, you had close to half a million war deaths, and perhaps even that is an understatement.

The difficulty is that it looks like this trend is beginning to reverse. In 2014, the death toll from war is approximately 180,000, with most of those deaths coming from Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan. The first two in particular are showing indications of getting worse, not improving, so while I think they may have a point, it shouldn't be considered a fait accompli.

[Reality Check]

There are a few problems with those statistics.

Most of the deaths during World War II were civilian deaths, not military deaths.

Those doing most of the killing did so after the military battles were over and the termporialy victorious armies had absolute physical control of their, soon to be dead, civilian victims; and the temporarily victorious armies had absolute control of the news reporting apparatus during the killing.

Some times those armies, such as the red army of the Soviet Union, and the Communist army of China, were on the victorius side of World War II and did most of their civilian killing after the war.

Most deaths that occured before, during and after World War II were not reported until well after World War II.

For a modern example the new Islamic State territories are being ethnically and religously cleansed.

Muslims of all types, Sunni, Shia, Suffi are being killed as apostates if they do not believe exactly the same way as the religous purests of the Islamic state. The same is true of the men of many non-Arab groups.

The world has no reliable figures on just how many people have been killed so far in the Islamic State.

The population of the world has exploded since World War II.

Before, during and after World War I the deaths were in the Millions.

Before, during and after World War II the deaths were in the 10s of Millions.

After World War III the deaths will be known, and likely will be in the 100s of Millions or even single digit Billions.

Where will all those deaths occur? Look to the where the people are - the countries with

Two years before World War II the British leader had achieved "peace in our time". War had been avoided again. Then the real killing started - and 10s of Millions died - mostly civilians. The full extent of the killing before, during and after World War II was not known until decades later.

[Reality Check]

Some of the evidence seems too compelling to ignore. According to sources, war deaths averaged over 200 per 100,000 during World War II, down to 8 during the 1960's and 1970's, and down to less than one in the first decade of the 20th century.

I believe you meant to write: "and down to less than one ( person ) ( per million people in the world during ) the first decade of the 21st century"

This of course ignores the ramp up that has occurred in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine during the second decade of the 21st centurary. Since none of those three conflicts has, as yet, concluded - we also do not have official numbers for the massive numbers of deaths of civilians that will occur ( or already have occurred, but not yet been officially reported ) at the hands of the victors.

Wide spread use of nuclear weapons against the population centers of non-nuclear armed countries by the newly nuclear armed countries in the same regions have also not yet occurred before, or during a third world war.

The old nuclear powers, and the newly nuclear powers, may even use nuclear weapons on each others population centers during a third World War. Such retaliatory and/or peremptory strikes will be a first for the world. Previous to now, nuclear weapons have only seen very limited use against a non-nuclear power by the then, only nuclear power in the world.

Given the continuing build up of nuclear weapons in the newer countries with nuclear weapons such as China, Pakistan, India and Israel and the eminent frantic build up of nuclear weapons in the middle east by countries such as Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, declaring massive war deaths on earth a thing of the past appears to fly in the face of the numbers related to the build up of weapons of mass destruction and increasing evidence of the leaders of countries with growing populations willingness to eliminate competing populations and seize the liberated lands and natural resources for themselves.

[John]

I have a couple of memories related to these issues:

1. In 1982, I had a conversation with someone about a news story that
there were 30-40 wars going on in the world at any given time. I
remember looking at the list of wars at that time, but I had no idea
what most of them were about, and I don't remember the list.

2. In 2004, I read an article that said that there had been almost no
wars since 1990. This would mean a dramatic change from 1982 to 1992,
which would cross from the end of the Awakening era to the middle of
the Unraveling era.

In the 1990s, there was a lot of talk about the "Vietnam syndrome,"
where we were afraid to go to war. In particular, after Saddam was
expelled from Kuwait, there was little or no desire to go after Saddam
in Iraq.

America entered its generational Crisis era in 2003 (1945+58), which
is the time that we started the ground war in Iraq.

Israel entered its generational Crisis era in 2007 (1949+58), and in
2006, Israel launched its war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, with no plan
and no objectives.

In 2006, I spent some time trying to figure out some of these issues,
and having just seen the movie about John Nash, I tried to reduce the
international situation to game theory:

** A beautiful mind? The world is paralyzed into a 'Nash equilibrium'
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... 17nash.htm

I've never developed this any further, but I do suspect that the
following is true:

In the 1960s-1980s, there was a willingness to go war, because doing
so was felt to be low risk, since no country besides the US was strong
enough for a war to spin out of control. Therefore, the US filled its
role of world policeman, in the same way that the NYPD fulfills its
role.

By the 1990s, other countries had become stronger, and there was a
reluctance to start a war for fear that it would spiral out of
control.

This fear has only grown strong since the 1990s, but there are two
opposing themes, as I was writing about the other day: appeasement
versus war. But I should have worded it as "appeasement versus
belligerence."

So what I wrote was the following:

On the one hand, whether it's Barack Obama in Syria, Angela Merkel in
Ukraine, or Pakistan and Turkey in Yemen, there's a fear of "getting
involved," and a willingness to appease rather than confront, as in
the legendary case of Britain's Neville Chamberlain and Nazi Germany.

On the other hand, there are very strong nationalistic and xenophobic
feelings being exhibited in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and
UAE in Yemen, China in the South China Sea, and Russia in Ukraine.

In the end, choosing between appeasement and belligerence is a
"Hobson's choice," because in a generational Crisis era, appeasement
is not an choice that's available for long. Appeasement in this era
appears as weakness, and only encourages further nationalism and
belligerence on the part of the countries not practicing appeasement.

I believe that with some research it would be possible to trace these
two themes -- appeasement vs belligerence -- from the end of one
crisis war to the beginning of the next, and show the role they play
during the various generational eras.

Today, the appeasement and belligerence themes are very strong, much
stronger than they were even a few years ago, and this appears to be
substantially increasing the level of international tensions. Just
one miscalculation by any country could become a "regeneracy event,"
and spiral into a larger war.

[John]

Here's something from a news story:

According to the Pew Research Center, "roughly a quarter of the
world's countries are grappling with high levels of religious
hostilities within their borders." As a result, the religious
composition of many countries is rapidly changing: In Iraq, for
example, the number of Christians has plummeted from approximately 1.5
million in 2005 to 300,000 today.