I've got this idea baking because I saw a guy post that it's been as many year from 1971 to 2024 as it was from 1971 to 1918. How do the global wars compare in the two periods?
It occurs to me that this last 1/2 century or so has been globally pretty peaceful. And I wondered if it might even be one of the MOST peaceful 50 years we've had.
I'm inclined to imagine that the Cold War might have kept a lid on larger military aspirations. What do you think, am I deluded?
World War 2 vastly overshadows all other conflicts. Something like 3.7% of the global population died. Some individual countries lost more than 10% of their populations. No other conflict, or group of regional conflicts, comes anywhere close.
I wish the graph in the link had an option to normalize by population. I bet a graph of war deaths as a percent of global population would look very peaceful over the past 50 years.
Great link, thanks for that. We should also note that those are only combatants and don't include the far larger number of civilians who dies because of these conflicts (Holocaust, Siege of Stalingrad, etc.)
I agree that the last 50 years, in terms of "war deaths per capita", must be the most peaceful in all of recorded history, and probably by a huge margin.
If we define the end of the Cold War as the collapse of the Soviet Union, that was over 30 years now. Considering other potential flashpoints (e.g., India and Pakistan), I'd say it's more nuclear deterrence in general. No one wants to be the first to get into sustained conventional, symmetrical warfare with nukes on both sides.
We also seem to be seeing a shift in soft power. Now that raw footage of conflict is readily recorded and broadly accessible, regimes aren't able to control messaging like they used to be. Still need public support to wage war, and it's that much harder to obtain when people can see the faces of the people you're killing.
No one wants to be the first to get into sustained conventional, symmetrical warfare with nukes on both sides.
Not to mention no one wants to be the one to start a nuclear exchange, as that would effectively wipe out both participants nations wholeheartedly, and the populations that remains would inherit a wasteland.
It's probably also a matter of perspective and where in the world you live.
I feel specifically the last 25 years have been specifically bad with the outbreak of quite a number of wars. Starting with two gulf wars, balkan war, several wars around the russian influence sphere, a lot going on in africa, wars nearly forgotten by the media like Yemen, and ultimately Israel/Gaza....