Jonathan Power
An ugly cloud of pessimism hands over many parts of the world. War that seemed to be in retreat, has returned with a vengeance with the second largest military in world, Russia’s, battling a very under-resourced neighbour, Ukraine. It’s getting a lot of people down. Yet there are many more grounds for optimism.
“We need jaw-jaw not war-war”, said Winston Churchill, albeit hypocritically. Still, he would be glad to see that because of his pithy advice the number of wars around the world has fallen dramatically since the end of World War 2. This is despite the wars in Korea, Africa (many), Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan versus India, Myanmar, Central America, Cyprus, ex-Yugoslavia, Syria, Yemen and now Ukraine.
Compared with centuries past this has been a remarkable era, yet one not often acknowledged.
Interstate armed conflicts, apart from India versus Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Gaza, Israel and Lebanon, Iran and Israel, Yemen and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine, have vanished off the map. Most conflicts are civil wars, as in Sudan, Syria, Congo Relative to the size of their populations these wars involve a very small percentage of humanity.
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