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What Are the Trends in Armed Conflicts, and What Do They Mean for U.S. Defense Policy?
2017
• Examining armed conflict empirically over a decadeslong perspective, we find that it has decreasedinterstate war has become a rare event, and intrastate conflict has lessened in frequency and magnitude, despite a recent uptick in violence. • Only a handful of the alternative future scenarios that we examined produced large spikes in expected levels of violence down the road.
In 2010, UCDP recorded 30 active armed conflicts (i.e. with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths). This is a substantial reduction in relation to the 36 conflicts registered for 2009. A drop of this magnitude has only been reported four times previously in the post-1946 period. However, only in two of these instances was this part of a general downward trend. Thus no major inferences should be drawn, except perhaps that the reduction in conflicts in Africa seems to be part of a trend. At 30 in 2010, the number of active conflicts is at its lowest level since 2003. Furthermore, the number of wars (1,000 or more battle-related deaths) declined from six in 2009 to four in 2010. The most intense war in terms of fatalities was in Afghanistan. Eight of the armed conflicts listed for 2009 were not active in 2010, but during the year two new conflicts erupted -Mauritania and Tajikistan -both involving rebel groups that had previously fought in neighbouring countries. Only two peace agreements were concluded during the year. While this is one more than 2009, it is decidedly below the annual average for the post-Cold War period.
Regional Conflicts: New Thinking, Old Policy
Regional conflicts remain one of the most important issues on the superpower agenda, a fact reinforced by President Bush in his discussions with Chairman Gorbachev at Malta in December of last year. Working toward solutions to regional problems of all types--political, economic, environmental, and military--will be critical to stability and the reduction of tension worldwide. This subject occupies as important a place on the East-West agenda as nuclear arms control. Indeed, the two subjects are intimately connected. Finding solutions to regional conflicts is an essential part of the all-important task of preventing nuclear war. The disturbing frequency with which small wars have become big wars in the past gives caution to us all.
War is declining and there is sufficient evidence to support this claim. Research suggests that we are living in the most peaceful era in human history and that there has been an unprecedented decline in conflict between states over the last two centuries (Pinker 2013: 400). For the purpose of this essay I will be limiting the definition of war, due to its increasingly diversified nature, to " a state of open and declared, hostile armed conflict between states or nations " (Tzafestas 2015: 140). The emergence of an overwhelmingly liberal international system, where states can cooperate in economic terms even when competition exists and democracy prevails to facilitate freedom, is an undeniable aspect to the reduction of interstate wars. The advent of the industrial revolution after 1815 was a profoundly transformative period for the developing world. The explosive growth realised through globalisation made autarky undesirable, and this phenomenon in turn promoted tolerance and understanding between nations (Gat 2012: 153). Thus the widely held belief that war was an effective model for growth was extinguished and a decline of interstate conflicts ensued. In this essay I will be discussing how peace by trade, democracy and intergovernmental organisations have influenced state actors to avoid conflict, drawing on real world examples displaying the importance of all elements. These three factors driving the decline of interstate conflict are inextricably linked, with the globalisation of trade being the starting point for perpetual peace. Peace has become more profitable than war and the universalisation of capitalism is considered to possess deeply pacifying qualities. Erich Weede in The Diffusion of Prosperity and Peace by Globalisation recognizes that " there exists strong and beneficial links between globalisation and the avoidance of war " (Weede 2004: 168). This gravitation towards nonviolent cooperation can be understood in the changing circumstances of the cost-effectiveness of war; there is no longer a necessity to politically possess a territory to benefit from it. This peace by trade or, 'capitalist peace', is aligned with Emmanuel Kant's belief that the natural process of self-interest will eventually produce a lasting and just peace (Oneal and Russett 1999: 1). It is in the states best interest to avoid war. As warfare often results from resource competition, the rise of the global capital market provides alternative mechanisms for competition and communication where states may otherwise be forced to fight (Gartzke 2007: 166). However, the conclusion that trade causes a reduction of interstate conflicts appears to befit only major-power pairs and contiguous dyads; there is no substantive evidence to suggest the correlation between trade and peace for non-relevant dyads. For a contiguous dyad, a single standard deviation increase in the ratio of trade to gross domestic product lowers the probability of conflict by 38 per cent (Oneal and Russett 1999: 439).