Towards a more peaceful world? A critical view

Abstract

Contemporary scholars do not agree on whether there is a declining prospect of war and armed conflict. A substantial number of authors of quantitative studies have concluded that the current worldwide trend is towards peace. I argue that this conclusion builds on insufficient evidence and possibly on misleading categorisations. The complacent view on the contemporary international system is based on inadequate awareness of the changing patterns of violence. The so-called new wars are not played out on the traditional battlefield. Valid conclusions about present trends would require a reconsideration of definitions, empirical evidence, and coding rules. Moreover, the current wave of democratisation and the increasing number of international interventions probably do not make the world more peaceful. Therefore, the conclusions in some of the most extensive recent analyses of war and peace, that the world is becoming more peaceful, are flawed.

Acknowledgements

One of the inspirations for this article was lively debates with Håvard Strand and Nils Petter Gleditsch; the author is grateful for their comments on an early draft of this article.

Notes

 1. Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson was in charge of a UN report on global governance; see also Carlsson, ‘A New International Order Through the United Nations’

 2. Kegley and Raymond, A Multipolar Peace?

 3. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future.’

 4. van Creveld, The Transformation of War; Münkler, Die neuen Kriege; Kaldor, New & Old Wars.

 5. Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001’; Brzoska, ‘New Wars' Discourse in Germany’; Lacina and Gleditsch, ‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat’.

 6. Harbom, Högbladh, and Wallensteen, ‘Armed Conflict and Peace Agreements’; Human Security Report , 22–25.

 7. Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001’; Lacina and Gleditsch, ‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat’; Lacina, Gleditsch and Russett, ‘The Declining Risk of Death in Battle’

 8. Mueller, The Remnants of War

 9. Sarkees, Wayman, and Singer, ‘Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars’

10. Kaldor, New & Old Wars; Münkler, Die neuen Kriege

11. Wohlforth, ‘The Stability of a Unipolar World’

12. Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace; Hegre et al., ‘Toward a Democratic Civil Peace?’; Gleditsch, The Future of Armed Conflict

13. Human Security Report .

14. See the account of data, definitions and methods on the UCDP Web page, www.ucdp.uu.se/database, accessed 20 April 2007.

15. Brockett, ‘Measuring Political Violence and Land Equality in Central America’; Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, 276; Paris, At War's End, 147.

16. Lacina and Gleditsch, ‘Monitoring Trends in Global Combat’.

17. Sambanis, ‘What is Civil War?’, 816.

18. UCDP homepage; Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001’; Small and Singer, Resort to Arms.

19. Sarkees, Wayman, and Singer, ‘Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars’, 56; Sambanis, ‘What is Civil War?’, 825.

20. Chivvis, ‘Preserving Hope in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’

21. Sambanis, ‘What is Civil War?’.

22. Prendergast and Thomas-Jensen, ‘Blowing the Horn’, 61.

23. Bond et al., ‘Integrated Data for Events Analysis (IDEA)’. For details, see the account on the UCDP website.

24. Münkler, Die neuen Kriege; Kaldor, New & Old Wars.

25. Richards, No War No Peace; Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, 284; Koonings and Kruijt, Armed Actors.

26. A substantial number of these homicides might be categorised as ‘political’, although the distribution between various categories, as well as the total number, are difficult to estimate; see Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, 219–225 for further details.

27. Dodge, ‘The Causes of US Failure in Iraq’, 90–92; Fearon, ‘Iraq's Civil War’, 2–15

28. Collier and Sambanis, Understanding Civil War; Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, 61, 70, 84; Richards, No War No Peace, 2, 5, 13.

29. UCDP Website; Human Security Brief, 11.

30. van Creveld, The Transformation of War, Münkler, Der Wandel des Kriege.

31. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works; Bayart et al., The Criminalization of the State in Africa; Reno, Warlord Politics and African States.

32. Münkler, Der Wandel des Krieges, 144.

33. Enders and Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism.

34. Human Security Brief, 15; UCDP website.

35. Russett and O'Neal, Triangulating Peace.

36. Hegre et al., ‘Toward a Democratic Civil Peace?’; Francisco, ‘The Relationship between Coercion and Protest’; Muller and Weede, ‘Cross-National Variations in Political Violence’.

37. Huntington, The Third Wave.

38. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom.

39. Hirst, ‘What is Globalization?’, 154–156; Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 321–348.

40. See the annual accounts from Freedom House.

41. Paris, At War's End.

42. Doyle et al., Keeping the peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador, 2.

43. Doyle and Sambanis, Making War & Building Peace, 6.

44. Human Security Report, 155.

45. Doyle and Sambanis, Making War & Building Peace.

46. Doyle and Sambanis, Making War & Building Peace, 86–93.

47. Paris, At War's End.

48. See the country reports from the British research organisation Tiri, 2007; cf. also the analyses of unintended consequences of peace operations in A oi et al., Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping Operations; cf. further the conclusions by Berdal, ‘Consolidating Peace in the Aftermath of War’, on UN peacebuilding; Berdal shows that in-depth historical analyses are mandatory for understanding the consequences of international interventions.

49. Fearon, ‘Iraq's Civil War’, 8.

50. Hodges, Angola, 14–18.

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Øyvind Østerud

Øyvind Østerud is Professor of International Conflict Studies and currently Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. He has a doctorate from the London School of Economics. He headed a comprehensive Norwegian Power and Democracy Study from 1998 to 2003. From 2003 to 2006, he was Chairman of the Board of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. He has published extensively in international relations and comparative politics.