A world less dangerous

While some argue that we live in the most dangerous time in the history of the world, some researchers beg to differ. The Atlantic's Primary Sources column offers some interesting statistics from the Canadian Human Security Centre, which concludes:

The number of ongoing armed conflicts is 40 percent lower now than in 1992, and the number of deadly conflicts—defined as wars leading to 1,000 or more combat deaths—is 80 percent lower. The number of military coups and attempted coups was 60 percent lower in 2004 than in 1963. And the annual number of victims of genocides and mass killings fell by 80 percent from 1989 to 2001, even taking such places as Bosnia and Rwanda into account. The exception to this generally positive trend, of course, is terrorism. To explain the overall decline in violence, the report cites the end of the Cold War and the proxy conflicts that it fueled in developing nations; the end of the often bloody process of decolonization; and UN diplomacy, sanctions, and peacekeeping missions.

The difference, of course, is proximity.Al-Qaedaism targets the US and other western countries while proxy conflicts and war of decolonization occurred thousands of miles away from places. So while the world is not more dangerous, to westerners, THEIR world seems that way.

I bet Salvadorans and Angolans don't think the world is more dangerous than it was 20 years ago.