Everything that you thought was true about the state of the world is apparently false. If you don't believe it, read the Commission on Human Security Report titled War and Peace in the Twenty First Century. The report is filled with fascinating information. Did you know for instance that:
Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways. Civil wars, genocides and international crises have all declined sharply. International wars, now only a small minority of all conflicts, have been in steady decline for a much longer period, as have military coups and the average
number of people killed per conflict per year.
*Armed conflicts around the world have actually declined by 40% since the early nineties.
*Between 1991 (the high point for the post-World War II period) and 2004, 28 armed struggles for self-determination started or restarted, while 43 were contained or ended.
*There were just 25 armed secessionist conflicts under way in 2004, the lowest number since 1976.
*Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere, the number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001.
*International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001.
*The dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003.
*Global military expenditure and troop numbers declined sharply in the 1990s as well.
*The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end.
*The period since the end of World War II is the longest interval of uninterrupted peace between the major powers in hundreds of years.
*The number of actual and attempted military coups has been declining for more than 40 years. In 1963 there were 25 coups and attempted coups around the world, the highest number in the post - World War II period. In 2004 there were only 10 coup attempts - a 60% decline. All of them failed.
According to the Report each of the following examples of conventional wisdom is actually little more than myth:
� The number of armed conflicts is increasing.
� Wars are getting deadlier.
� The number of genocides is increasing.
� The gravest threat to human security is international terrorism.
� 90% of those killed in today's wars are civilians.
� 5 million people were killed in wars in the 1990s.
� 2 million children were killed in wars during the last decade.
� 80% of refugees are women and children.
� Women are the primary victims of war.
� There are 300,000 child soldiers serving around the world today.
The Report states that, "Not one of these claims is based on reliable data. All are suspect; some are demonstrably false. Yet they are widely believed because they reinforce popular assumptions. They flourish in the absence of official figures to contradict them, and conjure a picture of global security trends that is grossly distorted. And they often drive political agendas."
Then there is this astonishing fact:
According to the World Bank, the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001 pushed millions of people in the developing world into poverty, and likely killed tens of thousands of under-five year-olds, a far greater toll than the total number of deaths directly caused by the attack.
The report gives the lion's share of the credit for the decline in violence to the end of both colonialism and the cold war, which is certainly a major factor, and to the efforts of the U.N., which is certainly a singularly ludicrous attribution. Nowhere in the report is there mention of the fact that since the 1980s, evil-doers have been put on notice that if they persist in doing their neighbors ill they may well receive a knock on the door from an American JDAM precision guided munition.
Such a prospect has probably done more to concentrate the minds of the world's villains than all of Kofi Anan's proclamations, programs, and thieveries put together. Yet it receives no mention. Nor have we seen this report in the MSM. Too much good news for the chronically dyspeptic gloom and doomers to assimilate, we suppose.
Thanks to Belmont Club for the tip.